How To Measure The Reach Of Articles & Press Releases
If you are anything like me you will invest a lot of time, energy and hard earned cash writing and distributing Articles and Press Releases to build brand awareness, to promote your web sites and to generate traffic.
Lots of people will tell you that it is a really effective method of achieving those objectives. But, how do you measure the degree of distribution and the effectiveness of your Articles and Press Releases?
Firstly, lets look at the distribution of your articles. I use three separate distribution services for articles:
1. www.submityourarticle.com
2. www.thephantomwriters.com
3. www.ezinetrendz.com
And I use the www.PRweb.com Press Release distribution service.
It is quite likely that a limited number of ezine editors will all be on at least two, and possible all three, of those article distribution lists. It wouldn’t be wise, therefore, to send the same article out three times, not only would this be a potential cause of annoyance to the ezine editors, it would also be a waste of money!
So, I only submit an article to one distribution service at a time.
For Press Releases PR Web allows you to choose the level of service that you want. There is a free service but I prefer to use the paid service simply because it provides more comprehensive reporting. In my opinion the best value for money is achieved when making a contribution of $30. For really important campaigns I occassionally pay $80.
Now, how do we quickly and easily measure Reach?
There is a very easy way of setting up an automated system to measure reach. And the good news is that it’s free. All you need to do is to put a unique tracking code in your resource box for each article. You then simply set up an alert at www.google.com/alerts and enter your unique tracking code as the “Search Term” then select either News, Web or both (I use Web for articles & Both for Press Releases); you can then select how often you want to receive alerts - once per day is often enough in my opinion; and finally you enter your email address and you are all set.
Now, depending upon the frequency that you selected, you will recieve a list of URL’s that Google has spidered and found your unique tracking code, or search term.
It’s very easy to set up, it’s automatic and it’s free!
———————————————————–
Copyright: John Taylor - January 2005.
John is a prolific writer and is the author of several
books including the best selling eBook “Testing & Tracking”
www.Test-and-track.com . John enjoys significant
earnings as a top affiliate across a broad section of niche
markets and has recently launched www.Blog4Cash.com
a blog hosting service with a built in two tier affiliate
scheme that allows you to get paid to blog!
———————————————————–