This past Friday at midnight, we rolled out a brand new PRWeb.com.  This launch was the result of countless hours of effort logged by a wide variety of individuals – from developers, to designers, to writers and more, this was truly a collaborative effort that spanned the company.

Also worth noting is that the launch is a mashup of several different projects that have been on our roadmap for a while now.  Some changes will be immediately obvious, such as the updated look and feel of the site and the new press release template.  Other changes on the other hand, will reveal their impact over time – but more on this in a bit.  What is common throughout all the updates is our intention to better serve our customers – from providing them with more tools to get started to ensuring that the releases perform more effectively online, this launch was all about continuing to offer industry leading visibility to our customers.

As with all significant changes, there are sure to be questions that arise.  We want to take this opportunity to address some of the more significant changes you may notice with the new PRWeb.com:

1. We are no longer listing all $140+ releases on the home page

Back when PRWeb was a free service and publishing a far more limited volume of releases, front page placement was a benefit granted to certain customers willing to make a financial contribution to the company.  At this time there were more tangible benefits to front page placement in terms of readership and SEO.  Over time, the volume of releases published daily has swelled to a much larger number and we have ended up with a home page that can contain too many articles at times.  This has made the home page less than optimal for both users as well as search engines.

Our solution to this challenge has been to evolve from an architecture that focuses on one front page to one that has multiple front pages (from a search perspective). Tactically, we have done this by creating a section of our domain completely devoted to customer news releases, organized around industry verticals (i.e. arts & entertainment, technology, etc.).  This technique is one that is used by many sites with a large volume of content and is a generally accepted method for creating value in certain silos within the hierarchy of a Web site and passing value to the pages located within these silos (customer news releases).

As a result, we fully expect this new architecture to increase the volume of traffic to your release as well as your site.

2. We have made some major changes to the news release template

The PRWeb news release has undergone some significant changes.

First, you’ll notice that there is far more room being given to multimedia elements like video, images, and file attachments.  In the last several years we have gained a lot of empirical knowledge about the way that people consume news online.  Our own research into the effects of multimedia on news consumption showed that the presence of relevant images and video increased the average time users spent on news releases.  There is also notable research that has proven the correlation between multimedia and action.

Then again, all it takes is a quick look at the home page of CNN.com to see how multimedia is beginning to dominate the visual real estate of news sites today.

The second major change we have made is to place links to various actions such as sharing, further inline with the news content.  These days, news releases are not just about getting people to read a story; they are also about getting the reader to take some form of measurable action: to share on Facebook, e-mail to friends, and more.  Subsequently, we have optimized the placement of these links to make our news more action-able.

The final change we’ve made to the release is behind the scenes.  After years of adding code, the time had come for us to step back and optimize the code behind the release to make sure it was optimized for faster load times and better performance in search.  Speed is not only important for users, but leading certain search engines have been very vocal about the growing importance of speed when it comes to performance in search.

3.  We have introduced a dedicated learning center

Over the past few years, we have been consistently investing more time and resources into customer education.  We realize that although there are some folks who have been sending out press releases for years, the practice of creating and distributing online news releases is still relatively new.

What’s more, the varying backgrounds of our customers has created a need for a range of different types of content.  We have PR folks who want to learn more about SEO, and SEO folks who want to learn more about PR.  We have small business owners who want to move from sending out one release each year, to a more ongoing cycle of communication that results in the long term development of online visibility for their brand and their business.

So in response to the ongoing demand for educational resources, we are launching a dedicated learning center that will serve as a hub for all the various articles, webinars, and white papers we have put together.

Hopefully these points address some of the more glaring questions you might have.  If you have others (and I’m sure some of you will), please post them to the comments section of this article and we will make sure to address them as quickly as possible.

We’re looking forward to the conversation.

