It’s Thursday evening and I’m checking my stats on the BigNews.biz site. Traffic for the day was good, but one particular press release went to the top of the popularity list in less than a day.

As of this post, the press release located here was viewed 2891 times in one day. The reason for this is largely because of the image on the left (quite clever) that was posted by the Coltons Point Times. The Google News algo seems to test images in their search results and when an image gets clicked on alot, they show it more. If it does not get clicked on, they move to the next image inline, for the story their algo has associated with that image.

About 2 years ago, I saw something similar happen with a story on circumcision. A National Institute of Health (NIH) study had found that circumcision significantly reduced the risk of acquiring HIV. The NIH press release ran on the healthnews-stat.com Web site with an ancient Egyptian illustration of a man being circumcised. The release has been viewed on that site 58,545 times and a later release on the same topic with the same illustration was read 22,732 times. These are huge numbers for a press release.

In both cases the popularity of the release on the healthnews-stat.com Web site, was driven by traffic from Google News because their algo saw how many people were clicking on the image in their search results and continued to use the healthnews-stats image to illustrate that story.

So what does this mean for you?
Find interesting images to illustrate your press release. I have very detailed instructions on how to then optimize your photos and illustrations here.

What I don’t understand is why over 80% of press releases I see posted online have no photo or illustration associated with them when they can get so much more traffic with even a simple photo. Even if you can’t find something interesting, try to include some type of image with your press release. On BigNews.biz, there is no additional charge to ad an image, just keep it under 50K in size, jpeg format and no larger than 300 pixels wide or high.

What is a news release?
A news/press release informs the public and the media about news related to your organization or business. “News” is defined as information about a recent or important event. As an example, if your organization or business hires a new CEO or introduces a new product or service, you could write a news release about this event. However, if you wrote an article about what your organization does or what your business sells, this would NOT be considered a news release because it does not give information about “a recent or important event”.

What are the parts that make up a News Release?

1. Headline - Like a newspaper story a press release needs a brief yet memorable headline that summarizes the topic of the news release in one sentence. As an example: A fictitious business, FreeFuel.biz just started selling a new widget that turns water into automobile fuel. The headline for the press release that announces this new product to the media and the public might be “Revolutionary Invention from FreeFuel.biz turns water into automobile fuel eliminating need for gasoline”. It’s important that the title also contains important keywords that pertain to the topic of the release.
2. Summary - The summary is a bit longer than the headline and allows you to give more details and include more keywords that pertain to the release. Some public relations professional just use the first paragraph of their news release for the summary. My personal preference is to write something a bit different from the first paragraph of the release. Again, using our fictional company and their new product as an example, the summary for their press release might be “After 5 years of research, FreeFuel.biz begins distribution of their revolutionary converter that turns water into automobile fuel, eliminating the need for gasoline”. As with the headline it’s also important that the summary contains important keywords.
3. News release body - This is the body of the press release. In this section you want to answer the questions: who, what, why, when and where, as if you were writing a story for a newspaper. Make your release interesting by telling your target audience how your news will have a positive impact on their lives. Above all, avoid the temptation to sell them something with your release. Don’t get caught in the trap of turning your press release into an advertisement. Your release should read like a story in a newspaper. The body of a press/news release has several different parts….
   • Location and date - At the beginning of the first line of the release, you want to give the geographic location that the press release is originating from and the date. As an example the standard format usually looks something like: “Key West, Florida - September 07, 2008 - … “
   • Who is sending the release - The date would be followed by the name of the company or organization that is publishing the release. This can also include the URL or Web address of the company. Using our original fictitious company again, the first line might look something like this: “Key West, Florida - September 07, 2008 - FreeFuel.biz (http://www.FreeFuel.biz) today announced…..
   • What is the release about? - Following the location, date and who is sending the release, is the topic of the release. This first paragraph is very similar to the summary mentioned above. For this first paragraph, you want to give the reader a very concise outline of your news and you want to grab their attention as well. You should also be careful to include keywords that pertain to the subject of your release. Using our fictitious company again, The first paragraph of their news release might look something like this:”Key West, Florida - September 07, 2008 - FreeFuel.biz (http://www.FreeFuel.biz) today announced that after 5 years of research and development they have eliminated the need for gasoline as a fuel. The company has developed and is now manufacturing a small, inexpensive, revolutionary device that converts water into automobile fuel. The new converter is expected to hit store shelves in October of 2008 with a suggested retail price of $29.95.”
   • More details about the product or service - In the paragraph(s) following the first/opening paragraph, give more details about the product or service. Using our fictitious company once again as an example:”The “FreeFuel” water converter uses proprietary technology to convert common tap water into fuel for most gasoline powered vehicles. The converter can be easily installed by the owner of the vehicle or their local auto mechanic, in about about 30 minutes. The converter also allows the driver to switch from conventional gasoline to water by simply flipping a small switch on their dashboard.”Feel free to ad more paragraphs as needed to tell your story, but keeping it brief and factual will serve you better than long and commercial.
   • A quote from someone of authority at your company or from outside your company - Following the details, include a quote with 2 to 3 sentences from someone of authority. Example:”As you can probably imagine, our new FreeFuel water converter is going to change the world as we know it.” said James Smith President and CEO of FreeFuel. “We are very excited to be able to bring such a revolutionary product to market.”
   • Closing paragraph and a call to action by the media - If you distribute your press release online, it is going to be read by both the public and the media. In your closing paragraph you may want to reiterate some of your important points and then encourage the news media to contact you about this story. For our fictitious release the closing paragraph might look something like this..”The FreeFuel water converter will be available at retail outlets across the U.S. beginning October 1st, 2008. For a detailed list of locations, visit the FreeFuel Web site at http://www.FreeFuel.biz .Accredited media interested in scheduling an interview to discuss this press release in more detail are encouraged to contact Bill Smith at bsmith@xyzprcompany.com
   • Boilerplate - This section contains a paragraph or two about your company and appears after the closing paragraph. Once again, using our fictitious company as an example…”About FreeFuel.com
     FreeFuel.com was founded by Tim and Tom Turner in 2003 after the fraternal twins obtained doctorates in chemistry from MIT at the age of 16. The company is based just offshore in Key West Florida on a repurposed oil drilling platform. Twenty million dollars in first round funding was secured through WeFundAnything partners in 2004 allowing the company to secure 32 patents and begin manufacture of their water fuel converter. The company is currently privately held.”
4. Contact info - This can appear at the top of the page above the release or at the end of the release and would look something like this…Contact Info:
   Bill Smith
   XYZ PR Company
   1-888-555-1212
   bsmith@xyzprcompany.com
5. Keywords - Many press release release distribution service will give press release publishers the option of including keywords with their release. If you have this option, ALWAYS include keywords with your release. This may help your release with search engine optimization as well as other features offered by the service you are using. For the Fictitious release we have been creating, the list of keywords might look something like…Alternative fuel, gasoline, water, converter, FreeFuel, fuel, automobile, car, petroleum, revolutionary.
6. Photos & Graphics - Including and optimizing graphics and Photos for Internet distribution of your press release is extremely important. Proper optimization has the potential to more than double the number of readers your press release will get. Be sure to review our blog article about how to properly do this here: http://bignews.biz/blog/?p=11
7. Putting it all together - When you take all the parts and put them all together, you get a press release that looks something like this…

