Poytner just posted a list of the top 20 news web sites by traffic.

Yahoo News is #1. Google News doesn’t make the top 20.  So if you want to post your news on a top site, use a news distribution service that reaches Yahoo News (a few free press release sites do, PRWeb does, the major newswires like PR Newswire and Business Wire do, etc).

Data from ComScore, mashed up by Poynter

If you can’t get onto one of these sites directly, see what blogs or web sites are included in Yahoo News and pitch them (guest post, etc).  Or pitch reporters writing for these publications.  I’m actually surprised to see Examiner in the top 20.

Each time I talk about social media press releases and newsrooms, people want examples. I finally found one I can recommend. It’s from a bank in the UK called First Direct.

Their newsroom is at www.newsroom.firstdirect.com.

Why I like this newsroom

• They have a simple, easy to remember URL.
• There are photos, videos and tweets in the sidebar so you can see the conversation and supporting multimedia.
• Each press release has a symbol so you know if it’s a blog post, video content or photos (as in infographics)
• There is a tab for journalists (I would add one for bloggers) with logos and corporate images they can use for stories.
• They include charts and research in their press releases, which makes them useful, rather than just promotional.
• There is a tab to all press releases listed by month.

What could they improve on?

• Add a retweet or share buttons at the top of each press release. I’d examine where they get the most shares and post links to that site. So if most of the activity is on Facebook, I would have a Like button on each press release. If it’s on Twitter I’d use one like I have in this post.
• List social media URLs at the end of each press release. Just to make it easy to find. Put with contact info.
• Include more links in their press releases for search engine optimization and to lead readers to related content. They could include links to related articles/videos/blog posts within the body of the press release. If they used keyword phrases as links to other pages of their web site, it would help their SEO.
• Add informal pictures for bloggers to use rather than just the corporate images they have now.

They use a Pitchengine type service to post their social media releases and it echoes their design and style.

Overall the bank site is refreshing because the design is so unique. It’s modern and clean looking not like every financial or bank web site out there. It’s fashionable. Glancing over their press releases I saw they are the only bank to make the UK CoolBrands list. I can see why. What a killer newsroom and web site. I hope they inspires you to think more creatively about your brand!

If you know of any other killer newsrooms, please share in the comments.

Related articles

• Online newsrooms should go social (econsultancy.com)
• PitchEngine Launches Newsroom for Facebook (mediabistro.com)
• Getting Added Twitter Value From Press Releases (webpronews.com)
• Merrick Lozano of PRLeap Gives Tips About Press Releases (gabrielcatalano.com)
• 4 Ways News Releases Boost SEO (hubspot.com)

Last year I did a webinar with PRWeb and Bill Stroller that was voted one of the best of the 2009. It was close to Christmas and we didn’t expect thousands to register, but they did. This year will probably exceed that.

Towards the end of the presentation I will talk about how to take a press release and use it to jump start a social media campaign. I’ll show examples and give resources. PRWeb will show actual holiday press releases that got the most clicks.

I’m honored to work with PRWeb on a new webinar:

Generating Holiday Buzz with Great Press Releases

November 17th, 2010 at 3:00pm – 4:00pm Eastern Time

FREE Webinar

There’s plenty of competition for attention over the holiday season – so your next news release needs to be in top shape. Get tips from author and publicity expert, Janet Thaeler, and learn how to stand out from the crowd this holiday season by:

* Choosing news angles and story ideas
* Writing your news to grab people’s attention
* Getting your news found with the best keywords
* Attracting more attention with social media

Click here to register for the free webinar today and take away a free chapter from her book I Need a Killer Press Release – Now What???

I want to note that my book is being used at a university for another semester for a PR class. Also, thank you to everyone who left a review on Amazon. It’s like a gift for me each time I go there and see a new review has been posted.

Register Now

Today is the last day of the Fourteen Days of Foursquare series. I’m relieved it’s over in a way – fourteen days was long! However, focusing on Foursquare has given me a lot of insights into how businesses are using this social network to recognize and reward people for visiting. I have a lot of case studies to draw from.

For online PR value – we got retweeted by Pizza Hut and Six Flags. We got noticed by PR Newswire for including them – most of the posts came as a result of press releases posted by the businesses themselves on PR Newswire. We could’ve done even better at the promotion part and could even write a press release about the series.

My favorite posts were the ones about good causes and discounts on Foursquare. Many people joined in with examples via Twitter or in the comments. My least favorite was about sports (probably thanks to having a closed mind about pro sports thanks to 4 brothers who watched them more than I could stand growing up).

