Here are 7 reasons you should never issue a press release again:
1. iCrowdNewswire guarantees 12,000 impressions on Facebook and offers you the choice of spreading those impressions over 3, 5 or 7 days. You decide how to divide 12,000 guaranteed impressions – the CrowdRelease (SM) has the longest social media shelf life in the industry. Since you chose a CrowdRelease (SM) with a variable impression timetable, your CrowdRelease (SM) will be getting impressions over and over, day after day, according to your timetable selection. How many Facebook impressions will your press release get 5 days after being issued? How about 7 days after being issued?
2. A CrowdRelease (SM) will provide you guaranteed posting on 100 media web sites, just like the big wires. And no, you don’t need one thousand sites, 100 is more than enough.
3. iCrowdNewswire will publish your CrowdRelease (SM) on its news feed, the newsfeed with more crowdfunding campaigns from more diverse platforms than any other newswire anywhere. This the big wires cannot do, they simply do not have enough crowdfunding content – crowdfunding campaigners and SMEs are budget conscious.
4. iCrowdNewswire will post your CrowdRelease (SM) on our social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
5. Want a link report to show your where your CrowdRelease (SM) was posted, we can provide this as well.
6. CrowdReleases (SM) cost $49.99. Flat fee. No word overages. No membership fees.
7. Want to post your Crowdfunding campaign and grow your visibility and exposure, our campaign posting product costs $5.99 and includes the 100 web site postings and social media distribution. Use our share button to share with your followers, ask your team to do the same and ask their followers to share as well.
I know the press release is at least 50 years old, PR Newswire and Business Wire started distributing press releases in the ‘60s using telex machines – funny, most people reading this have never seen or have no idea what a telex machine is. Maybe that is one of the best reasons I could find to re-invent the press release and introduce the CrowdRelease (SM).
I and our team know all about press releases, we have spent the better part of the last two decades in the industry – we know what works and what doesn’t. We know where the value is and where the waste is. We understand media and we respect journalists. But most of all, we know it is time for change. Time to evolve, discard the high priced handcuffs that tie the big wires and provide a new generation tool for the future. An efficient SaaS tool at realistic price points where the most important actor in this production, the client, is the ultimate beneficiary.
Some of these are ideas are not new, the problem is, all of us have been shipmates and not captains – which means that the ultimate decisions were made by others that did not exactly understand that the most valuable component of this industry is the client and holding back growth and development for the sake of a bottom line is unsustainable. Now we are captains, so hold on. Lack of innovation and raising prices year to year to increase annual revenues is not a growth strategy.
Introducing the CrowdRelease (SM) – we are so eager to introduce our game changing model we decide it even needed a different name. Our company is iCrowdNewswire and we are dead set on disrupting the sleepy old models and stealing from the playbooks of the big old wires the things that work, discarding the waste and fluff that is ultimately smoke and mirrors, and providing real value. Now don’t get me wrong, press releases still have a place, financial releases are valuable and needed and the SEC mandated EGAR system is after all, mandated. But even EDGAR needs re-invention and the SEC knows this. In fact, it needs a total overhaul even more than the main bridges in Pittsburgh. Several years ago the SEC actually tried to do this or at least talked about it. Problem is the SEC needed over a billion dollars to create a new digital reporting system – one word of advice I have for Mary Jo White, please don’t hire the company the President Obama used to build Obamacare the first time.
Back to the press release let’s first consider the press. In the United States we still have small town media thanks to visionaries such as Warren Buffett who has assembled quite a large group of small town newspapers and keeps them alive. He and a handful of others are the reason we still have newsprint throughout America, otherwise, it would be long gone. But media has shrunk, changed and is different today. Year’s back we did some research and estimated the big wires published close to 5,000 press releases in a single day! Sure, if you are AT&T announcing the acquisition of Direct TV you may get media coverage but Chi Chi Joe’s Pizza down the street – as they say in New York “forget about it”.
So at the end of the day the content marketing piece you want to issue, formerly known as a press release, is much better suited for the crowd than solely the media. Trust me, the media will find the story and our intention is not to leave them out but rather stop overburdening them with thousands of stories they will never even look at. The big wires tend to rely heavily on yesterday’s technology systems to reach the press – take Associated Press (AP) – great association of media groups, great value overall and very poor and wasteful way to distribute your content marketing news or press releases. Don’t take my word for it: download the free AP mobile app., scroll down and down, and down some more and find the button that says press releases – then try and find your release? You can pay one of the big wires $350 plus word overage after 400 words to do this, or distribute a CrowdRelease (SM) and save $300 plus and put that towards hiring a professional to help you with your public relations, investor relations and outreach efforts. Or take your wife out to dinner. Or in the case of the millennials that don’t understand the word marriage, buy an Apple watch and be sure and sign up for our newsletter so we can send our news to your watch!
The point is the distribution through news agencies, distribution in 20 languages, media spamming, news room expenses, translations, word overages, are headed the way of the telex machine. One of the big wires mandates an addition of a 30+ word paragraph to every release – great, I send you a 390 word release, you add 30 words that you want to add, and charge me word overage because the release is now 420 words!
The changes coming don’t stop with variable timetable guaranteed social media audience and extending the life of your announcement or prices that make sense. On July 10, 2013, the SEC adopted the GSGA (general solicitation and general advertising) amendments to Rule 506 and Rule 144A to comply with Section 201(a) of the JOBS Act, which requires the SEC to remove the prohibition on GSGA for securities offered under those rules. While the new GSGA rules permit issuers and their agents to solicit potential investors through GSGA materials (including mass mailings, newspaper advertisements, unrestricted websites, television spots and social media), issuers should understand the requirements, restrictions and legal implications of the GSGA rules before using them.
The Jobs ACT, GSGA, Crowdfunding and “icompanies” like iCrowdNewswire which focus on innovation; incentives; initiatives; intuition; information; inspiration; invention; independence; interaction; and iCrowds are here to create change. The World Bank wrote about crowdfunding as the innovation in entrepreneurial finance that can fuel the “Rise of the Rest” having a substantial positive effect on emerging markets. As Crowdfunding will have an effect on the global capital markets we will work so that the CrowdRelease (SM) does its part.