The Best Time of Day for Press Release Distributions

Many of the lower-end press release distribution services are now offering you to specify a distribution time. The main wire service providers have always allowed you to set the release time and time zone.  With this in mind, a technology marketing agency is often asked “what time of day should my company issue a release”?

Unless you are trying to stem a crisis or doing a timed product release that’s linked to an event, we have found 7:30am-8:00am in your “target timezone” to be the most effective.It is early enough in the morning to meet most journalist’s deadlines and late enough to catch them after their java. Releasing early in the morning will allow get you to the top of Inbox’s if you are pitching via email. It also gives your public relations agency the entire day to line up interviews with company executives, if requested.

Your “target timezone” can be different than where your business is actually located. For example, if your technology business is in Dallas, Texas but you want to reach out to the Pacific time zone San Francisco tech media, a 7:30am PST/PDT release would be advisable. Early AM release submissions have given us the best media pickup. Remember though, you always have to option of sending reporters releases “under embargo” which means you can send them ahead of time and, by ethics, the receiver agreees not to publish until your specified date and time.  However, we find sending releases “under embargo” is not as effective as a timed morning distribution. Some editors and reporters also frown upon embargoed releases or they just simply forget about a release when it was sent to them days before.

For a press release distribution service consider Marketwire.com.Marketwire’s state-only distribution channels are excellent bargains if you only sell locally.And their SEO-enhanced options at $200 is highly-recommended as anchor-text backlinks remain intact even in online news sites such as Google News and Yahoo! News. If you can’t afford Marketwire for a [national|nationwide] release, then use PRWeb at $80 if you’re really budget-limited, or the $200 PRWeb SEO-enhanced version with anchor text links. However with the $80 PRWeb package, you cannot pick your distribution time – the default is midnight.