We are rolling out a number of great new feature enhancements designed to provide you with an improved user experience, more scheduling options, and increased visibility for your images. Here are the new features now available through PRWeb:

Draft Mode

All PRWeb news releases are hand-reviewed by our dedicated editorial team to ensure each release meets our editorial standards. Traditionally, customers upload a final copy of their news release when they are ready to submit it for editorial review and distribution.

Save your press release as a draft before submitting

With draft mode, you can now create a news release in our system and save it as a draft without submitting it for review. When you are ready, you can go back, finish it up and submit it to our editors. Note: if you save as a draft, then it will not go to an editor for review and won’t be distributed until you have specified that it should be submitted for editorial review and distribution.

ALT Tags

ALT tags help images perform well in keyword driven searches. For instance, if you are distributing a picture of your cat without an ALT tag, it would be difficult for a search engine to know that the picture is of your pet cat. Adding an ALT tag that reads “my cat” will help explain to the search engine that the picture is indeed about your cat. ALT tags also make your site more accessible to text readers used by the visually impaired.

Add ALT tags to your images You can edit and add ALT tags from the file library in your PRWeb console.Enhanced Navigation

To help explain the steps involved in uploading your release and provide you with an indication of where you are in the process, we now offer an enhanced navigational device to guide you.

Enhanced navigation shows you where you are in the process

Scheduled Distribution

You can now synchronize your communications more effectively by choosing the time of day you want your news release distributed.

Priority Distribution

If you need your news release out fast, simply select priority distribution when you choose your distribution package. With priority distribution, your news release is immediately sent to an editor for review. Provided your release meets our editorial standards, we’ll publish it right away through our distribution network. Note - priority distribution is available between the hours of 4AM (PST) and 6PM (PST) and is contingent upon editorial approval and processing time for any additional services ordered.

Filed under: User Experience, Multimedia Press Releases, News Release Features
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Based on numerous customer requests we are rolling out several new industry categories that you can now add your news release to including Executives, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Private Equity. These categories are also now available to our e-mail subscribers as well as via RSS.

Filed under: User Experience, Press Release Distribution
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Many first-time users come to PRWeb with a press release in hand, ready for distribution. Other first-time users come to PRWeb with some experience in PR or marketing but not in press release writing. Finally, there are first-time users who are experts in writing press releases but are still new to things like search engine optimization (SEO) and using multimedia.

In response to numerous customer requests for more resources for first-timers we have put together a quick start menu that serves as a central portal for some of our resources.

PRWeb Quick Start Menu

From the quick start menu, you can:

1. See tips, tools and templates for writing press releases
2. Sign-up for our free new user orientation
3. View our editorial support services

The quick start menu is accessible to all PRWeb users simply by clicking on that ‘Quick Start’ button on the far left of the top navigation area.

If you have any additional items that you think would help make Quick Start a better resource we’d love to hear about them.

Filed under: User Experience
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I’m pleased to announced the official launch of editorial services through PRWeb. 

A large portion of PRWeb customers are small business owners or independent consultants who want to publicize their business, but do not have a great deal of experience with crafting press releases.  Another portion of our customers have experience crafting press releases but aren’t familiar with various strategies for making them search-optimized.

Based on these customer needs, we will now be making the following services available to all customers who purchase a PRWeb distribution package:

• News Release Drafting - A PRWeb editor will work with customers to draft a news release based on their requirements and targeted for their specific audiences, including journalists, bloggers and consumers, that will achieve top results in search engines.
• News Release Revision - PRWeb will copyedit news release for spelling and grammar and give them a refined, professional tone to optimize the messaging across all PRWeb distribution channels.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Analyzing key words and phrases in the customer’s release, an editor will enhance the news release with search optimized language, driving increased traffic to the release. Additionally, the key word links will help search optimize the customer’s own website.

These three services including Easy Submit, offer customers an array of useful editorial solutions to ensure their news gets the visibility it deserves. 

