–Business Wire is waiving its annual $120 membership fee starting January 1. That means you only have to pay a fee if you want the company to distribute your news release, or provide other services.
Business Wire also will reduce rates on premier multimedia services.
—24-7PressRelease.com now offers news dissemination scanned by news.google.com, opt-in journalists, freelance writers and editors. It offers XML feeds to 2rss.com, feedster.com and other sites. The feeds are also available to MyYahoo for those interested in adding 24-7’s headlines to their personalized Yahoo accounts. Submit your releases.
–When Andrea Obston’s PR agency asked reporters for their pet peeves, and what made them discredit news releases, the three biggest press “sins” mentioned were puffery, superlatives and hackneyed phrases. Journalists said they are particularly distressed by eight words or phrases that keep showing up in releases and are a tip-off that writers are guilty of blatant self-promotion. One of the words is ‘unique.”
“Everyone thinks their product is unique and you know that they’re wrong,” Andrea says. “According to the dictionary, unique means one of a kind. Are you telling me you are the only company in the universe to offer a certain kind of service? Chances are you’re not, so don’t say you are.”