Bignews.biz - Free Press Release & News Distribution Blog

How to write a “Micro” press release in 20 minutes

admin — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:56:35 +0000

Alert the media - How to write a “Microrelease” in 20 minutes or less.
Press releases are VITAL to your Internet marketing strategy. They let the public and the media know about the latest news at your TIAS store. Publicity attracts new customers and increases sales.

The complaint I hear the most about writing and posting press releases is that it takes too long. The potential benefits are huge, so either hire someone to write a proper press release for you or take 20 minutes and write a quick & to the point “Microrelease”. This can be broken out into the following elements….

1. Title - Maximum length of no more than 140 characters that tells what your press release is about.
2. Summary - Maximum length of no more than 200 characters - Gives slightly more detail than your Title
3. Press Release - Minimum length 175 words - Be sure to include all keywords and phrases that are pertinent to your business and this news event. The body of the release has smaller parts including…
a) Dateline - Date and location - when and where the release was sent from
b) First paragraph - More detail than Summary
c) Second paragraph - Additional detail about this event
d) Third paragraph - This would be your “About Us” paragraph that gives details about your company. This is sometimes called the “boiler plate”. You use it at the end of all your press releases, so this can be used over and over again, cutting down even more time for creating future microreleases.
e) Contact Us - The name of your company, the name of the media contact person at your company, followed by the postal mailing address, email address and phone number for the media contact.

OK, here is an example of a quick microrelease based on the above info….
–
Title:
Online Antiques & Collectibles Mall TIAS.com Guarantees All Online Purchases

Summary:
Customers who purchase antiques & collectibles from merchants at TIAS.com are now covered for up to $500 of the purchase price.

Press Release:
December 29, 2010 - Garden City, New York - TIAS.com the Web’s largest online antiques & collectibles mall today launched their “TIAS Trusted Merchant” program. When a customer buys from a “TIAS Trusted Merchant” their purchase is guaranteed by TIAS.com for up to $500 of the purchase price and they may return the item for any reason within a minimum of 7 days of their purchase (program details are available online).

TIAS had recently launched a number of initiatives that were designed to make buyers more comfortable purchasing from TIAS merchants. The company had found one of the biggest obstacles customers had when buying antiques and collectibles online was the lack of “trust” when buying items from independent online merchants that they were not familiar with. To address this issue, TIAS launched the “TIAS Trusted Merchant” program.

About TIAS - (Note that you can use this same section again in your next microrelease)
TIAS serves approximately 800,000 unique visitors each month. About 400 merchants sell through the TIAS system, listing well over 630,000 items for sale online. The company has been building e-commerce systems for merchants since 1995.

For more information contact:
Phillip Davies,
TIAS.com Inc.
1-888-653-7883
phil@tias.com
–
The above microrelease has 184 words, not including the title and the summary. This might take you 15 to 20 minutes to write. Possible topics for a microrelease about your business might include…
a) New Inventory just posted to your online store.
b) Recently listed unusual item(s).
c) Upcoming shows you will be attending
d) Insights into market trends
e) insights into antiques & collectibles that you specialize in.
f) Brief articles about care and maintenance of specific antiques or collectibles
g) anything unusual or newsworthy that would be of interest to the public or the media.

Once you have completed your microrelease, create a free account at http://News-Antique.com or one of these other free press release distribution services http://www.bignews.biz/blog/?p=6 and they will feed your press release to writers, editors, bloggers and collectors.

If you still need some help figuring this stuff out, contact me at Phil@tias.com

Google news drops free press release distribution sites

admin — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:04:51 +0000

Some of the largest free press release distribution services on the Web appear to have had their content dropped by Google news. The largest of these sites appears to be PRLog.org which has not had a new story in Google news since June 12, 2011. Also dropped from Google news was BigNews.biz and PR-USA.net .

As the owner of BigNews.biz and several other free press release distribution services, I must say that it extremely frustrating to get info from Google News as to why we were dropped. Although we process over 1000 submitted articles a day, only a small fraction of the submitted content actually qualifies as press releases and is included in our Google news sitemap. We don’t send them SPAM or low quality content, just newsworthy press releases. I believe the same is true of PRLog.org as well. Google, rather than assume that everyone is out to get you, why not work with us so that we can determine what new rule we have violated and we can correct the problem.

Updated List of Free Press Release Distribution Services

admin — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:01:01 +0000

There have been some major changes to our list of free press release sites.

http://www.bignews.biz/blog/?p=6

We dropped one of the most popular sites on our list because they were dropped by Google news. There has also been some major shifting of positions between the sites on our list.

