Newswire services India market hotting up
By Editor on Dec 16, 2006 in mediarelations
Public Relations India is happening or at least it seems like looking at the number of press release distribution services opening up in India in the last few months to offer their services to the increasing number of PR agencies across the country.
The latest development on this front is that US based PRNewswire might enter the Indian market in the next 1 year or so. We also have a new press release distribution services in India recently launched called Infomailers.in
Also consider the free press release distribution services like IndiaPRwire and Webnewswire.com that are catching up fast. Remember such a similar service was launched also for Hindi press releases called Hindimediachannel.com . Even India’s top news wire service PTI has also launched a similar service. Then we have India’s traditional press release distribution services like BusinessWireIndia.
So who’s using which service? Which one is better? Do we opt for the free service or the paid service? While anybody can use free press release distribution services, the problem might be with the content as anybody can write anything and submit it as a press release. When there is a charge to distribute a press release, it sorts of act as a deterrent from against those mom and pop press releases. However, this doesn’t mean that all contents on free press release distribution services are bad and all content on paid ones are good. You can see press releases from large MNCs and industry associations coming from the free press release distribution services. Also I think that that they have an editorial team to look into the content.
What will be the deciding factors when we choose for such a service? Maybe the free or paid doesn’t matter much, as long as a PR agency gets what it wanted. These could be:
1. Which other press releases are there on the site? I might not want my client’s press releases to be in the middle of some half-a dozen press releases from a freebies website, or a new grocery store in town.
2. Who view and use my press release on such sites? Are journalists really going through what’s coming out of such sites? Are those journalists the ones on the relevant beats? Has any print media picked up a release from these sites?
3. Search engine optimisation – Does my press release come out in Internet search engines with embedded links to my client’s website.
4. If my press releases get syndicated on other sites – Do they remain there permanently in the archives having their own permanent links or do they get removed after a few days?
Relevant post: Free Press Release Distribution Services
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On Dec 16, 2006, Shiv Kumar said:
As a journo, one is usually buried under a clutter of garbage dished out by PR agencies. Usually I dispose of press releases in about 5 seconds flat. The ones i find interesting have some newsy bits two thirds down the page. Why, oh Why, can’t PR people understand news sense? May be its because most of you hire failed journalists.
On Dec 16, 2006, hobbit said:
Hi Shiv, yes PR people need to know what makes news and what don’t. But we do more than that – we mix news with what we want to sell. PR is a sort of marketing function.
I don’t know about failed journalists joining PR, but have come across many award-winning journalists in the PR line. The usual reason why journalists join PR is because the latter pays triple times more and the profile is varied.
On Dec 28, 2006, rachana said:
Hi, being a journo i feel sometimes these pr sites can be helpful…atleast until u become known to all agencies. It might not be that useful to all those journo’s who get crap mails like how shiv kumar said…but definitely for journo’s like us who have few contacts and are new to the industry pr sites help to an extend…