Here are Four Foursquare Trends to watch:

1. Foursquare badges go off-phone and on page.
   The idea of rewarding people for taking action can apply to more than just checking in through your iPhone. You can reward people for participating in your forum, commenting on your blog or otherwise contributing to your web site. The most visible example of this is Huffington Post. The site came out with their own set of badges to identify and recognize super users.
2. Foursquare joins the social media marketing promotions mix.
   To enter contests, win giveaways or otherwise qualify for promotions online, many ask you to take specific actions online (thereby increasing traffic, links and exposure to their business).  They usually ask you to comment on their blog, become a fan on Facebook, tweet the offer, etc. I’m seeing more people add Foursquare check-ins to the list.
3. Foursquare becomes another way for fans to stalk celebrities and for celebrities to capitalize on their  fame.
   Celebrities are already getting paid to check-in at sponsored events. Additionally Foursquare has made it so you can follow celebrities and get updates without the need for them to follow you back. Since celebrities really don’t want you to know exactly where they are at all times, they can use this selectively and reward check-ins at concerts and other events. You can also see what restaurants or venues celebrities favor. I’m waiting to see rock stars give a mayor deal of a free concert t-shirt or back stage passes.
4. Foursquare as a way to crowdsource the best places to eat, visit or shop in any city.
   Thanks to talks with all 3 of the major search engines, Foursquare is poised to become part of web searches. Search results wouldn’t show individual check-ins but give you an idea of which places draw the most crowds. If you were looking for a place to eat near your hotel when traveling and one showed multiple check-ins you would probably be more likely to follow suite.

One trend I hope to see is auto check-ins – a possibility that Mark Cuban recently called on his blog.

Here’s a recap of all of the Foursquare posts – please feel free to link to any of the posts on your blog and do a trackback so we’ll know:

• Foursquare for Real: 14 Days of How Real Life Businesses Use Foursquare
• Day 1: Foursquare for Tourism
• Day 2: How Pro Basketball Let the Foursquare Games Begin
• Day 3: Foursquare for Fun – Six Flags
• Day 4: Foursquare for Jobs
• Day 5: Ford’s Foursquare Road Trip
• Day 6: Pizza Hut Goes Social with Foursquare
• Day 7: Foursquare Etiquette at Weddings
• Day 8: Foursquare Discounts
• Day 9: Foursquare for a Good Cause
• Day 10: Teen Influencers not Hip to Foursquare
• Day 11: Seven Foursquare Partnerships
• Day 12: Foursquare Courts the Search Engines
• Day 13: Unofficial Foursquare Offers
• Day 14: Four Foursquare Trends to Watch

PRWeb just made some major changes to their web site. Overall they are welcome.

Home Page Changes

On an aesthetic level PRWeb’s new home page and logo is brighter (I really like the new brighter logo – we share an affinity for red and black!). They have made their value to small businesses more clear too.

The home page is more dynamic. Rather than showing all press releases on the home page they just highlight a few (notice the ones highlighted have photos) and list others by category. The new approach will help them in search engines (they’ll be able to rank for terms relating to press releases rather than on terms in other people’s news releases).

The home page also has more multimedia, which is something they encourage others do in their press release writing. PRWeb says using multimedia in press releases means people spend more time on your press release. Spending more time on a site is a an indication that they found something relevant or useful and is another ranking factor.

PRWeb ad: Get your news to consumers, journalists and bloggers. Increase your rankings in search engines. Drive traffic to your website with press releases

Twitter
They now include live tweets on the home page. They already integrate tweets into the submission process (which studies show are more likely to get clicks and are twice as likely to engage with your brand and click on ads than other social networking sites).

Multimedia Features Emphasized
The press release summary, main quote, images and video more prominent citing a correlation between using video with news content encourages people to act. From the study:

Among the key findings are that news is the most popular online video category and that consumers are taking meaningful action in response to video ads…

With this change you should put more thought into your summary and consider the $360 distribution level that includes video. The nice thing about this pricing model is that they include a lot for one price.

I just read that Business Wire’s internal research says that using any graphic or video in your press release increases gets you 2.5x as many clicks as a text-only press release.

Traditional newswires charge more for extra words, images, for additional target markets or for by location. At $360 you’re exposed to the top 100 newspapers which is a big score if your story gets published. Newspaper sites tend to rank highly in search engines. However, it’s more limited if your trying to get the attention of traditional news sources.

Search Engine Improvement
Also significant is overhauling the code so the pages load faster – another factor in search engine optimization. You can read more about the changes here: http://www.bloggingprweb.com/introducing-the-new-prweb-web-site

Suggested Future Changes for PRWeb
These are great improvements but I there are more I’d like to see next. I’ll list 3 ideas below.