—————————-
Headline:
Revolutionary Invention from FreeFuel.biz turns water into automobile fuel eliminating need for gasoline

Summary:
After 5 years of research, FreeFuel.biz begins distribution of their revolutionary converter that turns water into automobile fuel, eliminating the need for gasoline

News Release Body:
Key West, Florida - September 07, 2008 - FreeFuel.biz (http://www.FreeFuel.biz) today announced that after 5 years of research and development they have eliminated the need for gasoline as a fuel. The company has developed and is now manufacturing a small, inexpensive, revolutionary device that converts water into automobile fuel. The new converter is expected to hit store shelves in October of 2008 with a suggested retail price of $29.95.

The “FreeFuel” water converter uses proprietary technology to convert common tap water into fuel for most gasoline powered vehicles. The converter can be easily installed by the owner of the vehicle or their local auto mechanic, in about about 30 minutes. The converter also allows the driver to switch from conventional gasoline to water by simply flipping a small switch on their dashboard.

“As you can probably imagine, our new FreeFuel water converter is going to change the world as we know it.” said tom Turner President of FreeFuel. “We are very excited to be able to bring such a revolutionary product to market.”

The FreeFuel water converter will be available at retail outlets across the U.S. beginning October 1st, 2008. For a detailed list of locations, visit the FreeFuel Web site at http://www.FreeFuel.biz .

Accredited media interested in scheduling an interview to discuss this press release in more detail are encouraged to contact Bill Smith at bsmith@xyzprcompany.com

About FreeFuel.com
FreeFuel.com was founded by Tim and Tom Turner in 2003 after the fraternal twins obtained doctorates in chemistry from MIT at the age of 16. The company is based just offshore in Key West Florida on a repurposed oil drilling platform. Twenty million dollars in first round funding was secured through WeFundAnything partners in 2004 allowing the company to secure 32 patents and begin manufacture of their water fuel converter. The company is currently privately held.