Also note that 3 sites are now marked “Publishes Photos Free”. These sites accept photos with your press releases. Google news in particular will include photos with your press release when they publish it. Press releases with photos can really stand out from the rest. For more info on how to use photos with your release, see http://www.bignews.biz/blog/?p=11

New Free Press Release Distribution Sites Serving Very Targeted Categories

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:58:10 +0000

So earlier this month we launched about 18 new, FREE press release distribution services that cover some very specific subjects. By offering these new services, our intent is to reach a very targeted audience with your press releases.

When you post a press release to one of these new sites, it will also AUTOMATICALLY be posted to our flagship press release distribution site, BigNews.biz . We are also setting up Twitter accounts for each site. As an example, the Twitter page for the new PR distribution site BigTravelNews.info can be viewed here. We’ll also be setting up Facebook Fan pages for each Web site as well as offering the press releases you submit to Google News.

We will also feed your release via RSS to sites like Weblogs.com Blo.gs, Technorati, Feed Burner, Syndic8, NewsGator, My Yahoo!, PubSub.com, Blogdigger, BlogRolling, BlogStreet, Moreover, Weblogalot, Icerocket, News Is Free, Topic Exchange, Google Blog Search, Spinn3r, Bloglines, AideRSS, SkyGrid, Bitacoras. As well as all of the major search engines.

Here is a list of all the sites in our new network. Pick one and give it a try today!

Health-News.me - A free press release distribution service covering health, medical, fitness, diet and well being.

If you have suggestions for other targeted topics, drop me an email at phil@Bignews.biz and I’ll consider them.

New Software for Bignews.biz has mailing lists for your account

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:08:39 +0000

In this latest version of the bignews.biz Web site you can create multiple email lists to send your press releases to.
This is an extremely powerful marketing tool for your press releases. Just login to your account and in the left column select “My Mailing Lists”. If you have not already been authorized for this feature, you will be prompted to type in a valid phone number to confirm that you are an actual person. Enter your phone number and I’ll give you a call to confirm the number. I’ll then authorize your account to create and send your press releases to your own private email lists. Every time you post a press release, you can also automatically send it to one of your email lists. If you need help or have any questions, drop me an email at phil@BigNews.biz and I’ll be happy to help.

Delays in publishing releases on PRLog.org

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:15:28 +0000

When you post a press release to PRLog.org are you experiencing a long delay between the time it was posted and the time it was published? I posted this release on January 27th and received my confirmation from them on February 22nd. Which is a huge delay. Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this….Phil

Top sources of News on the Web

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:43:08 +0000

In Early December of 2009, comScore published a report giving the most visited Internet news sites for November 2009. Google News was ranked at #2 with 100 million unique visitors.

Yahoo! News - 138 million
Google News - 100 million
New York Times (combined properties) 92 million
CNN - 66 million
China’s QQ.com News - 53 million
BBC - 48 million
MSN News - 48 million
Wall Street Journal - 6.8 million

It’s an interesting list that shows the importance of feeding your releases and news to Google news.

Google search launches “Latest Results” in page 1 search results

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:06:15 +0000

This morning I processed several hundred press releases that were submitted to the BigNews.biz site and found that many of the releases we published were showing up within seconds on page 1 Google search results from our Twitter feed. Here is an example of how the new Google page 1 results look for the search Obama.

The content in ‘Latest results” seems to be coming from from social media like twitter and feeds to twitter. From what I’m seeing, these listing only remain live for maybe 10 minutes, but this may depend on the volume of content being produced on this topic at the time of the search.

Interesting stuff. I like it alot and it may provide some significant benefits to press release publishers.

Update to to our list of free press release sites

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:33:42 +0000

The updated list can be viewed here: http://www.bignews.biz/blog/?p=6

Notes on this update
Merinews seems to have slipped down on the list. Not sure why though. They offer a great service and carefully edit each submission prior to publication. They don’t usually allow backlinks but they do drive traffic.

PressReleasePoint.com seems to have been dropped as a feed to Google news, so until they get back on Google news, we’ve dropped them from our list.

Time increasing between submission and publication on many free pr sites. I’m probably going to start pulling sites from the list that take more than 3 days to process a free press release submission. I had one site recently send me a publicationconfirmation a month after the release was submitted. If you need a 24 hour turnaround some of the faster sites on the list include PR-Inside.com , Bignews.biz (our site).

Google ads news to organic page 1 search results

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:04:57 +0000

In their ongoing effort to make their search results even better. Google search has been including news results within some organic search results.

How does this help you? Well, do some searches on Google for terms that people would use to find your business or event. Do any of these terms have news results lited as part of their page 1 search results? If they do, create a good quality press release WITH A PHOTO that include the term in the headline, the summary and the body of the release. Post the release to Bignews.biz or any of the other press release distribution sites on our list

There are no guarantees, but you may just see your press release on page 1 for google search results. In some cases we’ve seen release hold that position for up to a week.