Today’s public relations (PR) professionals have a lot to do. Those undertaking agency work typically juggle a gaggle of clients and hefty content needs in an increasingly complex and fast-moving modern media landscape.
Press releases are a foundational component of nearly every client’s PR strategy. As such, PR pros will often find themselves scrambling to issue timely releases on product and service launches, HR announcements, mergers and acquisitions, events, awards, and more. It’s just as challenging for investor relations (IR) pros who get crunched every quarter with mountains of earnings releases to distribute in the first week or so after the quarter ends.
However, the good news is that there is a better way to manage this often exhausting and stressful workload. Here’s the easiest way to distribute press releases for multiple clients.
Streamline Content Production
Press release distribution starts with creating a draft, typically reviewed and edited by a handful of senior execs. This requires skillful coordination by the PR pro to incorporate edits and maintain version control一often tricky assignments when working with email or hard copies across multiple parties under looming deadlines.
News Direct, a new and innovative news and content distribution service, has streamlined this workflow dramatically. Its proprietary Content Studio is a secure online workspace where PR pros can draft and collaborate with stakeholders in a single, self-directed, cloud-based platform.
A full suite of AI-assisted editing tools, including conformity to AP Stylebook conventions, is also available, and version control is managed automatically within the platform. In short, all drafting, edits, reviews, and comments are located in one place and only accessed with account manager permission. This in itself can save hours of chasing down stakeholder input and keeping materials organized.
Importantly, agency PR pros can establish a News Direct account for each client with a single sign in. This ensures press release drafts, boilerplate language, edits, comments, and previously distributed releases remain in their distinct client environments, and the PR pro’s pivot from one to the other, without the need for separate logins, is effortless.
Easily Manage Tabular Data
For the IR pro who loses years of their life formatting tabular financial data, News Direct has created SimpliFi™️. This proprietary functionality within the Content Studio enables the user to cut and paste financial data from a document into the News Direct platform with nearly complete format retention.
For IRs managing multiple clients, this alone is a game-changing time saver.
Enjoy Enhanced Security
A leak of pre-market data, such as quarterly earnings releases, can also add to the IR pro’s nightmares一if not to those of clients themselves. This is especially true in a work-from-home (WFH) environment where many industry professionals, including newswire editorial staff and key stakeholders, currently continue to find themselves.
However, News Direct has solved this challenge, as well. The News Direct platform is a highly secure environment with best-in-class protection grounded in cloud isolation technology and advanced encryption protocols.
Release Standalone Multimedia
Here’s another way to make press release distribution easier. News Direct’s proprietary Digital Asset Direct™ functionality enables PR pros to distribute multimedia on a standalone basis. And according to News Direct’s 2019 Market Assessment study, 86% of journalists find standalone media appealing. And according to leading CRM provider HubSpot, media consumers, too, show strong preferences for visual content. Why, then, spend the time creating a press release to support a video, image, or infographic when it can tell the story effectively on its own?
This functionality gives PR pros with multiple clients better and more efficient tools for managing their numerous press release responsibilities.
Access Actionable Analytics
News Direct also makes tracking results for multiple clients a breeze with its analytics portal. Actionable analytics一powered by AI一include news release posting, exclusive earned media reporting, detailed visibility and engagement metrics, and more to help calculate ROI and capture meaningful insights.
Sharable, professionally formatted reports are also easily accessible and ready to use with clients, in real time.
News Direct also provides its one-of-a-kind Equity Impact Report to track the influence of news on the market in real time. Easily follow clients’ most relevant market metrics throughout the day and subsequent weeks as the news and its effects unfold.
Transparent & Predictable Pricing
News Direct’s asset-based pricing is simple, straightforward, and completely transparent. Each primary content piece, whether a press release or standalone multimedia, is charged the same flat rate一regardless of word count or geographic distribution.
Each additional piece added to the order, such as an image, video, or infographic, costs half the same flat rate. This approach一built for modern media outreach一makes budgeting and forecasting for multiple clients easy and predictable.
Next Steps
Contact News Direct for a demo of its proprietary, industry-leading capabilities, and make distributing press releases for multiple clients easier today.
