Coveragebook is an online PR solution that automates the compilation of PR coverage books. Users input the url links of their online PR coverage, and Coveragebook pulls in screenshots, as well as website visits, social shares & Domain Authority from sources like SimilarWeb & Moz. Users can customize each coverage book by choosing to show/hide metrics, apply high impact backgrounds, add their own commentary, and then share online or print. Coveragebooks also stores all past…
Coveragebook is very well suited to preparing client reports. Links make it easy for clients to share the coverage within their companies by forwarding a link. The PDF reports also look great. There is an option to provide all the pages of a piece of coverage, or just the first, which is nice when a client is on one page of a multi-page article or product roundup. This way they don't have lots of extra pages that don't feature their product or brand.
PR Newswire is a terrific solution for ensuring that news is distributed in a way that is findable and searchable. It also automatically ties the news to ticker symbols. It's not a useful or meaningful solution for actually securing news coverage. It still requires picking up the phone and pitching media.
Allows users to edit and add information like coverage impressions as needed
Enables you to customize your report (including all pages of coverage, just the first page, uploading your own screenshot, editing metrics, adding client logo, etc.)
User-friendly - PR Newswire has a very user-friendly website that makes it simple and easy to get a news release set up for a distribution relatively quickly. You can also save your selections from a previous distribution to make it go even faster. Since I am pretty much always sending out my releases to the same distribution list, all I have to do is check that box.
Customer support - When you submit a release via the web portal, you have several options about when it will be released. I typically want my releases to go out as quickly as possible, but even then I know an account representative will take a look at my release and accompanying multimedia materials and give me a quick call to confirm and make sure everything is set before officially sending it out. It's a helpful step without making the process cumbersome.
Reports - PR Newswire provides timely and comprehensive reports, so it's easy to tell the where the news release went.
The pricing structure is comprehensive, depending on how far you want your release to go.
Adding multi-media, such as photos, increases visibility quite a bit but PR Newswire charges extra for photos.
PR Newswire also charges an annual fee for storing your logo, which I think should be free for organizations that already have an account (and pay a membership fee).
PR Newswire is an industry leader and gives the user the ability to send out a press release, to a wide audience, very quickly and easily. The pricing is on par with other companies (perhaps they are a bit higher) but they do send useful "visibility" reports after a release is distributed, which is helpful when trying to explain ROI to C suite leaders. You also can email or fax your own distribution list, which is helpful and reduces the need for a media monitoring service
I have had a few questions while using Coveragebook, some of which were answered in the FAQs, but others were not. I emailed customer support and had responses within one business day. (I'm in California and Coveragebook is in the UK, I believe.) All questions were answered to my satisfaction quickly.
Honestly this is probably the absolute worst part of the company. I had maybe 5 different emails from 5 different people when attempting to use this service, and I never knew who my account manager was and who the other people were.
We used to build coverage reports from scratch in PPT or send coverage links or PDFs of each piece of news to clients. Coveragebook is the first formal media coverage platform that we have used, and it suits all of our needs. It helps us save time, create great-looking reports, and present clients with detailed data about their media coverage.
PR Newswire and Businesswire are familiar, similar products in terms of newswire distribution services. Many times it comes down to client familiarity with one service over the other, the cost per distribution, the reach of distribution, as well as other related fees, i.e., you have to be a member of PR Newswire to use the service and then pay fees on top of that for individual distributions.
