Are All Wire Services the Same?

By Neila Matheny

Recently, one of my clients decided to evaluate the various news wire services because of a reduction in the number of press release pickups company announcements received. A number of my colleagues were investigating the various options for exactly the same reason.  We all compared notes about the three major services, and man, did we learn a lot!

With recent progress in search engine optimization and RSS feeds, the major wire services have all introduced their own offerings in these areas. Linked keywords and multimedia features are becoming more important to our clients as they look to drive additional traffic to corporate websites. Our research showed that some wire services are more advanced than others, but that all plan to deliver similar services in the coming year.

Because the services offered by each are similar, the decision really came down to price and customer service. Although prices did not differ too drastically from service to service, the difference in customer service was evident.  As an agency, we pride ourselves on the level of service we offer our clients, and we like to work with companies that have similar philosophies.  Some of the wire services are equally dedicated to their clients; however, others seemed to focus only on how to undercut their competitors. The news wire dedicated to providing top-tier customer service was the clear choice.

In the end, my client changed its service.  Since then, press release pickups have more than doubled, and the client’s placement on the main search engines has also improved. Evaluating each of the wire services took a long time and a lot of work, but in the end, I feel that what we learned will ultimately benefit our clients.

Comments

[Jeff Ferry]

It would be very interesting to know how changing from one wire service to another can lead to a doubling in pick-up on a release! Seems to me this would outweigh customer service in terms of importance.
Best regards,
Jeff

[Becky Caudill]

Hi Jeff,

I'm sure my colleague Neila can add information here as well, but as I was knee-deep in working with all of the wire services on behalf of one of my clients, I figure I can add my personal thoughts. I won't name names, but the one that offered the maximum distribution also had the best customer service. The one with limited distribution had awful customer service. And the third was somewhere in between and confused about the whole thing in general. Let's just say it was a very easy decision.