Contact Info:
Bill Smith
XYZ PR Company
1-888-555-1212
bsmith@xyzprcompany.com
—————————-

Once you have a press release, you can post it online to a general press release distribution site like BigNews.biz or a topic specific press release distribution site like News-Antique.com . This blog also keeps a list of the top free press release distribution sites, which is updated several times each month. You can view the complete list here. If you want someone to write and distribute a press release for you, drop me an email at phil@bignews.biz

If you were given the choice of selecting one of two similar newspaper stories and one of them had an interesting photo, which would you select. Like most people, you would read the story with the photo first. This same principle applies to press releases. People are drawn to illustrated press releases, so each release you publish should include a graphic or a photo whenever possible.

I probably edit about 100 press releases a day on the press release distribution sites that I run. Surprisingly most of them don’t have photos accompanying the release. From the statistics I see, releases that do have photos consistently get more readers than those that don’t. If the object of a press release is to get people to read it, the people who submit these releases are making a huge mistake by not including a photo or an illustration with each release they publish. Any photo or illustration included with a release is much better than none at all.

Another reason for including a photo with your press release is that it gives people another way to find it online. Believe it or not, Many people use Google images to search for things online. One of my press release sites actually get about 40% of it’s search referrals from Google Images. That’s a huge number and represents more referrals than this site gets from either Yahoo! or MSN search. Press releases also show up in Google News and releases with photos are MUCH more likely to get seen than those that don’t.

Now that you understand how important photos and illustrations are to the visibility of your release, here is what you need to do….

1. Make sure that you include a photo or illustration with every press release you submit online.

2. Whenever possible, use a press release distribution service that also accepts photos along with your text.

3. The image/photo should be in JPEG format at 72dpi. Try to get it larger than 200X200 pixels. google news seems to be sensitive to the size of the image and the format of the image. If it’s too small or not a jpeg, there is a chance that it will not show up in Google News.

4. Give the image a filename that describes the photo and also includes keywords that are important to the press release. Don’t make it longer than 4 keywords.

5. The title of your press release should contain keywords that are in the filename of the photo.

6. If the press release distribution service you are using allows for “Alt Text” for the image or a photo caption, be sure to fill this in and include keywords that are in the filename.

7. Use the most interesting image you can find. From what I have seen, I suspect that Google news actually tests the popularity of different images to see which are clicked on the most. It then selects the most popular image to illustrate all of the stories on that topic. So pick an interesting image to go along with your press release.

8. If possible, include the name of your Web site on the image, along the bottom. This is often called a watermark. So if someone uses the image or sees just the image without the release, it will always point viewers to your Web site.

If you have any comments or suggestions regarding the techniques I’ve outlined, please don’t hesitate to post them here.

.:Phil:.

So I took some of my own advice and posted a press release about our new list of the top 13 press release sites (See http://bignews.biz/blog/?p=6) , to the sites on the list. Guess what, most of them ran the release

Within 2 days, if you did a search on Google for “List of Free press release sites”, out of 24,000,000 pages listed for this term on Google, we moved up to #5 on page one, from having an extremely low placement in the SERPs for this term. As time passed and our release slowly migrated off of the home pages for these 13 press release distribution sites, we moved back in the SERPs (Search engine results pages). As of this posting, we are now listed as #4 on page 3. Which is not too bad at all, but we’ll try to do better.

To me this shows that Google search results are more dynamic than ever. The SERP’s are updated daily (maybe hourly) instead of weekly or monthly. So a site can have great placement in search result on one day, but as sites that link to it change, the search results in Google can change just as quickly.

So the list of top free press release sites does work and has given us a very interesting insight into how Google search results work as well.

.:Phil:.

Note: Last list Update 9-26-08

First off, yes I do design and sell Web sites that distribute press releases online. I also use free press release distribution sites for my PR clients, so I’ve seen both sides of the online PR distribution business.

Based on this experience, I have a bit of a bias about what I am looking for in a press release distribution service. The number of Web sites in this space seems to change from day to day. Sites disappear, change policies and appear daily. So this list needs to be just as dynamic.

Before you post a complaint that I’m missing a site, keep in mind that this list is a work in progress. It had to start somewhere so consider this a first draft. PLEASE don’t hesitate to submit a site for consideration. We’ll probably include it, as long as your submission fits the 4 criteria outlined below.

There are quite a few free pr distribution sites on the Web. Many of them are not worth the time it takes you to submit a release. However, there are some that are quite good. Following are the 4 criteria that I used to create this list of the top free press release distribution sites.

1. Page Rank - What is the Google page rank of the site? I’m only listing free PR sites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. To determine the page rank of a site,

2. Google News - Are most of the press releases that are published by the site picked up by Google news? To find out if a PR distribution site is getting their content indexed by Google news, go to Google News and do a search for “site:sitename.com”. This will show all of the stories by that site that have been indexed by Google News. As an example, a search for all press releases for the free PR site BigNews.biz, would look like this “site:BigNews.biz”

3. Traffic - Does the free press release site get any traffic? For this list we used Alexa.com to check traffic. You will have to set your own standard for what you feel is acceptable. For this list, I’m using any site that is ranked above or around 300,000 by Alexa.

