Are Your Press Releases Getting Results? Top 3 Analytics to Review

You spend countless hours working on creating a perfect press release. You’ve planned and strategized, and now it’s ready to go. You have your media list. You have your distribution site chosen and you have a timeline for releasing it to your social media audience and email list. But there’s one more step to take. Make sure that you have analytics systems in place before you publish your press release. Skip this step and you’ll have no idea if your press release campaign is getting the results you want.

What are Analytics?
Analytics are data points and information related to online activity. For example, the number of visitors your website receives in a day, week, or month is an analytic. The number of people who click on a link in your email is an analytic. As you can see, this type of information is not only interesting, it’s also invaluable. When it comes to press releases there are key analytics you want to review.

#1 How many times was your press release shared and who shared it?
This is an analytic that your press release distribution service may or may not offer. Look for a service that does, because this can help you forge relationships with people in your industry. It can also let you know where your website visitors and traffic are coming from.

#2 Visits to your website
Do you have an analytics system, like Google Analytics, installed on your site? If not, do this first. Then review your statistics to see who is visiting your site from your press release links. The best way to get clean information (meaning you know that every visitor to a page has come from your press release) is to create a unique URL to send press release readers to. For example, if your website URL is www.mysite.com then your unique URL might be www.mysite.com/pr1. Then you know for certain that every visitor to that page came from your release. You can track how many visitors you had, where they came from, and what action they took once they got to your website.

#3 Opens and Clicks
This is a statistic that your autoresponder service can deliver for you. If you’re sending your release to your email subscribers, and to your media list, you can track how many of those people opened your email. You can even see who opened it with some autoresponders. And you can see how many of those people clicked on the link in your release and visited your website.

The only way to know for sure that your press release campaign is working is to track the data. Install analytics, use services that provide informative reports, and take the time to review the information.

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