'Net Features : prweb

Expand Brand Reach With New PR Distribution Tools

Allison Howen — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:00:00 GMT

PRWeb has launched three new distribution enhancements that will help its clients increase their visibility on the Web.

The news distribution service’s enhancements include 200 new local distribution partners, a partnership with some of the Web’s top financial websites and new social sharing features. The improvements apply to users of PRWeb and are available to Vocus customers that are using the Vocus PR Suite or the Vocus Marketing Suite.

Local Distribution
Reaching a local audience is becoming more important than ever, so in order to improve local distribution of news releases, PRWeb partnered with leading media organizations and added 200 local media sites to its distribution network. Businesses can now distribute their news to the readers of influential local sites such as the San Francisco Chronicle, which receives 12 million unique monthly visitors, and the Houston Chronicle, which receives 7.5 million unique monthly visitors. These new partnerships can provide businesses with the ability to reach a more targeted and relevant audience.

Financial Distribution
PRWeb has partnered with some of the Web’s top financial websites including Bloomberg, MarketWatch, MSN Money, Yahoo! Finance, Reuters and CNN Money. The partnerships enable businesses to distribute news to these financial websites, which helps provide greater exposure to businesses that need to reach this specific type of audience.

Social Sharing
The new features enable businesses to showcase their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles in news releases, which will help them build their networks. Additionally, an improvement to the service's TweetIt feature enables businesses to increase their visibility by publishing their news to Facebook and LinkedIn. Furthermore, more prominent social sharing buttons encourage readers to share businesses’ stories with their own networks.

“PRWeb has become the most popular news release service for online visibility,” says You Mon Tsang, Senior Vice President of Products at Vocus. “These new enhancements make PRWeb the most social of all the major services and give businesses access to even more local and financial Web properties to reach their customers.”

Ramp Up Your Press Releases

Linc Wonham — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Online news distribution service PRWeb is offering a new tool that evaluates the components of Web releases such as headlines, content, multimedia, keywords and links. Called Make it Better, the service aims to help small business owners gain online visibility and improve the impact and reach of their releases and SEO opportunities.

The interactive news releases are distributed to search engines, news sites and thousands of regional, local and national outlets, letting users include keyword links, video and images to earn more reader interest.

“The majority of journalists and bloggers search for news on the Web," says director of product management Jiyan Wei. "And the majority of consumers search for information about businesses online, rendering old, expensive wire services ineffective for most businesses. Companies large and small need to get their news where everyone is looking – the Web. And they need to create releases that work well on the Web, which means including multimedia, images, keywords and links.”

PRWeb Teams with Photobucket for Image Search Results

Linc Wonham — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:29:00 GMT

Looking to extend its reach into the rapidly growing image search sector, leading online news distribution service PRWeb has partnered with one of the most popular photo-sharing sites on the Internet, Photobucket. Images uploaded to PRWeb as part of a multimedia news release will now automatically be added to a site co-branded by the two companies, making them easily accessible to the 22 million unique monthly visitors that search for images on Photobucket.

Several recent studies have underscored the emergence of image search as one of the fastest-growing areas in the search market, including a 2009 survey from Hitwise that determined it to be Google’s third-largest source of revenue behind only Web search and YouTube searches. Additional research presented at last week’s New Communications Forum revealed that, on average, images can increase time spent viewing a news release by about 30 seconds.

The new partnership significantly expands the range of PRWeb customers that include images with their releases, as Photobucket’s 100 million registered users link billions of photos to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Craigslist and others. A service of Vocus, Inc., PRWeb has been forming similar partnerships in its ongoing efforts to broaden its online distribution network.

Distributed News Releases Now in Zemanta

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:30:00 GMT

News distribution service PRWeb announced a rather interesting partnership today with blogging application Zemanta, which recommends content to bloggers.

If a PRWeb customer’s news release is considered relevant by Zemanta’s recommendation engine, it will now be suggested as related reading to bloggers using the application.

“We are providing a better way to connect our customers with the blogging community,” said Jiyan Wei, director of product panagement at PRWeb. “The Zemanta engine ensures that relevant customer content is provided to bloggers who have opted to subscribe to Zemanta’s application. It’s both a savvy and friendly means to boost visibility for our customers in the social media space.”

PRWeb is the first newswire to partner with Zemanta.

New PRWeb Analytics Reports

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:16:00 GMT

Online news distribution service PRWeb released new analytics reports for measuring results from news releases. If you've ever used a news distribution service (the wire) before, you know how absolutely atrocious the data you receive can be.

The types of analytics, which will be provided to cusotmers at all PRWeb distribution levels, include media deliveries (a list of the specific media outlets where the release was distributed), online pick-up (showing a listing of the differnet websites where he release appeared - interestingly the system is powered by Yahoo!'s BOSS [build your own search service]), and visitor interaction (including click-through data, prints, forwards, PDF downloads, and website interactions).

“These new reporting enhancements are all about helping our customers better understand what happens once their news release has been published on PRWeb,” said Jiyan Wei, director of Product Management for PRWeb. “They will now be provided with a much better sense for where it is sent, where it appears and most importantly, what people are doing once they read the news release.”

PRWeb Tweets It - Launches TweetIt

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:43:00 GMT

Online news distribution service PRWeb announced TweetIt, a new add-on service with important social media implications. The service allows customers to automatically share a news release through Twitter at the same time it is distributed through standard PRWeb syndication channels. This is the latest of social media features added by PRWeb to help its clients leverage social messaging.

