Cision PRWeb aims to impact customer behavior by providing efficient communication tools to continuously engage with target audiences across multiple online channels including search, social media and with industry-specific partner websites, bloggers and influencers.
We have run several national PR campaigns over the past couple of years and Cision PRWeb makes it easy to distribute the releases and publications pick them up with is a testament to Cision's industry trust credibility. With just a few clicks, the release is set up and ready to deliver at a time of our choice.
PR Newswire is well suited for organizations with a significant public relations budget that want to quickly disseminate a news release over the wire to a specific targeted group of recipients. It's probably not a suitable solution for smaller companies or "boutique" public relations agency unless the distribution cost is to be directly passed on to the client because it is quite expensive.
I think PR Newswire's reach is very good. It's a well-known service that's been around a long time and has a solid reputation. You can trust it.
I think PR Newswire helps increase the visibility of news. So although I would also recommend pitching the news, using a wire service, particularly when there's major news to announce, can help in spreading the word.
It's pretty easy to use. You may need someone to walk you through it at first, but you can save distributions and so forth so that it gets easier over time.
I wish you didn't have to pay for every extra thing. Sometimes it comes off like the people with the most money will be the ones that get their news seen.
It would be nice to geo-target globally. Right now, PRWeb only lets you select certain major MSAs in the US.
We are unlikely to renew PRWeb because I feel that the costs outweigh the benefits of the service. For a company like ours (small business with about 60 employees) we don't have enough press that warrants monthly coverage. We may look at using PRWeb on an as needed basis, 3-4 times a year for single submissions, but that would be the extent of it. I could see PRWeb being much more beneficial for large companies that are constantly needing to issue press.
PR Newswire is an industry leader and gives the user the ability to send out a press release, to a wide audience, very quickly and easily. The pricing is on par with other companies (perhaps they are a bit higher) but they do send useful "visibility" reports after a release is distributed, which is helpful when trying to explain ROI to C suite leaders. You also can email or fax your own distribution list, which is helpful and reduces the need for a media monitoring service
I have only required support from PRWeb on two separate occasions and they handled my issues without any problems. I was a bit confused at first not sure if they had received my requests but shortly after I received responses and was able to move forward with my press release.
Honestly this is probably the absolute worst part of the company. I had maybe 5 different emails from 5 different people when attempting to use this service, and I never knew who my account manager was and who the other people were.
To be honest, there weren't that many options for media tracking and media databases. Cision was one of the biggest platforms and we got into a groove working with them
PR Newswire is considered one of the two gold standard newswire services because of its wide reach and high quality reporting. Pricing is almost identical to its biggest competitor, Business Wire, so it winds up being a matter of preference and ease more than anything. We actually made the decision to move our business away from PR Newswire due to their growing desire to have editorial oversight over the news we're distributing on behalf of clients.
I mentioned that a client of mine for which we used PRWeb is now in talks with a potential reselling partner - so that could have a major impact on their business.
It's always good to have the news out there to as wide an audience as possible. While pitching the news directly to reporters should be part of the PR plan for any announcement, issuing it via a service like PRWeb is usually a good idea.
PRWeb can help more reporters see your news. There are times when a reporter might see the press release via PRWeb and contact the company. Of course, news articles help add credibility and drive more traffic and more business.
ROI is difficult to calculate in my company's specific industry, but we do know our visibility has increased when we send out a release via PR Newswire.
We send out a relatively small number of press releases a year, so we know when we send out a report if our target audience is receiving it.
With Google and other search engines being the primary way people research information about company's today, we know that when we do a press release via PR Newswire that release will "live" indefinitely on the web, so we know our press release will go much further than the initial distribution.
