vital marketing

There are a ton of web sites that claim they’ll distribute news releases for free. But my experience is that many of them are more trouble than they’re worth and they are constantly pinging you with upcharges.

Today I came across a great blog entry that ranks these “free” distribution services by:

1. Page Rank – What is the Google page rank of the site? I’m only listing free PR sites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. To determine the page rank of a site,

2. Google News – Are most of the press releases that are published by the site picked up by Google news? To find out if a PR distribution site is getting their content indexed by Google news, go to Google News and do a search for “site:sitename.com”. This will show all of the stories by that site that have been indexed by Google News. As an example, a search for all press releases for the free PR site BigNews.biz, would look like this “site:BigNews.biz”

3. Traffic – Does the free press release site get any traffic? For this list we used Alexa.com to check traffic. You will have to set your own standard for what you feel is acceptable. For this list, I’m using any site that is ranked above or around 100,000 by Alexa.

4. Cost – For this list we are looking for sites that are primarily free. However, they may offer additional premium services for a fee.

As a result, I tried the top ranker – http://www.PRLog.com.

I just submitted 2 releases (one for Hopkins Marketing and one for OstermanCron) and that experience was excellent… compared to previous experiences on other sites. The real proof will be in whether or not we get online exposure… but so far so good.

PDF forms are great. Sort of. Everyone can universally open them (who doesn’t have Adobe Reader these days.) But when you have to print a form, fill it out and then mail it, scan it, fax it, or email it, it’s not so great anymore. It’s a pain.

Why not make it interactive and save a tree. The job applicant, for example, opens the form, and types his qualifications right into the form and hits submit. Or saves the document and then emails it back. Saves lots of steps, not to mention those trees. Plus, you receive readable and uniform responses.
You can create interactive forms in Adobe Professional and Indesign (I prefer Professional.) Or have some one do it for you for under $10/page (OK, this is a shameless plug… julie@hopkinsmarketing.com). But seriously, if your pdf’s are static, it’s time to go interactive.

Here’s a nice summary article of the top content sharing websites: http://tinyurl.com/m4axax
The only thing I question, is the email marketing recommendation for aWeber. In all fairness, I’m not familiar with this service. BUT, I am a huge fan of www.mailchimp.com. For my clients (HopkinsMarketing.com and Vital-Mktg.com) who may only blast emails sporadically, pay-as-you-go is the way to go. Plus, they just keep innovating in the mailchimp labs. Love it and highly recommend it.

Ning is one of the social media sites mentioned. I’m digging into this one and will report back…. looking at it as a private network for my ginormous extended family, as well as for my neighborhood association. I’ll report back with what I like/don’t like.

Happy 4th of July!