Press Releases - the Opposite of What You’d Expect
I love this graph! It shows the number of full page views of a press release I wrote and distributed through PRWeb. Normally news has a shelf life. Once the news is past no one reads it. After a few days there is a sharp decline and it doesn’t rebound. But a press release online continues to get read because it stays in search engines long after its released.
The first bar is day one, with over 200 people clicking on the full press release. The last bar is after 28 days and there are thousands of opens. If this were a paid ad, and you were paying by the click, that would be 20 cents a click (which is cheap). Plus, it’s going to keep getting read.
The black line that you can barely see shows that the number of reads does drop off after the first two days, however, since the news has a permanent link, if people link to it, it can be found for months and years after its release.
There is no “old news.”
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2 Responses to “Press Releases - the Opposite of What You’d Expect”
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March 1st, 2008 at 12:43 am
Hi Janet,
A quick clarification about reading these graphs: The bars represent accumulation over time, thus always getting larger. Notice the line that is also included in the graph. It represents the contribution for each week. And as you would expect, it normally does taper off over time.
Although you are correct that online press releases break through the standard 30-day news shelf life and continue to be located by interested readers for years to come. And there is always the occasions where the topic suddenly becomes of interest and your content is already ready and waiting to contribute to people’s research and interest.
Thanks for posting about and using PRWeb. We always like to hear how people are using our services.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am
Joe,
As you know I’ve been a fan of PRWeb for years. Thanks for clarifying. I wondered what the black line represented. Is that stated somewhere on PRWeb?
So the number of people who read the release approaches zero after about a month in this example. Not bad (I wonder what is typical for a traditional release).
Of course there is a long tail so I bet you’d get a few a month for a long time because it’s online. Plus as you said it could become relevant again.
Best,
Janet