Are wire services still relevant in today's direct contact age

One question I face when dealing with new clients, especially start ups is if wire services are still relevant for information distribution. Now lets exclude those organizations, like publicly traded companies who for legal reasons have to distribution information via a public forum. They use these services and should continue to use them.

The question for the rest of the body out there is given the cost of the various wire services, and their scatter shot approach to hitting the news , is if wire services remain relevant to the rest of us? I would have to argue that for most companies the answer is no.

In this day and age there are a number of reasons not to use wire services. First and foremost they represent a cost of several hundred dollars up to several thousand dollars. When you use these services you are hitting an outlet and not necessarily a reporter. Given the immense volume of releases issued on a given day, (90% of them are of no news value what so ever), there is an excellent chance any one release will be buried on the day it is disseminated.

What I recommend to clients is that this is an opportunity to build a relationship with key reporters who you should be building your relationships with your A list reporter. So this means that the Wall Street Journal is out as a publication in most cases. What a smart, smaller company is doing is going after its a list of industry centric publications and hitting up your a list contacts there. You should be offering these folks the information prior to public distribution and in rare cases, if you're trying to build a relationship with a key editor, offer the information under embargo or in even rare cases as an exclusive.

Wire services are going no where that much I can guarantee you. They do still serve a need but I have to say that they are not something that a small company needs and should be used only because there are regulations that require it. They bring no value add to your business and WILL NOT result in hits. Yes you will show up on Yahoo or Google News but that is as relevant as graffiti. When was the last time you noticed a graffiti vandal's tag?

So spend your PR dollars wisely. The wire services will try and lure you in with the bells and whistle's but in the end you are spending your money on items that do not deliver value. In these days of smaller budgets and increased ROI you are better of distributing it on your own.