3 tactics to try instead of a newswire service

By most measures, releasing your company’s anniversary news via a service is a poor investment these days. Here are some techniques more suited to the modern media landscape.

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This article originally appeared on PR Daily in February of 2018.

In 2018, sending out a press release via a wire service simply doesn’t make sense as a PR tactic to garner earned media coverage.

Does sending out press releases make sense at all?

Well, not really.

Press releases are PR 101. Sending them out used to be part of a standard PR professional’s workflow—and as a result, many pros still send out releases simply because it’s what they’ve always done.

Newswire services like PR Newswire and BusinessWire are costing PR professionals millions of dollars each year, with foggy ROI at best. On paper, it looks like you can get your news in front of tens of thousands of media outlets for a nominal fee.

Who wouldn’t want to pay to play a little bit in that case?

However, press releases don’t really work in the modern era of media relations.

In today’s digital age, when there are tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Medium available, does it make sense to pay for a press release to be published on a wire service?

Newswire myths

Let’s debunk a few of the common misconceptions around using wire services.

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