We Trashed Our Affiliate Programme

OfficialWire trashed its affiliate programme today. This should not effect too many people. Over the last two years, just two (2) referrals have been received and they were from a user who registered so that he thought we'd pay him for referring himself....go figure, eh? As it turned out, the progamme which promised to pay out up to 50% of a sale, just didn't have the take-up that we expected. Most of our clients just don't have the time to fiddle around with putting banners on their websites and few have personal blogs. So that's all she wrote. No affiliate programme.

Friday-the-13th Curse Strikes Again

Last night as I was approving client press releases and reading OfficialWire news, I was thinking how well everything was working...recalling, the old line from the A-Team, when Hannibal would say "I love it when a plan comes together..."; yes, it was all working perfectly, just as I planned it.

Then, all of a sudden, nothing. No time to think, no time to wonder, just one second OfficialWire was online, the next it was off.

It turned out to be a failed network card, no doubt brought on by the alignment of the "1" and "3" in yesterday's date, when meeting up with the day of the week "Friday" as it did and does from time to time. There really can't be any other reason and so that's the one I'm using, until another, more suitable excuse, comes along.

Anywho, the fine folks at Rackmounted.com, who have hosted OfficialWire for the last two years immediately sprung into action; no matter than it was just gone 5pm, no matter that it was "Poets Day" (Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday) in the UK where I'm based and braving the dreaded Friday-the-13th, they quickly replaced the offending article and we were back online after just two hours and 5 minutes rest, during which time I got to watch a back-to-back double episode of House; my wife's new favourite show.

So, it all worked out well in the end and now, I'm back to thinking how great I've got it.

Press Release Distribution (Talk) Group

OfficialWire and MrPressRelease has launched a Group, courtesy of Google (who else, eh?) intended to organise a number of separate tools into one interface. Registration is open to anyone who wants to report a bug, make a suggestion or find the answer to a question.

Press Release Distribution (Talk) Group

Halleluiah! Twitter Is Working Again!

As you can see from the title, we're in love with Twitter at OfficialWire. So imagine our sadness when they were hit by a DoS attack last evening. Shock horror!

We put the brakes on and generated a backlog of more than 250 press releases while Twitter's crack team of techies worked hard into the night.

This morning we were still experiencing some API issues but despite the delay in posting our client's press releases we only lost one client.

Oh well, you can't be all things to all people now can you?

Still Twittering...well, sometimes

Since last night, we are still experiencing intermittent interruptions with the API submissions/postings to Twitter; with about 10% success. OK, 90% failure rate isn't the end of the world, but it's pretty bad.

We're not sure what the problem is but the errors are reporting "timing out" and repeat attempts fail and appear to make matters worse.

Looks like Twitter is filtering submits (owing to their DoS attack or maybe they are just overloaded), but the results are the same.

We'll keep you posted.

Twitter back... online

Everything is now right in the world.... Twitter has weathered the attack and lived to tell about it. As for OfficialWire, we never doubted them.

Unlocked and ready for the more than 200 pending press releases... our busy beavers are (literally) working their tails off to get the news out!

Twitter down, OfficialWire applies the brakes

We paused our client's press releases being posted while Twitter was down. According to Twitter's blog, the popular website was the target of a denial of service attack.

Rather than post our client's press releases and miss the opportunity to submit them via Twitter as OfficialWire does automatically, we put the brakes on for a couple hours.

Normal service will resume as soon as Twitter recovers.

Targeting your online audience

So, you've launched that business you planned, and it is time to market it to your audience and so your first approach is to write a news release and send it to your local media outlets: newspapers, radio and television stations. You fold the news releases and place them into envelops and then drop them at the post office, or you decide to send the releases by fax machine and send them to selected journalists. If you have their Email addresses, you send the releases to your target journalists that way. Either way, if you're lucky, your news releases reach the selected journalists on time, and if they are interested in your content, they cover your story in some way. If you are not so lucky, your news releases get trashed, and that, my friend, is the end of it, at least for now, until you adopt a second approach.

The second approach is to get online. You conduct a search for news release distribution service on Google, Yahoo, MSN or any of your favorite search engines. A list of news release distribution companies is generated; you do your research and decided to use one of the news release distribution companies, for example, OfficialWire. You submit your news release to OfficialWire, within minutes, your news release appears on Google News, Yahoo News and other major online news services.

Are there any benefits between the first and the second approach? Unlike the first approach, the second approach enables you to instantly publish your business news online. The instantaneous publication of your news releases online is your number one benefit of using online news release distribution services.

The second benefit is when a service like OfficialWire distributes your release to other online media channels. Top media channels like Yahoo News receive your news release and publish it instantly, while some news sites will publish your release at a later date. News aggregators such as Google News and Moreover.com crawl news sites like Yahoo News and place summaries on their servers or news web sites. These aggregators in turn syndicate their summaries to other micro news sites, online databases, intranets and individual subscribers.