Selecting editorial services is easy.  After you choose your distribution level, you will be taken to a screen that asks you to select distribution enhancements:

Click to view distribution enhancements screenAlthough these services had previously been offered through PRWeb Direct, we have been integrating them into PRWeb over the past several months in response to numerous customer requests. 

Filed under: Editorial Services
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This past Summer we announced our partnership with Netvibes through which PRWeb content would be made more easily available to their customers to add to their personalized home pages.

We are pleased to announce the rollout of 6 new PRWeb news widgets that are available in the Netvibes listing of premium widgets in the Netvibes’ Ecosystem - their directory of widgets. In addition to a top news widget, there are PRWeb widgets available that focus on technology, politics, lifestyle, business and arts and entertainment news.

Click to visit our PRWeb Lifestyle widget

In addition to Netvibes, these widgets are also available for iGoogle, Opera, Windows Live, Apple Dashboard, and Windows Vista.

 

Filed under: PRWeb Partners, Press Release Distribution
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Starting in November, we will be sending out analytics updates via e-mail, two weeks after their release is published through PRWeb.  These e-mails will simply recap. the total number of impressions and reads that the release has received up to that point in time, with a link to your news management console so you can log-in and get access to the full range of your press release analytics.

Filed under: User Experience, Press Release Measurement
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Today we are happy to announce the launch of ‘PRWeb in Plain English,’ a short video produced by Common Craft. One of our greatest challenges has always been to explain how PRWeb works to people unfamiliar with our product.

Common Craft caught our eye with their series of educational videos on Web 2.0 technologies like RSS and social bookmarking, which managed to explain some pretty abstract concepts in an easy and entertaining manner.

Working with Common Craft was a tremendous experience for us and we are happy to introduce ‘PRWeb in Plain English’:

Filed under: Press Release Distribution
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New and Improved NewsPad - PRWeb’s NewsPad search engine has been completely overhauled to provide more than just press releases in the search results. Images, Web sites (including blogs) linking to releases, and podcasts are now included. Newspad.com is a PRWeb property used for searching the PRWeb archive of content. NewsPad searches also create RSS feeds; when subscribed to, these feeds will alert you when new releases have been added to the search results.

File Library - PRWeb has improved its news content management capabilities by adding the File Library Console to the PRWeb platform. PRWeb users can now upload all file types into their File Library for easy and ready access. The File Library utilizes a “drag-and-drop” user interface to make managing your files and attaching them to your press releases quick and easy to do.

Improved BlogThis - The BlogThis feature has been enhanced to enable inclusion of the embedded video from the press release in the blog post being created about the release. BlogThis will also now identify categories used by the blogger and allow them to be assigned to the corresponding blog post. PRWeb has also made the BlogThis tool available to all bloggers, whether or not they are PRWeb account holders.

Filed under: PRWeb News Services, Social Media Press Release, News Management Console
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We’re pleased to announce a newly formed partnership with Netvibes, the pioneer in personalized home pages.  Through the partnership we will be providing our news releases and podcasts through the Netvibes Ecosystem as well as our own branded PRWeb Universe.

Click to visit our Netvibes Universe
In addition, Netvibes users who visit PRWeb.com will be able to easily subscribe to our RSS feeds by clicking on a Netvibes chiclet.Netvibes’ AJAX-based technology allows users to easily create their own customized homepage by dragging and dropping content into different locations, giving users the ability to easily add the PRWeb RSS feeds to their specialized homepages.  In addition, visitors to PRWeb will have the ability to create and upload a news feed to a Netvibes account with the click of a mouse.

Filed under: Press Release Distribution
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RSS News Feeds have always been a big part of PRWeb’s news release distribution. In addition to the several hundred RSS News Feeds available for industries and topics, PRWeb now provides over 500 RSS News Feeds for countries and RSS News Feeds for U.S. cities. These feeds are based on the choice of country and MSA (metropolitan statistical area) made when setting up the news release, giving the release even more opportunities to be viewed by people with regional interests. Additional RSS choices also give the media and webmasters more flexibility in selecting content from PRWeb for story leads and content for Web sites.

Filed under: Press Release Distribution
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