Introducing the New PRWeb Web site was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Today we announced a new partnership with one of the leading image and photo sites on the Web, Photobucket.  Initially, we will be sending Photobucket a stream of news images from our media visibility releases that will be automatically syndicated on their site.  We are currently running the task once per day so all new releases and images that are published throughout the day may not make it over to Photobucket until the following day.

Additionally, we will be passing the image over in addition to the title of the image (if it is available) as well as a link back to a version of the image hosted on our own domain.    Over time we will be looking to optimize the contextual information we pass over to Photobucket to make sure they have the highest likelihood of showing up for relevant queries in the Photobucket search engine.

Image search is a rapidly growing sector of search and images are becoming an increasingly important part of our customer news releases.  Increasingly, we are shifting into a paradigm where customers are telling stories in multimedia instead of just plain text.  Our own research highlights many of the benefits to using multimedia as part of a news release campaign.   It is our goal that this partnership will help us push the impact of our customer news releases one step further, by tapping into the millions of people searching for images on a daily basis.

PRWeb Announces Partnership with Photobucket was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Over the past several months we have been taking a closer look at how multimedia impacts news consumption by studying the habits of our own PRWeb news consumers.  The research combined quantitative analysis of usage patterns drawn from Web statistics with a survey that was sent out to a segment of our e-mail opt-in subscribers.

Here are some top-line takeaways from that research, which will be also discussed in my upcoming presentation at Newcomm Forum this Friday.

1.  People spend more time on releases that contain multimedia – Images really do have an impact on how much time people spend consuming news releases.  In the sample of news releases we studied, releases with no images had an average time-on-page of 2:18.  However, releases that contained images had an average time-on-page of 2:47.

2.  Bloggers and journalists actually use multimedia – Not only does multimedia positively enhance the experience of news releases, evidenced by indicators such as increased time-on-page, but news producers (journalists and bloggers) actually use multimedia they find on news releases to help construct their ensuing stories.  Almost half (48%) of journalists and bloggers who subscribe to receive PRWeb news releases report having used an image or video in a news story or blog post they have written.

3. Bloggers and journalists favor some forms of media over others – When it comes to various types of multimedia, content producers clearly favor images.  88% of producers agree or strongly agree that images enhance their experience of a news release while about half (52) agree or strongly agree that video enhances their experience of a news release.  Only 28% agreed that audio enhances a news release.

The Impact of Multimedia on News Consumers was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

For the past several years we have offered podcast production and syndication services through PRWeb. In the past two years or so, a number of factors have resulted in declining usage of our podcast services.

Most notably, our launch of video integration has resulted in increasing numbers of customers focusing on video as opposed to audio when creating multimedia news releases. This trend in customer usage can be correlated with our research into journalist and blogger news consumption habits that shows relatively lukewarm interest in audio content compared to other forms of media.

These factors have lead us to decide and phase out our podcast production services so we can place increased focus on the other multimedia elements of the release including focusing on how images and video can be further emphasized on the release.

So effective May 1, we will no longer be offering podcast production services to our customers although customers who have their own audio will still be able to add them as attachments to their news release.

For your convenience, we recommend the following resources for those interested in learning more about how to create their own podcast:

1. eHow explanation of How to Syndicate a Podcast
2. wikiHow page on How to Start your Own Podcast
3. Tinkernut  video on How to Create a Podcast

Podcast Production Notification was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

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.

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.

PRWeb Launching New User Enhancements was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Adding a new visual and audio dynamic on your PRWeb press release page is now possible. In addition to the Quotables and News Image features, you can now embed streaming video directly into your press release. Simply upload your video to Yahoo! Video, Google Video, or YouTube and then use the “embed code” provided to place the video into your press release. This “Feature Video” capability is available at our Media Visibility distribution level.

Feature Video was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

We have made it easier for visitors to your press release page and the corresponding PRWebPodcast.com page to quickly and easily listen to your podcast. Embedded in these pages is a podcast player that will stream the content to your audience without requiring any special software or waiting for the file to download first.

Embedded Podcast Player was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com