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Topic: How Does PRNews Wire work? I'm very confused.
| Author | Message |
| lewisgroup1212 | Posted – 9/1/2008 1:13:49 PM | show profile | email poster Hello Everyone, I am a novice still learning about PR and I have some questions I was hoping you guys could help me with. I am trying to determine the difference between Bacon Cision and MediaAtlas. I have read that PR News wire is very popular for posting press releases and they are part of MediaAtlas. My questions are: 1. Can I just sign up for PRNews Wire just to post press releases or do I have to sign up MediaAtlas? 2. Does Cision offer anything similar to PRNewswire? What was confusing is that I can go to PRNewswire and read the releases, I didn't see anything similar with Bacons. 3. When go to MediaAtlas webpage, there are so many different things to sign up for that I am confused. I basically want to get updated media contact lists and to be able to post press releases to a website that gets a lot of traffic from journalist. What am I missing? 4. Can I just sign up for PRNews Wire (to post releases) and use Bacon's to build my media lists? Or is that extremely pricey and if so what's the alternative? I know these questions may seem pretty obvious, but I wouldn't be posting if I understood clearly how this thing worked. Thanks so much guys! |
| marianna | Posted – 9/1/2008 5:07:55 PM | show profile Hi Lewis, I've used both services (a lot) and while they both offer a little bit of everything, PR Newswire's main focus is putting out press releases and Bacons is providing contact information for journalists. So...if you want to put out a press release and have around $600+ to spend, you open an account with PR Newswire with a credit card. You write your press release in Word and upload it to the PR Newswire website. Then they call you withing 15 minutes and review the release with you and make sure everything is ok. You tell them what types of publications to send the release to; the more outlets you ask for, the more expensive it is. The release goes out at the time you specify and then PR NW will tell you via email what sources picked it up. (They stop checking after 24 hours, so its up to you to see who picked up your story after this.) If you're lucky, you'll start getting phone calls from reporters that same day. Now, moving on to Bacons: its a very expensive database that tells you the name, address, email address and phone number of all journalists, editors, TV & radio producers in the US. I'm not sure how big an outlet has to be in order to get listed, but I've seen really small trade mags listed along with some extremely obscure radio shows, so it's not just the big media companies that are included.. Bacons MAY let you have a free trial period so you can test it, but its still very pricey...at least $2000 annually. Hope that helped! |
| lewisgroup1212 | Posted – 9/1/2008 6:03:25 PM | show profile Yes, it does! Thanks so much for breaking it down! |
| lewisgroup1212 | Posted – 9/1/2008 6:08:59 PM | show profile Another question, is it safe or recommended to use PR Newswire AND contact reporters/editors individually as well via a press release? |
| marianna | Posted – 9/1/2008 7:30:43 PM | show profile Yes, it's certainly safe. :) Here's the deal...From what I understand, in order for reporters to read your press release, they need to "log on" to PR Newswire in some form. So even though the release was sent to American Lawyer Magazine (or whatever) its not necessarily going to be seen by the reporters there unless they feel like reading PR Newswire that day. BUT if you send your press release directly to their email in-box, you increase the odds of them actually seeing and reading it. Where PR Newswire delivers is on the web; a lot of websites like Yahoo Business News need non-stop content and seem to pick up absolutely any legitimate business story sent out. |
| lewisgroup1212 | Posted – 9/1/2008 9:01:06 PM | show profile Got it! Thanks for breaking it down! |
| LoDo | Posted – 9/1/2008 11:57:43 PM | show profile One thing that wasn't covered: PR Newswire's MediAtlas is like Bacon's/Cision...but in my opinion, better. And much cheaper. The rate for a solo practitioner is $1995, and you can break it up into quarterly payments. Cision is up to $3500, and yuo have to pay the whole thing upfront. Either one has its pros and cons, but I've had better success with MediaAtlas. ------ Lori |
| Cyrus | Posted – 9/2/2008 1:28:20 AM | show profile Others have addressed the media database questions, so I'll limit my response to distributing releases. The best alternative for that is BusinessWire, in my opinion. They're substantially cheaper and have no membership or additional fees whatsoever. If you subscribe to ProfNet, you're already paying PRNewswire membership fees, so that may not be a big issue, but their distribution rates are also higher. I suspect PRNewswire is seeing its world rocked by the debut and successful launch of Help a Reporter Out. I've had proactive calls from PRN asking me how happy I was with ProfNet in the last 2 weeks, something I NEVER had before HARO launched. ------ Cyrus Afzali Astoria Communications www.astoriacomm.com |
| maphop | Posted – 9/2/2008 8:44:50 AM | show profile I agree with Cyrus that BusinessWire is an excellent source for distribution but primarily for business-related stories (finance, law, M&A, etc) versus stories that are more feature oriented such as entertainment news, social issues, etc. Re HARO versus ProfNet, I use both (especially since HARO is free!) but for similar reasons as stated above. I find that most (not all) of what's posted on HARO is aimed at the feature or "soft" news end where I get more queries aimed at the academic and professional world from ProfNet. I still think the cost of ProfNet makes sense for my clients - there are often 150 postings/day and I find the postings far, far easier to scout quickly and figure out if they're good matches - but HARO is definitely giving them a run for their money. |
| LoDo | Posted – 9/2/2008 5:54:18 PM | show profile Peter rocks :-) And so does BusinessWire. I wish they would offer a good database; I suspect they might be working on that as we "speak." ------ Lori |
| LoDo | Posted – 9/2/2008 6:01:56 PM | show profile Lewis, here's the Web site if you'd like to sign up for HARO: http://www.helpareporter.com/ Please be warned that Peter is ADAMANT about pitching off-topic, and he has kicked people off the list for it. Granted, some journalists do have an automatic chip on their shoulders when it comes to PR people, but there are some PR people who just don't get it that a financial writer just doesn't want to hear about your client's new mag wheel line. ------ Lori |
| lewisgroup1212 | Posted – 9/3/2008 2:26:04 PM | show profile Thanks Lori. |
| Cyrus | Posted – 9/3/2008 5:53:51 PM | show profile I was interested in to see that Peter has been invited to speak at a PRNewswire event given that he's definitely eating into their revenue. I've got no way to have any reliable stats, but I'm sure a number of people are tossing ProfNet and are going to rely on his service instead. ------ Cyrus Afzali Astoria Communications www.astoriacomm.com |