4. Cost - For this list we are looking for sites that are primarily free. However, they may offer additional premium services for a fee.

Keeping in mind the 4 points listed above, here is my list. Feel free to send me additional suggestions, but they must fit the 4 criteria listed above. The order listed here is based on the sites Alexa rank.

The first number following the name is the site’s Google page rank as of Sept 19, 2008. The GN means that the site’s content is indexed by Google News. The last number is the site’s rank at Alexa.com

1. PRLog.org - 5, GN, 13732

2. PR-Inside.com - 4, GN, 15591

3. Merinews.com - 5, GN, 16710

6. IndiaPRWire.com - 6, GN, 22677

5. PR.com - 5, GN, 24732

6. OpenPR.com - 5, GN, 39607

7. 24-7pressrelease.com - 4, GN 46989

8. PowerHomeBiz.com - 5, GN, 47179

9. ClickPress.com - 5, GN, 49858

10. FreePressReleases.co.uk - 4, GN, 53256

11. NewsWireToday.com - 5, GN, 53792

12. TheOpenPress.com - 5, GN, 69467

13. PRUrgent.com - 4, GN, 93242

14. BigNews.biz - 4, GN, 124522

15. PR-Canada.net - 4, GN, 139125

16. USPRWire.com - 5, GN, 235983

Submit a site….

Again, this list is a work in progress. So if you have suggestions, please forward them to phil(at)BigNews.biz.

Other features you might want to have when selecting a free PR site…
a) Does the site also accept photos or other file types as part of the release?
b) Does this site give you reporting tools so that you can see your traffic?
c) Is the site fast and easy to use?

.:Phil:.

I just got back from 3 days at eBay Live in Chicago. Most of that time was spent walking around the “solutions center” which is the area at the show where vendors market and sell eBay related services to attendees. You can see photos at Auctionbytes.com

I’ve been attending these events for the past 4 years. The message I got loud and clear from many vendors and eBayers at this year’s show was “we’re looking for other venues”.

So now we have thousands of small businesses looking for alternate ways to sell and market their merchandise outside of eBay. Vendors at the show were offering many solution, from creating blogs to managing customer email lists.

So in the middle of eBay’s own trade show, you’ve got vendors and lecturers helping eBay sellers become less dependent on eBay as their primary selling venue.

It’s interesting to note that eBay canceled eBay live for 2009 .                     .:Phil:.

Online PR can take a great deal of time, so anything you can do to make things go faster but still get the job done right, is a big plus in my book. So, a few days ago we introduced a new feature to publishers on the BigNews.biz site and the News-Antique.com site.

If you have an email list of people that you send press releases and announcements to, we’ve now made it easy for you to email your list at the same time you submit a press release to BigNews.biz or News-Antique.com. This new, free service will save you considerable time, allow you to track the number of people that view your releases as well as give you the ability to maintain your private email pr/marketing list from any online computer.

It’s easy to get started, just login to your account at: http://www.BigNews.biz/?go=login or http://www.News-Antique.com/?go=login and select “My Mailing Lists” in the left column.
1. Then in the box marked “Create a new list”, enter a name for your new mailing list then click the “Add” button. the name of your new list will then appear in the “My Mailing Lists” box.
2. Before you start entering email addresses select the tab marked “Default message” and enter a message that will be sent to each user on your email list. Something like “Greetings from [Your name/business name] I’d like to put you on my email list and wanted to ask you if this would be OK.” You can have any message you like, this is just an example. Keep in mind that each address you enter will be sent your default message and will be given the option to accept or reject being placed on your list. So don’t include email addresses for people who are not going to be interested in hearing from you.
3. To start entering email addresses to the newly created list, select “View/Edit”.

If you have any questions, drop me an email at phil@BigNews.biz or give me a call at 516-578-1386. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have.

.:Phil:.

I‘m of the opinion that the target audience of most press releases should be the general online public. The Internet gives you the opportunity to distribute your message directly to the public via search engines and online news and pr distribution sites. Your release should be designed to appeal to this audience first and the “press” second. With this in mind, lets call them news releases rather than press releases.

The reason I suggest targeting the public first, is that on any given day, tens of thousands of press releases are flooding the inboxes of traditional media journalists and editors around the world. Your chances of actually getting one of these folks to publish a story about you based on an unsolicited release alone are quite small.

So, when drafting your release, think about how your message will be received by your target audience rather than appealing to the “press”. What information can you give that will inspire them to turn to your business or service to fulfill their needs? What does your news release offer them, that they can’t get anywhere else? A good release needs to give your readers something that they value.

.:Phil:.