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News Marketing is the practice of publishing one clear, well-structured release every 28 days and letting that rhythm build a permanent, searchable footprint your buyers can find.
Tips, insights, and strategies from the Newsworthy team to help you get the most out of your press releases.
For decades, newswires have measured press release distribution success largely the same way: lists of websites, recognizable media logos, and impressive "potential" audience reach numbers. But what good is having your press release on hundreds of websites if nobody can find it? In the age of AI, we should be measuring something more meaningful.
Mark M. Willaman
Walk into a drugstore and look at the pain relievers. One bottle says Advil. Next to it is a store-brand bottle of ibuprofen. Same active ingredient. Same dosage. Same basic job. But the Advil costs more. And millions of people willingly pay the difference. Why? That difference is one of the simplest ways to understand brand equity.
David McInnis
There's a common misconception about AI and content: If an AI system crawls or sees your content, it is learning from it. Not necessarily. Understanding the difference between AI training and AI grounding helps explain why publishing useful, authoritative content may be becoming more important in the age of AI.
Mark M. Willaman
For years, companies have treated press releases primarily as a way to get media coverage. That is becoming an outdated way to think about them. AI is changing how people discover businesses, products, expertise, and information. Instead of searching Google and clicking through a list of websites, people increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other AI-powered systems a question and receive a synthesized answer. That creates a new challenge for every company. When someone asks a question related to your business, can AI find you? Understanding why press releases can help starts with understanding something surprisingly simple about how AI finds current information.
Mark M. Willaman
The $600 Lesson. In 1997, I had a $600 epiphany. I was running a small business, wanted press coverage, and did what everyone said to do: I wrote a press release and paid a traditional newswire $600 to distribute it. The release went out. I watched it scroll across PointCast, the hot push-media platform of the moment. Then it disappeared. Just a fleeting line of text on a screen that almost nobody was watching.
David McInnis
Most podcast episodes are promoted for a few days after they are published and then gradually fade into an archive. But every episode contains something more valuable than just audio. It contains ideas, insights, expert opinions, and conversations that deserve to be discovered long after listeners press play. That's where many podcasters are missing an opportunity.
Mark M. Willaman
For decades, PR asked the wrong question. Most companies judged a press release by one metric: "Did it generate media coverage?" That's still an important question. But it is no longer the only question. Today, a better question is: "Did it make our company easier to find, easier to trust, and easier for AI to understand?" That shift changes everything.
Mark M. Willaman
For most of my career, the PR industry measured success one way: distribution. How many newsrooms received your release? How many outlets carried it? How many impressions did it generate? We built entire reports around those numbers, and they looked fantastic in a slide deck. A release that generated "2 million impressions" and "450 media pickups" felt like a win. But if you followed those numbers downstream to revenue, customer acquisition, or business outcomes, the correlation was often weak. Distribution measured exposure. It didn't necessarily measure influence. That model is broken. AI didn't crack it. It shattered it.
David McInnis
I've been in the press release business since 1997. I built PRWeb because I believed press releases should be searchable, public, and directly accessible to anyone. Since then I've watched the industry shift from fax machines to email blasts, from newswires to search engines, from SEO to social media. Every one of those shifts felt enormous at the time.
David McInnis
AI prices are going to rise. Significantly. Not a little. Not gradually. Structurally. And if OpenAI moves toward a public market path, the pressure to show real margins only accelerates that reality. The era of subsidized usage doesn’t last forever. At some point, the economics have to work. They’re starting to and this matters everywhere AI is used. But it matters a lot in one specific category that hasn’t caught up yet. Press release newswire and distribution platforms.
Mark M. Willaman
For years, companies were told that getting their press release on MarketWatch meant something. It didn’t. It meant you paid a newswire, and your content got dumped into a high-authority domain alongside thousands of other releases nobody read. Now it’s over.
Mark M. Willaman
You’ve probably heard that more than once. And if you evaluate them using the same metrics we used a decade ago, it’s easy to see why people believe it. Media pickup is inconsistent. Backlinks don’t move the needle like they used to. “Impressions” and “reach” feel inflated and disconnected from real outcomes. But here’s the truth: Press releases aren’t dead. They’re being measured against the wrong standard.
Mark M. Willaman
When devastating floods hit Comfort, Texas, the Comfort Area Foundation launched a flood relief fund but faced the challenge of gaining visibility for a brand-new donation site. By leveraging the combined power of Newsworthy.ai, NewsRamp.com, and Burstable.News™, the campaign quickly achieved top search rankings, AI snippet inclusion, and a surge in traffic—demonstrating how modern press release news marketing strategies can drive real-world impact.
Mark M. Willaman
Traditional press release tactics like mass syndication and backlink chasing are now liabilities in the modern SEO landscape. Today, visibility comes from credible, high-quality content shared through targeted, context-rich distribution that aligns with how search engines and AI evaluate authority.
David McInnis
For years, press release distribution has been measured by outdated, vanity-driven metrics: reach, impressions, backlinks, and media placements. But do these numbers tell you if anyone is seeing, reading, or engaging with your news? Not really. If you’re still relying on traditional newswires, your press release is probably being buried—or completely missed. Why? Because how people discover content has fundamentally changed.
