398. WebPR › webPR tactics › news releases: optimised for search and for social media• www.amazines.com• www.articlerich.com• www.isnare.com• www.articlesbase.comThese directories all allow three to four links, they all give statistics on howthe articles are doing and they all allow you to preview the article before youpublish it – it is important to be able to preview it to ensure that no mistakeswere made during the HTML conversion process.You will need to register for an account; all of the above article directories arefree.Once you have submitted the article it will undergo a review process – thedirectories do this to ensure the articles are actually useful and relevant ratherthan simply advertorials. It will then be approved and available to read onthe site. From here people who are interested in republishing the article ontheir own sites/blogs can do so as long as they reproduce the content exactlyas you have submitted it. If the article is well-written and informative it hasthe capacity to go viral which is the ultimate goal, as the more times it isrepublished, the more links you will acquire – and all at no cost to you.Monitor its progressA bit of basic online reputation monitoring (ORM) will enable you to keep aneye on where your article is being republished and that it is being republishedcorrectly - there’s no use in sites republishing it if they’re going to strip out allthe links and the “About the Author” section which you included.16.5.2 News Releases: Optimised for Searchand for Social MediaThe news release is a stalwart of public relations. It is a standardised format forreleasing information. Originally intended to provide information to journalists,increasingly news releases are being read without going through the journalistsfirst. PR has also realised the tremendous impact of bloggers, and many PRprofessionals are using the same news releases in their communications withbloggers. And today, journalists are also bloggers, and bloggers are the newcitizen journalists, so the lines are becoming even further blurred.Newswires, like article directories, allow for online submission of newsreleases. In turn, these are syndicated via RSS, and so are picked up by thenews engines, such as Google News, Yahoo! News, and MSN News. Manypeople pick up their news via these online news engines, which aggregatenews from a number of publications and newswires, so the news release isbecoming an ever more crucial means of reaching a growing audience. 401