Press Release Distribution: Do your own PR
If you are running a small business, one of your aims for 2009 is likely to be to raise your business profile and reach more customers. PR is a great way to do this, and with budgets being tight this year you may want to do your own PR.
Writing a press release is straightforward: you can find a template to download at www.prbasics.co.uk. If you need an expert edit on what you have written, I offer a press release health check for £30. But, how do you get it to the journalists who can give you the coverage you need?
There are lots of press release distribution services, and journalism.co.uk have put together a summary of the cost of each of them, plus where they reach. Of course, they are doing this because they think you should use their service: I can’t tell you if it is better than the other services. I’ve tended to use Response Source myself which always gets me some coverage, usually from a publication I would not have expected to cover the release. I have also been trialling Beauty4Media for a client which has got sample requests from a range of publications. You should check out each site and see where they distribute to: Sourcewire, for example, is mainly for tech topics.
| Site | Site Grade | Google Rank | Cost per Release + Image | RSS | ||
| Journalism.co.uk | 99.6% | 6/10 | £30 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sourcewire.com | 98.4% | 5/10 | £65 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Pressdispensary.co.uk | 95% | 4/10 | £160 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Responsesource.com | 92% | 5/10 | £65 | Yes | Yes | No |
| PRnewswire.co.uk | 78% | 6/10 | n/a | Yes | Yes | No |
| Pressport.co.uk | 62% | 1/10 | £35 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Get2press.co.uk | 59% | 0/10 | £30 | Yes | Yes | No |
| PRforless.co.uk | 12% | 0/10 | £130 | Yes | No | No |