ACCESS Newswire is a press release distribution platform that helps clients increase their online visibility and web presence. It provides premier syndication to leading news outlets. The solution aims to empower clients with a variety of solutions to suit any budget.
$299
single PR
Help a Reporter Out (HARO), discontinued
Score 5.0 out of 10
N/A
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was a service owned by Cision (via the merger with Vocus) for reaching out to journalists. It is discontinued.
Personally, I see no difference between Newswire and other press release services. This one's available with our current PR SAAS solution, there's nothing wrong with it, and pricing is usually somewhat competitive. These days nothing works as well as actual media relations, so Newswire comes in handy for just having a solid link for a press release and getting the SEO on backlinked sites.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was (and today, HERO is) an incredibly valuable tool that effectively bridges the gap between journalists and PR practitioners, and it filled a need on both ends. A perfect solution to an ongoing industry problem. When I have a client that needs media coverage, and a lead is shared in the daily email that fits the client's expertise, it creates an opportunity that we may never have otherwise been able to identify.
Communication via video calls and emails. They were responsive to any questions we had.
Provided all the information we needed to make the decision to move forward. They had the materials around what publications and news outlets they could get into for us.
The editorial process was always very hard on our sale releases. Even if we followed the same structure we used to with PR Wire they would flag it as advertorial.
The option for video is nice but would be better to actually embed it into a part of the release versus just floating at the bottom.
Would be interesting for them to share more industry-specific releases or give the option to only get emails on specific industries. The E-blasts are always too general.
I've noticed that some queries are incredibly vague to the point where they could or could not apply to me. I feel like they should implement more strict parameters on what the query has to include.
Sometimes the outlet is marked anonymous which is not beneficial at all to those who are browsing queries. I think the outlet should be required as that is a pretty essential piece of information to consider.
I think they email slightly too often. My inbox gets flooded with HARO emails and I'm not able to go through all of them because they get buried. Maybe explore a new strategy to organize the huge amount of queries that get submitted every day.
Simply put, they are a great team, excellent support and a platform that is so seamless to use. Great reporting content, can do attitude and a solution / product that works. They are an established company and there are many 'new companies' out there claiming to offer a better service but they lack the depth and capabilities of the Newswire platform
Simple step-by-step process to get your news out to the world. Easy to understand process and explanation as you go through the steps. Each upgrade does have a charge, but it's pretty visible. Once you get familiar with their platform and systems, it becomes fairly easy to use to get your news published. It's also nice how quickly you are able to get the news out and published in the places you choose.
When we have needed support, the Newswire support team has responded quickly and been very clear about what we need to know. We have never had a significant issue and they have been very helpful at cleaning up any points of confusion on our part. I always feel like they have my back.
It is a very simple product to get started using, particularly for press releases. I have no used the other functionality so I can't say for sure how easy or difficult that might be, but my guess is that the way the platform is built makes it easy for anybody to get started.
To be honest, they are very similar in many ways. Business Wire, for example, is more focused on business news as opposed to other types of news. Newswire has a more general and broader application. Other news services like Bloomberg are only interested if the company is traded on one of the stock markets.
They are different tools. While HARO pretty much gives you feedback on media opportunities you can pitch for and allows you to get in touch with the reporter, so you can get exposure and they can find people for their news. Cision allows you to syndicate your press releases. You need to have a written press release in order to use it.
In a new technology area, Newswire has helped us build brand recognition.
During the pressures put on Healthcare over the past COVID periods our presence in the Marketplace have been difficult to maintain. Newswire has been key in our efforts.
When medical imaging AI tools exploded on the scene three years ago, there were over 150 vendors at conferences. Those that didn't promote with tools like Newswire and now gone.
A hard thing to measure in terms of actual sales dollars, however, being able to provide fresh content is essential to any brand. When someone mentions they saw the published piece or it grows organically from social media, that is a win.