Mark M. Willaman
AI is not the cause of journalism’s decline but a potential solution. By automating tasks, enhancing distribution, and enabling innovative storytelling, AI empowers independent journalists and revives local news. Tools like AI-driven transcription and multilingual content adaptation bridge resource gaps, ensuring broader access to quality reporting. Used responsibly, AI can revitalize journalism, reconnecting communities with critical news and supporting independent voices.
Mark M. Willaman
In a digital landscape where user behavior has fundamentally shifted, traditional metrics like website traffic and press release placements no longer tell the full story. Inspired by Rand Fishkin’s insights, this post explores why these vanity metrics fail to measure real impact—and what to focus on instead. From declining search traffic to duplicate content penalties and the rise of zero-click content, the rules have changed. Discover why impressions, views, and engagement are the new gold standards for press release success, and how adaptive strategies like NewsRamp.com are leading the way by delivering content in formats that resonate across platforms. It’s time to stop chasing vanity metrics and start creating meaningful connections.
Mark M. Willaman
In my journey alongside my business partner, David McInnis, we've navigated the dynamic worlds of PR and marketing, overseeing thousands of press releases. Through this experience, we've identified some intriguing differences in how these two departments approach press releases.
Mark M. Willaman
In response to evolving SEO algorithms, shifting media consumption habits, and the rise of AI-generated content, press releases need to adapt by diversifying formats and leveraging new distribution channels. By transforming press releases into engaging, multi-platform content and focusing on targeted delivery, marketers can restore the value of press releases as powerful tools for content amplification and visibility.
Mark M. Willaman
In the evolving landscape of content marketing, the emphasis is shifting from generating clicks to fostering genuine engagement. This blog post explores three key trends driving this change. It also offers practical strategies for adapting your content marketing to thrive in this new environment, ensuring that your efforts lead to deeper connections and sustained visibility.
Mark M. Willaman
This article challenges the conventional measurement of press release effectiveness, emphasizing engagement over reach. It explores the true value of press releases as a direct-to-buyer marketing tactic and advocates for a shift toward news marketing and engagement metrics.
Mark M. Willaman
Exploring the symbiotic relationship between AI and the realms of writing and journalism reveals a landscape of innovation and collaboration. Despite concerns about job displacement and misinformation, AI emerges as a powerful ally rather than a foe. By understanding its limitations, harnessing its capabilities for collaboration, content generation, and enhancing creativity, writers and journalists can unlock new horizons of productivity and storytelling. Far from threatening the essence of these professions, AI amplifies their potential, ushering in a new era of efficiency and creativity.
Mark M. Willaman
Creating an evergreen press release transcends time; it's about embedding your message in timeless values and universal themes that resonate well beyond its publication date. This strategic approach ensures your news remains fresh and relevant, offering sustained visibility in an ever-changing digital landscape.
David McInnis
The U.S. media landscape is experiencing significant upheaval, with legacy media facing financial challenges and workforce reductions. Despite this turmoil within mainstream media, there's a burgeoning growth in alternative or independent media platforms. This article delves into the decline of traditional media, the growth of alternative media, and opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) seeking media coverage.
Mark M. Willaman
Sometimes marketers must run two parallel marketing campaigns. One that grows the product category and a separate promotional campaign that captures market share in the product category.
Mark M. Willaman
Adding your Google Business Profile map to press releases adds an interactive and visual element to the release, paving the way for improved audience engagement.
Mark M. Willaman
Let's do the math. You may have a lot more influence than you ever imagined.
David McInnis
“PR is no longer just about media outreach. You now have the opportunity to drive a message directly to your customer. Everything you write should be focused on meeting the needs of your customer. Don’t worry so much about writing for the media. A good journalist will be able to pick up and follow these threads.” —David McInnis, founder of Newsworthy.ai (and PRWeb) in his article, Write the Perfect Press Release.
Mark M. Willaman
Let’s dive into the world of press releases and newswires, exploring the challenges companies often face. For starters, writing an effective press release can be quite a daunting task. The cost of distributing these press releases over newswires can be quite steep. There’s no guarantee of coverage, leaving companies with limited exposure. And to top it off, it’s difficult to determine how many people actually read the release, or if the release drives significant traffic to a company’s website.
Mark M. Willaman
You spent hours (minutes if you used Newsworthy's AI tools) writing your press release and getting approvals from company stakeholders. The press release is very good and you can’t wait to share your news with the world. So you distribute the release over a newswire, like Newsworthy.ai, where it gets distributed to hundreds of websites, shows up on Google News, etc., etc. What else can you do to promote the news within your industry?
Mark M. Willaman
Influencer marketing works, which explains its exploding growth, growing to 16.4 billion in 2022. Businesses are making $5.2 ROI for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. There has been a 465% increase in searches for the phrase "influencer marketing" on Google alone since 2016 (1).
Mark M. Willaman
The value of press release distribution has shifted from a media outreach tool to a direct-to-consumer communication strategy. PR should be focused on meeting the needs of the customer, not just writing for the media. Writing to personas is the best way to get engagement. You can group personas into 4 macro personas: Methodical, Competitive, Spontaneous, and Humanistic. You can reach each persona by answering one question, specific to the target persona.
David McInnis
AI is well-suited for creating press releases because there is less risk of bias, as press releases mostly contain undisputed factual information about events or other company announcements. Additionally, there's less risk of the content being identified as AI-generated, which can be problematic in contexts like academic essays or SEO-sensitive content for companies, where plagiarism or spam-like content are issues.
Mark M. Willaman