I know from our recent PR seminar feedback (by the way, you can now buy the ebook for only £25: how to make PR work online) that many people in the PR industry and especially those working in-house are interested in the best ways of distributing press releases online. Obviously you will want to engage directly with your journalist contacts and send them press releases directly when they are interested, but there is also a need to syndicate most releases and send them out on the newswires. What’s the best way of doing this?

First, the benefits of syndicating your release:

1. it might actually get picked up by journalists directly from the newswires (try to make your headline good to increase the chances)
2. dedicated bloggers often use online news sources to find inspiration for new stories - it can be very hard work consistently coming up with new content when you don’t have the resources of a large publication
3. you can gain exposure through news channels that perform automated scans of the newswires and syndicate relevant content (and this gives you another shot at getting in front of journalists)
4. many of the newswires let you control links and anchor text, giving you some immediate links back to your (client’s) website and increasing the chance of you getting the links you want in any editorial content generated

So how do you syndicate your press release?

I would actually like to get some input here about other services that people have found useful. I believe, like almost everything online, there will be large differences in effectiveness for different sources in different industries and kinds of story and that, like all of these things, the importance of trial and measurement can’t be overstated. First, our experiences:

• We have had the most success with PRWeb who offer a number of pricing models, from the basic $80 option (which allows links, but no control of anchor text), through the $200 option (with control of anchor text) up the all-singing, all-dancing $360 option (with ‘additional social media features’ - essentially social bookmarking links, ‘digg this’ buttons and tagging). We have tried all three of these options and got the best results for the money with the $200 option - controlling the anchor text is very useful, but the additional features of the most expensive option weren’t that useful for us as we did our own social media marketing. If your story is very strong, with a compelling enough headline to help you get it picked up by journalists who contact you for more information, the basic option might well be enough, as any hyperlinks would be included from fresh anyway.
• I have been impressed by the features offered in webitpr’s social media release - from PR blogger’s new company but haven’t had a project opportunity to try it out yet
• Other paid newswire services include PR newswire (which I have heard some good things about but don’t have first-hand experience of) and Business newswire
• There are also free services, such as i-newswire - as with anything though, I think to some degree you get what you pay for

If you have used any of the services above, or indeed any others, and have a case study you can share, please leave us a comment and I’ll include any good ones here in the main article (and if you let us know your website address, you’ll even get a link).

A couple of quick links for a Saturday morning - both to SEOmoz who have been writing and talking about online reputation monitoring and management:

• Whiteboard Friday video all about how to stay on top of your reputation online and find out what people are saying about you
• When to respond - Jane ‘Attack’ Copland on when to keep your mouth shut and avoid wading in to online arguments involving your company and brand (go on Jane, write the follow-up showing us how you smack down the idiots)

It’s good to see the stuff we’re interested in getting written about by the big boys. Hope people find them useful.

While these issues are at the front of people’s minds, don’t forget that you can get yourself a chance to get a free copy of Avinash Kaushik’s fantastic book, Web Analytics, an Hour a Day, by signing up to Reputation Monitor.

Many of you will have heard of Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytics in an Hour a Day. Avinash is the analytics guru who recently moved from an in-house role at Intuit to Google Analytics.

He is a brilliant writer and anyone who is in any way interested in getting more out of their website should read Avinash’s blog. His book is also brilliant (and comes with a CD of additional material). We have a load of copies that we are giving away! Keep reading to find out how to get your hands on a free copy of Avinash’s book.

I have corresponded with Avinash a few times and I’m now pleased to be able to announce three marketing ventures that we are doing with the help of his book (of which we have just bought a boatload of copies - see photo):

1. (as per the subject of this post) we are offering a couple of free copies of Avinash’s book to lucky Reputation Monitor subscribers. We are going to pick two random subscribers on Monday 3rd September (a month from now) - one drawn from all subscribers on that date and one from everyone who signs up between now and then. So if you’re not already signed up (lapsed accounts don’t count, but accounts in the first month free trial do), what are you waiting for - go grab yourself an account - individual and pro accounts are free for the first month
2. anyone signing up for an agency account from now until we run out of books will also get a free copy
3. over the coming months, we are going to be sending copies of the book out to prospects on the SEO / PPC management side of our business in order to introduce ourselves and hopefully get some great meetings. If you know anyone who you think would benefit from a copy and would have a meeting with us in London in exchange, drop our account manager a line: emily@distilled.co.uk

Incidentally, Avinash says on the book’s website that it is for a good cause:

100% of the author’s proceeds from the book will be donated to charity. The proceeds will go to The Smile Train and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), to assist in their efforts to make our world a better place.

So we love the fact that not only are we marketing, but we’re supporting charities while we’re at it.

PS. For people outside Europe, we may decide to get Amazon to ship a copy rather than posting it from our UK office, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Following our seminar on the same subject, we are finally ready to release the ebook that we wrote covering the same topic: “how to make PR work online”. It is now available to buy instantly online for only £25 through Google Checkout:

The idea behind writing the ebook was to package up lots of our knowledge about Internet marketing and how it applies to anyone doing PR (whether that be PR professionals agency-side, in-house or small business owners doing their own PR). We aren’t aiming to teach people how to do PR (we’ll leave that to the professionals) - but rather we are aiming to get across some of the things you can do to ensure that you get the maximum search and online exposure benefit from your campaigns.

By taking our advice and adding it into the mix with already successful PR campaigns, you can ensure that you will gain the maximum online benefit possible. By downloading our ebook, you will:

• Learn how to get maximum online benefit from press releases
• Find out how to leverage social media to help PR campaigns
• Discover ways of monitoring the success of your efforts

If you think this might be for you, you can read more about the benefits and contents or just go ahead and buy it for £25:

We’d love to hear your feedback, so please let us know what you think. If you aren’t happy, we will refund your money if you simply tell us why it didn’t meet your needs or expectations.