By: Zachary Vito, Senior Account Executive
When it comes to getting your company’s news out to your desired audience, there are many different options for wire services and distribution methods to choose from. This blog will explain when it can be beneficial to use a wire service to distribute news and what it is like to do so.
Why Use a Wire Service?
Press releases are a great way to track the progress, growth and momentum of your company. This is important for a number of stakeholders, from your employees all the way up to your investors. For example, for employees, press releases that showcase company momentum may help to boost their morale, while investors may see it as an opportunity to get involved in a company making waves in the industry.
Some news from your company may not make a huge splash with reporters, but wire service distribution ensures a level of SEO so that your press release will show up in search results when people look up your company. This shows potential investors or new customers that the company is active and progressive compared to, competitors that may not have made any recent announcements.
How to Engage with a Wire Service
Working with a wire service is straightforward and usually, creating an account is all that is required before you’re able to set up your news distribution. The capabilities offered by wire services are also fairly similar across the board. While most press release distribution sites charge for their services, there are also a number of free services as well. Distribution methods and targeting capabilities are the two most important factors for you to consider when scheduling your press release. Be sure to pre-identify the audiences you are hoping to reach so that you can pick the wire service that is going to best help you target said audience.
Additionally, distribution services offer different methods for distributing press releases based off of the type of release and assets that go along with it. For example, if you have multimedia assets such as photos, infographics or videos accompanying your press release, you should seek out a distribution method that caters to press releases that contain multimedia assets. This is because there are specific targeting capabilities that the wires services have, which can greatly increase the number of impressions your announcement receives when utilized efficiently.
What to Expect When Using a Wire Service
When engaging with a wire service, it is most important to understand what not to expect. For example, you should not expect a wire service to be able to retract your press release from the web once its been distributed. This is a common inference but, once a press release has been sent out over the wire service, it is up to the individual websites that have posted the release to remove it. Considering these website editors share 100s of releases each day, it is unlikely yours will be taken down.
So, before you schedule any press release, make sure you have checked the release for all grammatical, informational and formatting accuracy. It is helpful to keep a checklist of what information you want to double check before you finalize the document. Finally, most wire services also offer a complimentary review of your submitted press release for grammatical and formatting inconsistencies, so it is wise to seek a reviewal from the wire service to get an extra set of eyes on it before you release it out into the world.
A PR agency can help you to navigate the relationship with a wire service and often times since agencies use wire services for multiple clients, they may even have access to different packages.