To share their news through Twitter, PRWeb customers simply include their tweet when uploading their news release. PRWeb then posts the tweet, including a link to the online release, to their Twitter account when the news release is posted. The new service is available immediately with the company's social media visibility package and above. It was unclear in the announcement whether TweetIt would use a PRWeb or Vocus Twitter account or the client's Twitter account, but I think it's safe to assume that the client gets that privilege.

"As the leading online news distribution service, PRWeb has attracted some of the most technologically-savvy customers in the industry who are looking for innovative ways to communicate their news to the world," said Bill Wagner, chief marketing officer of Vocus, Inc. "Recognizing the growing popularity and importance of social media platforms, such as Digg, Twitter and YouTube, TweetIt adds to a stable of features that helps our customers integrate social media into their communications strategy with one easy step."

PRWeb Distribution to AOL Money & Finance

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:55:00 GMT

The real value in sending press releases is in the distribution and syndication (and even more if you can embed a few keyword rich links in the copy) of content. When you've found an entity that enables you to share a message across a seemingly infinite number of outlets, you should use it reguarly.

PRWeb just announced that it has extended its press release distribution to AOL Money & Finance and the Quotes and Portfolio pages. The AOL partnership now enables those publishing press release to appear on that site, as well as within existing partner news outlets such as the Associated Press and Yahoo! News, to reach online audience of more than 70 million unique visitors in the United States alone.

"With PRWeb's rapid growth and expansion, it is becoming a key goal for our customers to get their news to the financial community," said Bill Wagner, chief marketing officer of Vocus, Inc. (Owners of PRWeb.com). "With over 15 million unique visitors each month to AOL's Money & Finance site, the partnership increases our customers' exposure in the financial community and helps generate interest among some of the top business investors and analysts."

HP Small Business to Include PRWeb Support

Mike Phillips — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:03:00 GMT

Small businesses that use HP services will now have the opportunity to take advantage of PRWeb to help market their products and services. Vocus, a provider of on-demand software for public relations management, collaborated with HP on the project.

"Small businesses are eager to find resources to attract new customers and grow their business," said Jeff Norton, Business Development Manager, HP. "By making PRWeb's services available to our small business customers through a variety of HP websites and programs, we are able to assist customers in connecting with a recognized industry resource that can help them further build their online visibility."

PRWeb support will be available through:

HP Smart Deals for Your Business website, which offers free downloads and discounts from HP trusted partners
HP Total Care Access program, which provides special access to software, services and discounts from HP and industry-leading vendors, making it easier for businesses to manage, protect and build their businesses
HP Creative Studio for Business, a comprehensive online resource providing small businesses with a single entry point to a wealth of web services, including a wide range of affordable, easy-to-use do-it-yourself products, along with custom services and special offers to help market and grow their businesses
Promotional in-box inserts for the HP 88 Officejet Ink Cartridges in North America

PRWeb Media Digests Available

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:14:00 GMT

PRWeb announced that customers can now distribute their press releases directly to hundreds of regional media outlets and trade publications through its new Targeted Media Digests feature. These "new media digests" will allow customers of the popular press release distribution service to increase their media exposure in local news outlets as well as trade publications. Ahhh.... old meets new - sweet!

"Our aim is to help our customers communicate to as broad an audience as possible," said Bill Wagner, Chief Marketing Officer of Vocus, Inc. "Now we can provide our customers with traditional online visibility benefits, such as search-engine optimization, pick-up on major news sites and RSS and social media distribution, as well as increasing their visibility within their local outlets and industry trade publications."

But will it work? Distributing press releases is only half the media relations battle. Getting picked up is another story entirely. Let's hope that PRWeb has established formal connections with the recipients of these "digests" to ensure that what customers are paying for (exposure) ends up as a genuine mention on the Web and in print.

Customers can choose from four regional digests, North, Midwest, South and East, as well as from four Industry-focused digests, Business, Information Technology, Health Care and Travel & Hospitality. Inclusion in one Targeted Media Digest is complimentary for customers who purchase the social media visibility ($140) package or SEO visibility ($200) package. Customers who purchase the media visibility ($360) package can choose two Targeted Media Digests in which to include their news release. Customers can also purchase inclusion in individual media digests for $50 per digest.

PRWeb Announces SEO and Biz Friendly Features

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:53:00 GMT

Online news distribution service PRWeb (and its parent company Vocus) announced the availability of some features that will make SEO's smile a bit brighter.

The PRWeb administrative console now features a draft mode. This will allow users to save and view a draft press release at any stage prior to submitting it for distribution. If you've got a PR person on retainer, this little feature will come in handy.

SEO conscious PRWeb users can now insert and edit ALT tags in press releases images to enhance visibility. This will help images rank higher in search results and be a real benefit to those optimizing with universal and blended search in mind.

Breaking news? PRWeb now feautres priority distribution and is guaranteeing release within one hour. Users have always had the opportunity to select the specific date when their press release will be distributed, but now users will have the option of selecting priority distribution to guarantee their release is sent immediately to the PRWeb editorial team and distributed within one hour of receipt.

"Our goal is to continue to bring innovations to market that increase the online visibility of our customer's news releases," said Bill Wagner, chief marketing officer of Vocus, Inc. "These latest features are designed to further simplify the upload process and enhance the release for search engines."