Earlier we needed to have the final draft of the press release and all attachments ready before we could submit the release. The submission screen had a single option (Save) which would send the release to an editor for approval. If you add something later or make a change, it needed a verification again. Now we can save the release in draft mode and this is sent to the editor only after we explicitly indicate the release is ready from our side.

Not only this change saves them unnecessary work, we can dynamically build our release. Thus we can enter the draft release and see how it will look (preview) without bothering about the file attachments and the news image etc.

The submission screens also show the various steps involved in the submission so that we can judge how far we have progressed.

We can also add alt-tags to the images for getting a little push in making sure our images found in the image search engines more easily.

All these changes are definitely going to make your submission process smoother.

You may change your target audience after you hear it

Visit this site on press releases and near the bottom of the page, you will find a section where you can submit your press release. Once you do that (takes about 15 seconds), you will have a one-way link from a fairly popular page, sending you some traffic as well help for quicker spidering of your release.

How’s that for a free lunch?

To test this, I tried to blog about the release announcing this facility itself. However the first thing I noticed is that you can blog about a release only if you have a PRWEB account. This will severely limit the number of people who will blog about your releases.

I really wanted to take this through its paces, so I logged in my account, went to the release again and clicked on the BlogThis link in the right column. This brought up a dialog box asking me for the type of my blog (Blogger, Wordpress and a few other types are supported as of now) and then asked me the log in details for the blog software. So far, so good.

Now the editing box that came up was very elementary with no auto-save and when I tried to move the box away so that I could refer to the original release for quotes, I could not move it out of the screen (the box seems to have been done with DHTML or something similar). At this point, I clicked on something and lost my half-done post

I commend the PRWEB team on a nice initiative but I am more comfortable with my feature-rich visual editor with auto-save. That’s how I drafted this post. However if you have a blog and a PRweb account, you should definitely try to make a blog post about one of the press releases and check this out.

PRWEb lets you publish online press releases for added exposure to your news through quick inclusion in the Google news, Yahoo news and several other prominent locations. Now you can look forward to getting your press releases to major media outlets in the top 100 markets, through this arrangement.

At the same time, they also added a podcast streaming player to the public page (available to the general Internet audience), so you don’t have to download and then play the podcasts.
PRweb has also introduced a full service option for those who feel intimated by the release submission process. This costs $100 extra over the regular package and should come in handy for business owners who want to take advantage of this potent medium but do not, because they avoid getting their feet wet.

While appreciating the move overall, I do feel that the changes were done hurriedly without undergoing a good user testing cycle.

Take the landing page that appears just after login, for example.

• There were a large number of options in multiple lines and places that have been fairly well consolidated. However there is no easy way to reach the management console that lists all the releases I have issued. The Consoles drop-down at the top is missing the most important one, the PRweb Console.
• The bulk of the content area on the page is taken up by announcements and notices section. I vote for being able to see my earlier releases just after I login, so that I can quickly check their stats without any further keypresses and clicks.
• I feel that a line like “Hello Arun Agrawal” at the top comes in very handy to the people who manage multiple accounts, as a quick reminder of the account that they are logged in.
• The logo at the top-left takes me to the public PRWeb site – while logged in, I will like this to take me to the home page of the console section. There was a “Home” button earlier that would take me to the ‘console home’; it is gone.

Overall the cleaner look should make the users happy. I am sure more improvements and enhancements are on the way from the ever-active development team.

This press release was done at an investment of $80 on PRweb.com and after 30 days has resulted in:

* 21,439 page views of the release on PRweb.com

* 406 estimated pick-ups

* 59 one-way incoming links to the site

He has attributed the success of this campaign to the ideas covered in the Press Release fire ebook by Brad Callen. This is a useful guide and you can pick up some very good ideas as well as free press release sites. Check it out!

Social media such as blogs, podcasts, wikis and message boards can play an important role in the dissemination of your news and company developments and if you can make your consumer aware of these developments, you can easily expect better branding and higher traffic to your site, thereby improving the results from your web site in all fields.

This is a must read for anyone interested in using press releases and blogs for their site promotion. To download Scott’s e-book, “The New Rules of PR: How to Create a Press Release Strategy for Reaching Buyers Directly” (second edition), please go to http://301url.com/NewRulesofPR.

If you get a mention in a local publication, that can do wonders to your promotion efforts. Read more details on this PRleap note about localized press releases.

You might know that PRWEB allowed a free podcast of 3-5 minutes wherein a PRWEB staff interviewed the contact person for the press releases and then, they would distribute this interview through iTunes and several other online podcast directories.

Now, starting December 18th, this option will not be available anymore. They have introduced an additional fee of $100 for each podcast of 3-5 minutes duration. The mail does not clarify whether this option will be available at every contribution level or only for $200 and above.

As an incentive to offset the new charge, here is what they are offering:

You may upload images to be used in the promotion and circulation of your interview. We will continue to distribute and promote your podcast interview through our existing podcast distribution channels.

They are also introducing a new option of 10-20 minute detailed interview at $200 over the press release contribution.

For those low on budget and not interested to shell out extra money, PRWEB will resume a self-service podcast where you upload your podcast (under 10 MB, so must be very compressed or really short) from January 1st 2007. Thus they have not killed the free podcast but the free podcast interview.
PRWEB also does not want to be left behind in the online video phenomenon sweeping the Internet. See this:

Starting January 1, 2007, PRWeb Podcast will also be offering a premium motioncast service for $250 in addition to a press release that will include a motioncast in addition to the three to five minute podcast. Melding your photos, videos, and fireside chat interview into a video, this motioncast will be tagged and uploaded to popular video sites such as YouTube.com, MySpace.com, Google Video, and Yahoo Video.

In essence, there will be powerful services to give you cool exposure but you have to make much larger investments overall. In any case, the investments for top or near top ranking on any day has been steadily going up and is above $600 on most days.

What do you say to this trend?

Update: Joe Beaulaurier (in a comment) pointed out that my post might give an indication that one needs to spend $600 and above to get on PRWeb. What I really mean is that you need to spend $600 and above for getting your press release in the first few results on the PRWeb home page on any single day. If you can afford this, it can get you much higher exposure to your release. Of course, you can issue a release through PRWeb for as low as $10.