In short – Yes. The longer answer is sometimes a business will have 'news' that falls under the category of being 'newsworthy,' particularly to your customers; however, it may not be newsworthy for the media. For example, during COVID-19, when restaurants were beginning to re-open, many were re-opening under certain restrictions and guidelines. Because this was standard information for nearly every restaurant, publishing a news release about it for the media would be pointless; however, to post this news to your website, informing your followers and customers would is beneficial.

Similar to something like a LinkedIn page, if you have all your information in one place, ready to go, it only takes about 10 minutes. At the minimum, we recommend including a logo, company information, some images, and where you've previously been written up in the news before—your welcome to spend as much time filling out the information in your newsroom. The more you fill out, the more attention you receive, and the better it looks.

PR Karma does not accept, support, nor publish news relating to the following subject matter: e-cigarettes/tobacco products, unlocking of phones, stock picks, recommendations or publicly traded companies, casino/online gambling, sexual enhancement products/supplements, payday or short-term loans, sex toys, pornographic or sexually explicit materials, escort or erotic massage services, unaccredited online pharmacies, products promoting weight loss, erectile dysfunction, financial opportunities, rants, opinion pieces, spam/over-optimization links, sales pitches, advertorial pieces, claims of products (false or otherwise), coupon sites, non-English language and intent to harm/defamatory comments, content with the intent to harm or exact revenge upon an individual or group.

We will also not publish news intended to: incite, advocate or express hatred, bigotry, racism, or gratuitous violence; promote personal opinions attacking an individual or group; maliciously affect a company's stock; or stalk, defame, defraud, degrade, shame or victimize an individual or group.

PR Karma strives to be as accurate as possible with news delivery to the media and bloggers. Part of this accuracy includes subject matter and location. In our experiences, by providing too many selections, we lost trust in journalists and bloggers as a source of credible news. For example, suppose you are a Seattle based company in the business of making strawberry jam for your local market. In that case, a local food journalist could potentially be interested in your story. On the other side of the fence, a restaurant journalist in New York covering restaurant reviews would have no interest in this story.

The million-dollar question that every business owner would like to know. Stories that are announcing a new product or service to solve a particular problem or that can assist that are also original can be of interest to any media member. If your news announcement has to do with a current event where you are announcing a new product or solving a problem, the chances of publication can increase.

If you're announcing a product/widget in an industry that already has many of the same devices, you need to have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that separates your gadget from the masses. If you are announcing another widget in an industry where there are tons of the same device with no significant difference, your chances of being picked up by the media are meager.

Yes! Absolutely! You should be attaching the maximum number of images possible to your news release. We have found that news releases with pictures will receive upward of 300% more views than a news release that is only text. Even if your news release only has one image like a company logo, this will receive more reads than a news release with no visuals. People like 'white space' – it makes reading text much more comfortable and more attractive.

Sending the same news release twice is a hard no. It does not matter how much time has passed; you should never send the same press release more than once. If you sent a press release and did not receive any visibility or pickup and you are eager to send it again, we recommend a complete re-write and try and take a different approach to your news. Ensure that what you are publishing is newsworthy.

Yes! Absolutely. PR-Karma.com provides you the flexibility to select a precise city to have your news distributed to either immediately or at a preset date. All news stories will require approval by our editorial team for the inclusion of our tier two network.

Yes – Typically, a feature of significantly higher priced services, PR Karma, allows you to select what time your press release goes out.

PR Karma will send you a confirmation email when your news release goes out. The email will confirm the time it went out with a few locations where we sent your news. We are aware of other services that provide 'links to other sites that published your news release.' We do not engage in this activity because it is our opinion that it takes away from journalists trying to break a new story. If a news story is already 'out there' online at many different locations, it is no longer news if a journalist writes about it. To further add, search engines do not like duplicate content, so having the same story, verbatim, out there, defeats this purpose. PR Karma engages in the business of sending your news release to continually updated lists of journalists and media points in your specific region and business industry. In turn, this provides the best possible chance for pickup.

We will leave it at 'tens of thousands' – our staff have compiled lists, we keep them up to date.

