carpeaqua by Justin Williams

It’s rare that I ever agree with anything Michael Arrington says, but his latest post today resonated with me. Arrington went off about getting dozens of emails a day from PRMac, the press release distribution service used by many Mac developers. PRMac works by distributing your press release off to hundreds of its partner sites and thus eliminating a lot of manual emailing for you. The hope is that you’ll get more exposure as your press release gets in front of more eyeballs.

Arrington was frustrated by the lack of an easy way to opt-out of the emails that are sent by PRMac. Words were exchanged between him and the proprietor of the site, which I would encourage you to read as part of the full post. Here’s a sample:

Then a barrage of emails (sort of ironic). One said in part, and I’m not kidding, “prMac is an OPT IN service for the media. We’re not spammers. We set up your account for you, only for your convenience and under your behalf…”

Yep, they followed a statement that they are opt in only and that they aren’t spammers with an admission that they set up our account for us “only for your convenience” (and certainly not at our request).

Arrington’s frustration actually somewhat confirms a suspicion I had about the site possibly being detrimental to your marketing efforts. Much like the AppStore, it’s hard to find the gems when you are surrounded by dozens of press releases from the same generic source.

I have used the PRMac service off-and-on for the past two years and have had mixed results. A release distributed through PRMac costs around $19, which in the scheme of things isn’t that much money, but over the past year I have grown less and less interested in giving my money to the site.

Beyond the reason already outlined, there are a few other things about PRMac that have long bothered me:

• PRMac prohibits including links in the press release itself. It’s not hard to get around this, but I would prefer to include an embedded link to where a user can download a trial or buy a license where I explain that information rather than as part of a link list at the bottom.
• The idea that you have no idea what sites your release is being distributed to is frustrating. I believe they used to be listed and the guy who runs the site pulled them down stating that others were copying the list without ponying up the cash. That’s unfortunate for him, but if I am going to entrust my business to you, I’d prefer to know where my release is going.
• As part of the PRMac service, your release is submitted to dozens of sites that do nothing but post press releases. Some of these are larger sites, while others look to be blogs setup by PRMac just to post a link to the press release. For instance, I ran a release for Today 2.1 through them and you can see that it was linked on this site at prmac.vox.com and pitchengine.com. One might argue that these could increase your “Google juice” but they seem slimey to me.
• I think my biggest pet-peeve by far is how PRMac handles itself in public. Anytime there is a question on the MacSB mailing list about advertising, press releases or anything remotely related, the site’s proprietor chimes in to plug his service. ¹ Just because you wrap your self promotion with </shamelessplug> :) doesn’t make it right. The proper venue to advertise your service is to take out an advertisement on the Mac Developer Network. I actually privately emailed Scotty, the list maintainer, about this a few months ago and the amount of shameless plugs seems to be down. I’m not sure my email had anything to do with it, but it’s nice. Either way, the nasty taste remains in my mouth.

PR Is About Building Relationships

I think the main point of this whole argument is that PR is not about just sending out a press release to 150 sites that have “tech” in their name. It’s about building relationships with members of the media.

I make no claims to being an expert in marketing or getting the word out for my product. Any success I have had in terms of marketing has been completely accidental. That said, I don’t look at the writers at Macworld and ArsTechnica as sources to spit out what I wrote in a press release. Dan Frakes of Macworld often sends me feedback about Today because he uses and likes the product. If I see Brett Terpstra of TUAW out at a WWDC or Macworld event, we say hello and chat about things OTHER than my products. Why? Because he is a human being, not a PR machine.

I also don’t email John Gruber press releases because I know that’s not how he curates his site. Instead, I email these people free licenses for my products in hopes that they will use them, like them and write about them.

Building personal relationships with writers and publications is going to go a lot farther than the $20 you spend to have your press release sent through a distribution service. If you want some good tips on how to be better at marketing your indie product, the best resources I can offer are:

• Hacking the Press - The C4 talk given by Tidbit’s Adam Engst.
• Dan Wood’s Indie Marketing Blog - Dan started this blog a few months ago and I have learned so much from it. You should all shower him with gifts and praise at WWDC for this thing. It’s fantastic.

If you want get a release in many inboxes and dedicated PR posting blogs, PRmac is fine. If you want to be memorable, send personal email to writers and build relationships with them. Those will last far longer than the high of shipping a 1.0.

1. He also does the same thing for his beta testing service whose name is failing me at this time. [↩]