Newswire vs. Help a Reporter Out (HARO), discontinued

As a general rule, press releases announcing an event are more effective than product or corporate business deals press releases. This may be because events are people-centered and tend to be one of a kind. The interest in a new product, unless it is an upgrade to an existing product line or service, attracts little attention. There are exceptions; if, for example, there is an outbreak of some pathogen and the company is working on a solution, then interest is higher. News has to be related to current concerns.

Incentivized

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was (and today, HERO is) an incredibly valuable tool that effectively bridges the gap between journalists and PR practitioners, and it filled a need on both ends. A perfect solution to an ongoing industry problem. When I have a client that needs media coverage, and a lead is shared in the daily email that fits the client's expertise, it creates an opportunity that we may never have otherwise been able to identify.

Incentivized

• Communication via video calls and emails. They were responsive to any questions we had.
• Provided all the information we needed to make the decision to move forward. They had the materials around what publications and news outlets they could get into for us.

Incentivized

• Pushes PR opportunities right to your desktop several times a day
• Provides media opportunities for just about every industry and if you monitor it regularly, on just about every topic you can think of
• Provides an easy way to contact reporters with relevant information
• Media outlets are verified for you

Incentivized

• The editorial process was always very hard on our sale releases. Even if we followed the same structure we used to with PR Wire they would flag it as advertorial.
• The option for video is nice but would be better to actually embed it into a part of the release versus just floating at the bottom.
• Would be interesting for them to share more industry-specific releases or give the option to only get emails on specific industries. The E-blasts are always too general.

Incentivized

• I've noticed that some queries are incredibly vague to the point where they could or could not apply to me. I feel like they should implement more strict parameters on what the query has to include.
• Sometimes the outlet is marked anonymous which is not beneficial at all to those who are browsing queries. I think the outlet should be required as that is a pretty essential piece of information to consider.
• I think they email slightly too often. My inbox gets flooded with HARO emails and I'm not able to go through all of them because they get buried. Maybe explore a new strategy to organize the huge amount of queries that get submitted every day.

Incentivized

Newswire is simple to use and the pricing is fair. The company's network for press releases is not as large as some competitors but seems to have the best reach at a comparable price point. Newswire also offers quality support for customers, which can be hard to find in this space.

Incentivized

Simple step-by-step process to get your news out to the world. Easy to understand process and explanation as you go through the steps. Each upgrade does have a charge, but it's pretty visible. Once you get familiar with their platform and systems, it becomes fairly easy to use to get your news published. It's also nice how quickly you are able to get the news out and published in the places you choose.

Incentivized

It takes only a few minutes to set up your account. Then, the rest is just checking the push emails, and responding to relevant queries.

Incentivized

It was available for immediate use

Incentivized

It seemed to be okay overall an we plan on continuing to use it as we expand

Incentivized

Any time I’ve had a question or needed assistance, I’ve been able to get in contact with a Newswire representative within a short amount of time. Their attention to customer satisfaction is impeccable, and they definitely go out of their way to ensure they can be of assistance to the best of their ability!

Incentivized

It is a very simple product to get started using, particularly for press releases. I have no used the other functionality so I can't say for sure how easy or difficult that might be, but my guess is that the way the platform is built makes it easy for anybody to get started.

Incentivized

Newswire hands-down beats these other platforms based on their unique price-to-feature-set ratio. We couldn't find a better value and user experience on any of these other platforms when we went through our discovery and evaluation process. All in all, we are very happy with the team and platform at Newswire.

Incentivized

They are different tools. While HARO pretty much gives you feedback on media opportunities you can pitch for and allows you to get in touch with the reporter, so you can get exposure and they can find people for their news. Cision allows you to syndicate your press releases. You need to have a written press release in order to use it.

Incentivized

I did not purchase, I only purchased the per use newswire options

Incentivized

I have not really used this software feature to the level to scale at this point

Incentivized

I did not really use professional services other than the customer support did answer some questions from time to time

Incentivized

• In a new technology area, Newswire has helped us build brand recognition.
• During the pressures put on Healthcare over the past COVID periods our presence in the Marketplace have been difficult to maintain. Newswire has been key in our efforts.
• When medical imaging AI tools exploded on the scene three years ago, there were over 150 vendors at conferences. Those that didn't promote with tools like Newswire and now gone.

Incentivized

• A hard thing to measure in terms of actual sales dollars, however, being able to provide fresh content is essential to any brand. When someone mentions they saw the published piece or it grows organically from social media, that is a win.

Incentivized