Press Release Distribution and
Online Video Distribution

Press release distribution serves as a model for distributing all online content. It’s quire simple, but there are a few steps in the process. Once you’ve mastered it you will find it easy to use similar software to distribute articles. Video distribution is similar, but is covered separately later on this page.

Press Release Distribution

It is helpful first to look at how most PR professionals do it in big companies. Publicly-traded companies must meet regulatory disclosure requirements, so their needs are more demanding.

Most companies use either Business Wire or PR Newswire , which offer guaranteed compliance through designated distribution channels, including AP, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and others.

Other services include targeting journalists by industry, geography or news theme. Big wire service companies also offer attractive targeting, monitoring and measurement services. One of the must-have tools they offer PR professionals is a constantly updated journalist database.

Journalist Database Services

Databases are highly perishable, a situation made more acute by newspaper closings and staff reductions. PR pros also use journalist databases for press release distribution via email, and to maintain a record of who has received what.

Small companies that have full-time marketing departments often subscribe to journalist database services from cision or Vocus. They can be accessed via Web browsers, and both offer a variety of plans.

Many small public relations firms find MyMediaInfo to be an attractive alternative at considerably lower price. The screen shot here shows a sample page with journalist contact information.

If you only need a list for a specific industry or geographic area, Dan Janal's BullseyePublicity will create a custom list and send it to you for far less than the price of a database subscription.  

Build Your Own Journalist Database

If you want to reach local news media only, there is no need to pay for a service. The best way to contact most TV, radio and newspaper news departments is by email or their own websites.

Create a spreadsheet to record web addresses, phone numbers and names of specific contacts you may develop. Some news organizations publish news staff email addresses on biography pages .

I have had success using the News Tips feature on websites of local TV stations and newspapers. In the database you make, use the URL for that page, not the home page.

You will have to spend some time on each website to locate the right page. Webmasters seem to do their best to hide them, but you may find them on pages such as Contact Us, About Us, News Tips and Feedback.

Keep messages short. I usually limit it to two or three bullets and a link to an online press release. Do this the day the release goes live.

Online Press Release Distribution Newswires

If you are primarily interested in publishing a press release online, you have a number of alternatives to PRNewswire and Business Wire. The biggest site, PRWeb, has earned a reputation for excellence. You can send free releases, but that option doesn’t include SEO tools that help optimize for search engines.

PRWeb offers four levels of paid press release distribution – Basic, Standard, Advanced and Premium. The Advanced level provides all SEO elements and sends releases to big news sites including Google News, Yahoo News and Bing News. The Premium level adds the ability to embed a video, and includes distribution to major media outlets including the New York Times and USA Today, via Associated Press.

Another service that gets excellent results – for considerably less money – is OnlinePRMedia , formerly called OnlinePRNews. I typically get Page 1 Google search results within hours with both of these services.

There are some minor differences in formatting, primarily in placement of anchor text links, but nothing difficult. Both services provide data regarding where your release gets published online and who received it.

These are but two of many press release distribution services. In his excellent product, Online PR Made Easy, Marc Harty includes a list of more than 175 online press release distribution services. It’s the best list I have seen, not just because of its size. Marc provides comments and tips regarding his experience with many of these services, as well.

Online Video Distribution

Online video distribution is quite similar to press release distribution. It’s safe to say far more people know how to post something to YouTube than to PRWeb.

YouTube is the biggest video sharing site, but there are at least 50 more, many of which target specialized audiences. And there are services that let you post to several video sites simultaneously, which can have incredibly helpful impact on search engine results.

Get on Multiple Video Sharing Sites with tubemogul

When you post a video to You Tube it gets indexed almost immediately by Google – sometimes in less than an hour! You can multiply that effect buy posting to several video sharing sites at once.

tubemogul is time-saving PR software that lets you upload video one time and send it simultaneously to multiple video sites, including You Tube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Facebook, Metacafe, Blip.tv and others.

Basic uploading and distribution service is free for up to 100 videos per month. For power video users Tube Mogul has an advertising platform that helps marketers target audiences precisely so their videos get viewed by people interested in them.

Online Videos as Part of Online Press Releases

It’s one thing to have a video on a sharing site, but it’s even better to have it on your own website.

You can use a video hosting company and pay for the service, but you also can embed videos from YouTube and other sharing sites on your own site with a simple copy and paste procedure they provide.

Likewise you can embed YouTube videos in online press releases to make them more interesting and drive more traffic. PRWeb and OnlinePRMedia make this easy to do.

To get more people visiting your website, include the URL of the page on your site you want people to visit. In the description, be sure to include the http:// before the www.yoursite.com part of the address.

Put Clickable Links in YouTube Videos

When you embed a YouTube video on your website you can add a clickable link to take viewers directly to a page for more information, or to purchase a product. LinkedTube enables you to put a Flash overlay on YouTube videos with a message such as, “Visit our website” or “More information here.” When the viewer clicks on it he is taken to the landing page of your choice.

Other Helpful PR Software Pages

Please also see our overview of PR software and the detail pages on website content and video content development.