Although we highly recommend having a newsroom, you are entirely welcome to send a news release without having a newsroom. You should be aware that the cost of sending a news release is higher, and free emails like Gmail, Hotmail, etc., are not permitted when you set your account up. You must use an ‘@company.com' email address to use just the news distribution portion of our service.

We also do not recommend the setup of a newsroom for the sole purpose of sending a news release without engaging our newsroom product, or your account will be closed.

There are some local community papers/news outlets that generally want news explicitly related to their community only. Occasionally a ‘broader distributed’ news release is relevant and may genuinely interest these smaller community papers/news outlets. If your news is not relevant to these smaller communities, we recommend selecting individual cities where your news will be most relevant to. Below are a couple of examples.

Example 1:
Washington state is having a significant forest fire crisis.

You have selected to send your news to the entire state of Washington. Your news release is about a new product that magically makes forest fires disappear within a 5-mile radius (yes, this is a stretch, only to make a point).

This type of news would apply to pretty much every community in the state of Washington.

Example 2:
Your news release is about a new restaurant opening in Los Angeles. It is a one-location restaurant.

In this scenario, although you believe people in other parts of the state (San Francisco, etc.) may be interested, this would not be considered newsworthy enough to select the entire state. Therefore, we would recommend selecting Los Angeles and a few communities immediately surrounding Los Angeles in this scenario.

We are sorry to see you leave. To cancel your account, from your Dashboard (you must be logged in), on the right side on the blue menu bar, go to the ‘Support’ drop down menu option and select “Contact Us”. In the Contact Us form subject field, please put “Please cancel my account”. In the message area, if you could please advise the reason, it would help us better support our community.

Before you go and cancel your account, did you do the following?

1.   Add a link from your website to your newsroom that is easily accessible for journalists & researchers alike.
2.   In a newsletter or notification, advise your current customers that you now have a newsroom and encourage them to follow your newsroom?
3.   Actively promote your newsroom?

If you did complete these and no longer wish to subscribe, no problem. We are sorry to see you go. Otherwise, we welcome you to try the above.

Every company should have a newsroom. The purpose of a newsroom is to provide media members (journalists), bloggers, and researchers an easily accessible location on your website to find information. Information journalists may be looking for include media kits, high-resolution images (like your logo), video, where you have had stories written up in the media, along with media contact information. Unfortunately, a newsroom is not an 'out of the box' product. Adding an out of box product to a website would not be easy. If you can find this kind of software, they would require updates and wouldn't directly connect to the media.

Yes – PR Karma provides the ability to 'cut and paste' our code to simplify your newsroom's appearance residing directly on your website without a separate link.

When you purchase a newsroom product with PR-Karma, you buy a newsroom and service that connects to our 'Journalist Media Desk' for journalists. Directly connected means any time you post information to your newsroom, journalists will have access to your information in real-time. If a journalist has any filters set up that match the notification criteria, they will become notified. As a PR-Karma Newsroom owner, you also take advantage of upgrades to our newsroom product as they happen at no additional cost.

The 'Featured in the Media' section is where you can boast where you have been written up or mentioned in the media. For example, suppose the Chicago Tribune wrote an article about your business or made a mention of your business in the news. In that case, you can provide an image, link, and date of publication to this information for your visitors to view.

When a member of the media is interested in your business, sometimes as a subject matter expert, they may wish to visit your social media channels to see what has been going on. PR-Karma provides them a snapshot of all your social media posts without them having to leave your page and not come back. It also allows them to sort those social media posts by channel.

Press kits are an excellent way to provide numerous pieces of information about a new product launch or business in a neat little package. For instance, if your company is announcing a new car, you could build a press kit including high-resolution images (that journalists may want to use in print media), a PDF of a news release, stats sheets, PowerPoint presentation, and more. Press Kits may be found under your 'Newsrooms' menu in your dashboard and are extremely easy to put together. Your newsroom also has a menu option for 'Press Kits' that journalists may navigate for further information about your products or business. Some businesses have press kits available about their business.