The third benefit is that your news release is featured as current top news in your industry. When OfficialWire publishes your article on Yahoo News; other search engines such as Alta Vista, Alltheweb.com and Google prominently feature your release on the top spot when a user conducts a search with a key word that appears on the title of your release. Sometimes these search engines will display part or the whole title of your release – depending on the length of your release. When your release is highlighted, you receive the instant benefit of putting your business in front of millions of your target audience for days and sometimes up to a week.

While not all search engines will feature your news, many major search engines such as Yahoo, Google, Excite, Lycos, WebCrawler, Find.com and Ask.com will index news releases from OfficialWire's archives. Hence, the fourth benefit is that, when you use online news release distribution service, your news release is indexed on major search engines so that end-users, researchers or even journalists find information about your company at a later date.

The fifth benefit with online news release distribution is through the OfficialWire RSS services. When you publish your news release on OfficialWire, your news release is converted into RSS and it is syndicated to RSS news indexing sites. Several RSS search engines such as Yahoo, NewsIsFree, Blogdiggers, Daypop and many others, pick news releases from OfficialWire and index them on their servers. Online users, including journalists, researchers and consumers use these sites to look for information or breaking news on products and services.

If end-users do not go to search engines for news and information, they receive it on their Email boxes or on their RSS newsreaders. Many news sites, like OfficialWire, allow online users to subscribe to news based on their target interests. Google News enables its users to subscribe to news via Email based on keyword. These methods of news delivery is the sixth benefit you receive by using online services to distribute your news release.

These are the six benefits of using the OfficialWire online news release distribution services. When you use an online service, your news is published online instantly, archived and distributed to news channels that not only publish your news online again, but they syndicate your release to other news sites and their subscribers. The result is a viral benefit. Another benefit is the featuring of your business on top of major search engines based on your target industry for thousands of online users who are interested in your product or service.

Designer News is IN

For far too many businesses, the press release is something that gets done as a last resort or when 'all else fails'.

Of course, OfficialWire registered users already know that's a recipe for disaster. The days of knocking out a press release, sitting back and waiting for something to happen are long gone. You know that your press release has to be well-written and should be sent to a wide variety of appropriate journalists. But there's another key to success.

Smart managers know that "news release" and "press release" are not interchangeable. The phrase "news release" should refer to a release that—not to put too fine a point on the matter—contains actual news.

Whether its a merger, stock split, recent staff appointment or a major new contract, important news is both easy to recognize and critical to the future of your business, if you deal with it properly.

OfficialWire is the correct venue for significant news.

Formerly OfficialSpin and directly distributed to as many as 230,000 disclosure points including, NewsNow, GoogleNews, and thousands of other leading newswires, and databases, OfficialWire guarantees maximum exposure at a realistic price. $59.99 per month, unlimited access!

This means you can:

• Publish an unlimited number of news releases
• Publish an unlimited number of initial introductions

Your success is our objective. While our main priority is the timely, accurate delivery of your news releases and other business communications materials, we also want to help you create a message that is as strong, targeted and compelling as it can possibly be—ensuring that your message receives the attention it deserves.

£34.99 (about $60) per month, unlimited access!

OfficialWire offers broad, real-time delivery of Official company news and press releases to leading newsrooms, disclosure points, Web sites and online databases, as well as to individual journalists, analysts and consumers. OfficialWire is the only premium news & wire service offering distribution of corporate news at flat-rate monthly pricing, with unlimited access. This means you can:

• Publish an unlimited number of news releases; and
• Publish an unlimited number of initial introductions

Formerly OfficialSpin and directly distributed to as many as 475,000 disclosure points including, NewsNow, Google News, Topix, and thousands of other leading newswires, and databases, OfficialWire guarantees maximum exposure at a realistic price. Give us a try and find out what many others already know: superior distribution at an affordable price makes OfficialWire an unquestionable asset for your business.

Registration is FREE so sign-up today and receive targeted notification of important news as it happens. When you're ready to publish NEWS or when you want to publish an initial introduction, activate the billing system. You can cancel whenever you want! Then it's a snap to re-activate your monthly payment when you want to publish some more news! We made it easy, because that's the way it should be.

Spin, or news releases and press announcements should be an important part of any company's marketing communications efforts. Whether you are announcing a new product, disclosing earnings reports, issuing profit warnings, or announcing the appointment of key staff, getting the correct Spin can have a significant impact on a company's most precious asset—its reputation.

Your success is our objective. While our main priority is the timely, accurate delivery of your press releases and other business communications materials, we also want to help you create a message that is as strong, targeted and compelling as it can possibly be—ensuring that your message receives the attention it deserves.