1. Improve the site search – I can search by exact title and still get pages of irrelevant results – you must put quotes around the title to find it. I’m glad they send an email with a link but if you don’t have it yet, don’t have access to the account and don’t know the exact title,  it can be hard to find your press release. Maybe Google Site Search would be an improvement.
2. Make the payment process easier to use. Rather than a simple text link that says, “Additional Options” I wish they made it more clear where you are in the process and used buttons rather than text to go to the next step.
3. Include a retweet button on every press release. I know there are links but I’m a bigger fan of a Tweet Meme button that makes retweeting the press release a no brainer and shows how many others have retweeted it. Since folks on Twitter are more likely to read it anyway, why not?

Thanks for the upgrades PRWeb – look forward to more!

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• 3 Things You Should Know About the New PRWeb (toprankblog.com)
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This is my favorite press release story. Jodi Bean is married to the president of OrangeSoda Jay Bean and that’s how I know her. She and I wrote books about the same time and I like getting updates from Jay about how it’s going.

One day I met their daughter Victoria. I didn’t know Victoria’s story, or the story of how the family adopted her, but that is the story of Jodi’s book Love Lessons.

In April, Jodi asked me to write a press release. It had recently broke in the news that a single mom Torry Hansen from Tennessee sent her adopted Russian son back to Russia by himself with a 1-way ticket. There was public outcry and it was on all the talk shows. I listened to a few that week on the way to work.

Jodi had been on Good Morning America recently too and wanted to highlight that. It shows that she is good on camera. Her main goal though was to sell copies of her book. While she had some other press it didn’t talk explicitly about her book. She emailed me her story and the links. I used it to write the press release. She hadn’t sent a press release before and pretty much trusted me to make the decisions.

The press release was targeted to Utah on Business Wire (this links to the actual press release) since I thought it was a story that the media would be interested in. I also needed it to go live immediately because the story would only be in the news a few days. It didn’t get a large response but it did get a strong one.

We didn’t target keywords because there wasn’t a lot of demand for phrases relating to the story. The important thing was to link to the book, her other appearances and to her foundation. These built trust and gave her credibility. There was no follow-up promotion of the news that I know of.

Results from press release:

• Book sales – unknown but still trying to get figures or ballpark from Jodi.
• Front page story on the main Utah newspaper the Salt Lake Tribune (links to the story) which mentioned her book twice. I found out about it when I read the newspaper that morning. It was about 2 weeks after we sent the press release.
• The Dr. Phil show (links to video preview of the show) called and they came to the Bean house to film the story.  She will appear on the Dr. Phil show today to tell her story on June 2, 2010. [update: I got a correction from Jody that she emailed the show directly with the story idea.]

Want to learn about how press releases can help you get your story told? I talk about the power of press releases in my book I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??

Note: It’s important to note that this started with a story on KSL (a local news station) before there was a big national story. That’s how Good Morning America found the story when the national angle hit. This helped build credibility and likely helped her get on the Dr. Phil Show. The lesson here is to start by getting a story in a local media outlet and you can build on that for future coverage.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Business Wire Press Release Case Study (newspapergrl.com)
• Will your Press Release Lead to Press Coverage? (onlineprbook.com)
• Why Old School PR Is Great For SEO (onlineprbook.com)

I’ve had some strong results with Business Wire recently that highlight how capitalizing on trends is so effective. In both examples (next one coming soon) it was taking something that was already being talked about and piggybacked on it by sending out a press release while the issue is still hot.

Here is one of the press release case studies from OrangeSoda

Here’s the background story. A competitor in the local search space ReachLocal had just gone public. This is big news in the industry. OrangeSoda wrote a series of blog posts about ReachLocal’s IPO. It’s also a hot topic because Google had also shown interest in the industry. As the post states Google  reportedly offered “over $500 million for Yelp” and “a decent volume of smaller acquisitions and investments by consolidators like Deluxe, AOL, IAC, and YPG/Canpages.”

Right during all of this OrangeSoda sent out a press release on Business Wire about a new product release. It mentioned another fact that was big news – that OrangeSoda is now partnering to bring SEO services to local newspaper advertisers. That alone was a big story and got coverage in some blogs like Search Engine Strategies.

Now for the results (incredible)

Used with permission, here are the results:

• Over 200 sites and publications picked up the release so far
• Over 20,911 headline views and 1,533 full views.
• There have also been 84 links.

• 125 Tweets mentioning OrangeSoda and the press release (from both the Business Wire web site and bit.ly). This is how I found out about the story even though I work there.
• 40%  increased traffic to orangesoda.com (as of Thursday after the release).
• 166%  increased traffic to our blog (as of Thursday).

They continue to see increased traffic because of the press release.

