NewspaperGirl

I asked someone at PRWeb the best day to release your press release. They said on a Tuesday or Wednesday. That’s generally speaking. I’d avoid Friday or weekends in most cases.

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Search Results Will Bounce Around

You’ll notice that in the first few weeks of a release you’ll come up higher in search engines. But since Google in particular counts freshness, you probably won’t stay there. As the news matures your rankings will most likely drop. It’s just one tool among many to get backlinks and distribute information about your business online.
Social Bookmark Your Press Release

One way to increase its visibility long-term is to social bookmark and inner-link to related press releases. That means Sphinn, Digg, and Delicious it (etc). Put a feed of them on your Facebook page. Blog about them, put them on your main site. In other words, you can do things to increase the visibility of your press release.

PRWeb is ideal for their social bookmarking and extra features (attaching images, PDF files, podcasts, video, etc). What I’d like to know, for search engine optimization purposes, do you still think PRWeb is the best bang for your buck? I need to run a test: running a release at each level at PRWeb and comparing them. Then, taking another release and running it through some other PR sites.

Test, Test, Test

One of my favorite posts still is the one where I ran a test and found that our $200 PRWeb press release performed by far the best. However, I’ve never tested it against other PR services. Maybe the next time I’m on the phone I could see if PRWeb would sponsor a test between levels. I know there are several factors that influence how much traffic a press release gets besides the distribution, but it’s probably one of the most influential.

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I get an email from HR that says “free pizza in the break room.” The second I read it I call out, “Free pizza - RUN!” I’m hungry so I sprint. Then the entire SEO team starts running behind me. I’m laughing as I run. I have flashbacks to the movie Run Lola Run. We arrive and it’s already a madhouse but we beat most of the crowd there.

At OrangeSoda we’re still hungry. I find that makes for the most creative juice. It fuels a startup. It might explain why people are leaving Google (cashed in on stock options) to go to Facebook (possibility of lucrative stock options). That hungry stage usually fades to complacency and order.

Interesting enough in my personal life I’m going from famine to feast and I have mixed emotions about it. It’s welcomed but I want to keep that hungriness too. Except I don’t like worrying about eating (irrational though it may be). I noticed my fridge is a lot less full these days because when I’m scared about money I stock up. Now I’m clearing out to make and keep space.
5 mins after the email I hear there are 2 slices left…and speaking of still hungry….

Popularity: 6% [?]

If you missed the first session of Jeremy Palmer’s affiliate marketing course, you can listen to a recording of it on WebEx’s web site. There are other free webinars on the site that sound good too. I wish there was some sort of rating system because it’s basically just a list with no promotion. It’s not just a free webinar on finding a niche - it’s by an industry leader who is qualified and also good at teaching! I also wish I could subscribe so I get reminders of new webinars by my favorite presenters.

Also, I’m thinking, where’s their blog? Then they could promote webinars and get comments on them.

Basically Jeremy is giving away information that he’s invested a lot in learning - high quality information - free. He invests a lot in keeping up on the industry, testing, and reading. The best motivation is no results no pay. In other words, he’s not on salary. The feedback I’ve heard so far is that it’s the information is excellent and presented well. I heard one person say, “what’s the catch?!!!?” and “is this for real??!?” In this case there is no catch and he is for real.

I write about Jeremy a lot since he’s the super affiliate I know best. There aren’t many super affiliates and I only know a couple. As his business has grown he’s been more open to sharing what he’s learned as an affiliate marketer with more people. Don’t miss out.

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Don’t Schedule Press Releases Too Close Together
This is a mystery solved from over a year ago. I had a client who had me write a press release every week. We had to scramble to find news and sometimes it was difficult. But then I talked to someone at PRWeb and learned that you’ll start to see diminishing returns if you publish press releases too often (and the contract ended because he said he wasn’t getting the return he expected).

The releases go to Google News and Yahoo News first and stay there for 28 days. You’re basically spamming those news sites if you distribute a release too much more often than that. You want to keep in the news, but not saturate it.

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My article on SEO for blogs was featured in the March/April 2008 issue of Engage Magazine. My friends Nash and Shahar started the magazine. They do a great job making internet marketing subjects simple for small business owners.
http://www.engagemag.net/archives/Engage-Mar08Web.pdf

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Targeting Cities with your Press Release
Here’s another PRWeb tip (I will have time in a few months to finish recording all I’ve learned about PRWeb) about the MSA regions you select. When you submit a press release, you can select 5 US cities/areas to target your release to. These are in addition to the entire US.

