The Real ROI of the Press Release

August 31, 2009
miproconsulting
Blog

Well-written press releases have lost much of their power to generate actual news coverage. Journalists suffering from information overload rarely have the time to slog through the number of pitches they receive daily, so publicists bank on their relationships with them to get coverage. If press releases have any potency now, it comes from showing up in Web searches and, hopefully in the process, raising a company’s profile online. Thanks to online distributors like PRWeb, your release can become virtually ubiquitous on the Web. But don’t be fooled. That’s not the measure of success.

I’ve been saying the same thing myself for over two years now. The press release is all but dead when it comes to garnering real journalistic coverage. Unless you have something truly noteworthy, the attention economy dictates that your “news” won’t be read by very many. The value of the press release lies in its ability to help get your web presence escalated on search engines, and even then there are caveats you should be aware of. Kerr’s article covers most of them.

(thx @mipro_dave)