Lessons Learned:

For maximum exposure time your news around what’s happening in your industry right now.

Write your press release in conversational or easy-to-understand terms. I didn’t write it but that’s the way I like press releases to read – like a story – not full of PR jargon.

You can get incredible results in terms of traffic, social mentions and links to your web site with a well-timed press release.

Online PR Book and Next Case Study

I spend an entire chapter talking about the importance of capitalizing on trends in my book, I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??? and show you what tools I use to find trends in my Online PR Book. I also go over promoting your news online through social networks.

OrangeSoda really demonstrated how this works. In my next post I’ll talk about one of my clients who got some great print media and TV exposure for her book with a single press release. She had never sent a press release before but when the topic of adoption hit the news, she knew she needed to.

I have to comment on this bad PR move. Last night KSL – a TV station in Utah covered a lawsuit that was filed over – you got it – cupcake flavors. Mini’s Cupcakes in Salt Lake City is suing another cupcake store in Park City called LuAnn’s Cupcakes. Why? they say that the store copied their most famous cupcake.

Sounds like a cat fight.

Mini’s owner Leslie Fiet says, “She has several cupcakes that are completely different from my cupcakes, but this just happens to be our most popular and most distinctive cupcake that people associate with Mini’s.” Fiet’s cupcake is called “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and LuAnne’s is called “Tiffany’s Jewels.” I’m getting hungry writing this but I haven’t tried either.

In a lawsuit, Mini’s claims that LuAnn’s has “adopted a strategy and philosophy to intentionally and unlawfully trade off the goodwill that Mini’s has built by infringing Mini’s trade dress rights in the Breakfast at Tiffany’s cupcake.”

I commented on Mini’s Facebook Page that I thought the lawsuit was petty and a bad idea. Instead they could’ve said, we’re the original, here’s how the competition stacks up. Accuse them of stealing the idea if you want but let the people judge if they did a good job or not. Have people vote on who’s is the best and invite cupcake experts to vote. Hold an event, send out a press release. Talk about it on Facebook, invite their fans, invite the media. They could even let their fans make their version of the Tiffany cupcake and taste test each others. All of this gets people involved and exposes people to your name and cupcakes. You’d save the thousands you’re spending on attorneys and instead plow it into making a killer event and getting some great publicity from it.

Instead you’ve left a bad taste in our mouth. Enough that I’m writing about it.

I watched Rachel Ray judge the best Chicago hot dog on one of her episodes. They had a line of contestants who own restaurants that sell hot dogs. You should’ve seen the disappointment on some of faces on the guys who didn’t win. They were mad. I figure that hey, you got your hot dogs on national TV, who cares if you didn’t win, play it up. It’s publicity for you either way. The ones who didn’t get in are those who weren’t even in the contest.

It’s better to be sweet – especially if sweet is whatch ya selling. My impression of this brand now and the people who watched this on the news is that they are anything but sweet.

Here’s the video from KSL:

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

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I just learned about Zemanta, added the plugin and started using it. I’m in love. It takes your blog posts, other people’s related posts, your images, other people’s images and you can add the content with a click. Also has tags and I haven’t figured out how, but it also has affiliate links from Amazon.

Now PRWeb has partnered with Zemanta so you can choose related press releases to add to your story – again with a click. The options show up in the right hand column of your blog admin in WordPress.  PRWeb says over .5 million blogs link to their press releases (see this search of Google).

I’m pretty excited about the innovation I see with press releases, social media and blogging. There’s newcomers presslift.com and pressdoc.com that are not about distributing news but aggregating social content in one place and sharing it. I’m planning to try both out and blog about the results.

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• Blogging is fun again with Zemanta and Apture! (72suited.com)
• PRWeb Partners with Zemanta to Enhance Visibility of News Releases in Blogosphere (prweb.com)

Please be sure to listen to this interview with me (Janet Thaeler), Pete Codella and Mark Polson. They produce a weekly show called the Online PR Podcast. This episode is about the power and purpose of online press releases. It was a lot of fun to do this interview because Pete is a PR pro and he knows online PR.

This was in person which I liked. On a webinar or phone interview you don’t get the interaction that you get in real life. Talking about online PR with someone else who loves it reminds me of how much I enjoy what I do.

We discussed:

• Online public relations versus traditional public relations
• How to identify what topics are newsworthy and appropriate topics for press releases (on a basic level, tell us what’s new in your business, industry or products)
• Blogger relations and outreach campaigns
• Press release formatting

To listen, click on the arrow at the bottom of the post and the player will start. While you’re there, check out the past episodes of the Online PR podcast. After listening,feel free to leave a comment with your feedback or questions.