There are two ways this is helpful: first, there’s a link on PRWeb’s home page that says, “search by MSA” that lists the cities alphabetically. So anyone can click there and see a list of cities. From there you can see all releases from that particular area. Second, people can sign up to get RSS feeds from PRWeb. So if a news organization is tracking news from their state, they could subscribe to that feed. They can also limit the press releases they see by area, category, and by editorial score. I only sign up for scores of 4 or 5 otherwise you get too many and you’ll get lower quality releases.

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I just looked at my CJ stats and beheld that my affiliate site that sells flowers is actually making money. I just heard a Mother’s Day ad on the radio on the way to work today (btw, it’s May 11th). I so impulsively wanted to buy 100 tulips. But I didn’t. Still, I’m on a blog binge and this one is off-topic, except that when I first started in affiliate marketing I didn’t know if it would work. You do a lot of work up-front and it takes some time before you see results. That was the toughest thing about coaching people new to Internet marketing! They actually had to believe the work would pay off and keep doing it even though they weren’t seeing any ROI for a long time. But I could relate because I was the same way.
I ignored my flower site and didn’t pay attention to it. Plus, I didn’t have the energy. Now I’m motivated to promote it. In fact, my dream is to blog about working at a flower shop. It’s my Cheers, my Steel Magnolias. Someday I’ll work at a florist and attach a blog to my site which will supplement the low wages. I want it to turn into a real newspaper column and maybe even a YouTube series. Because the stories at florists are just incredible. You get people coming in for a range of reasons, but mostly for big events and significant times of their lives.

My last year in college I delivered flowers in the natural gas van at the Flower Patch. It was a temporary job that turned into a real one. They sent me flowers and asked if I’d work for them. I couldn’t resist, even though I had no intention of working there until then. Plus, they put me in charge of managing the plants and I was taking a lot of botany classes so that hooked me.

Once I locked the keys in the van with the motor running and had to charm a police officer into opening it for me. I sometimes got hopelessly lost (this time I’d have a GPS). I loved the experience of seeing complete strangers at such poignant times (like the family visiting to celebrate a brand new baby). Sometimes it was like I get to tell someone they won the lottery because the beautiful flower arrangement I had in my hands was for them. It made them happy so I felt great. I liked the creativity of it too and the women I worked with. I also got to take a big risk and insist the boss give us breaks or I’d quit, and everyone loved me for that.
This post is sponsored by JustFlowers.com - where you can buy your mom fudge or flowers - you choose! I have a bad memory and it’s worse the busier I get, so this is also my reminder not to forget to schedule buying a gift for my mom. My mom who grows her own sprouts, used to put tofu in our spaghetti, and who makes whole wheat bread from grains that she grinds. And you wonder why I have a little bit of hippie in me!

So here you go: Mother’s Day Flowers

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My blog has gone down twice this year. Each time it’s stressful to get it back up. It’s always the same thing - plugins. Some aren’t compatible with this version of Wordpress. Twitter Tools plugin was the culprit this time. As soon as I deleted it my blog was back.

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A Perfect PRWeb Editorial Score
I’ve been writing press releases for distribution on PRWeb for several years for many different clients. Every time I call in I ask a lot of questions and they’re helpful. I’ve gotten to be friends with Joe and like attending Mario’s webinars. In all this time I’ve never gotten a perfect editorial score - until recently. I wrote a press release for a client that got a perfect 5 out of 5.

I remember asking PRWeb how to get a perfect editorial score. They basically said they’d hire me if I ever did. So I guess that means I have a new job and I’m moving to Washington state. Good thing I’ve spent quite a bit of time there when I lived in Oregon, so I think I’ll like it there

Here’s the weakness in most of my press releases - they don’t tie into larger trends or bigger news stories. To get a perfect score your press release has to be well-written, optimized, and newsworthy. In this example the client sent me a story about how real estate agents were marketing homes for sale. I changed it to be about how to survive the recession if you’re a real estate agent. It was already well-written, I just added strategically placed keywords, anchor text, and a call to action.

Right now the economy, gas prices, foreclosures, and the cost of food are big. If you can tie your story into these you’re chances for a perfect score will go up.

Some PRWeb Editors are Stricter than Others
To balance out my big head, in the past few weeks I’ve gotten more editorial holds on my press releases than I’ve ever gotten. I asked an editor why. He confirmed what I thought - some editors are more strict than others. For example, some will put your release on hold if you use “you” or “yours” in the release. They could also require that you use the organization’s name in the headline or the first paragraph. I’ve never had these complaints before.

The biggest problem I have about not using “you” or “yours” in a press release is that online people are used to more casual language. Since PRWeb distributes online, I don’t see why this is a problem.

Remember: every press release has several audiences: the consumer, the journalist, and the search engines.

Stay tuned because I’m going to publish more tips - before I forget them!

Popularity: 8% [?]