In Part 1 of this blog series we discussed how to analyze the statistics provided to you by your press release distribution service after your release was disseminated over the newswire, and in Part 2 we talked about using a clipping or media monitoring service to see what mentions your company is getting in both online and print media.

The problem with a clipping service is the price – it can be very costly, due to the time involved to scour through the various news outlets and find news relating to your own company.

So with this post we want to present to you an alternative way of tracking your release performance online that is free, quick and simple, though obviously not as thorough or extensive as a clipping service.

Simply Google your headline in quotation marks to isolate the results to only your release. This will give you an idea of how many online outlets picked up your release. It will not include mentions of your company or release subject in print media outlets, but as a general rule, if print journalists wanted to write about your company based on something they read in one of your press releases, they would contact the person listed on the release as media contact. The only other instance is if a journalist decided to reduce what your release said into a ‘filler’ item, where they need a couple of inches filled within the newspaper and can get all the information they need for that from the release. In that instance you would not be contacted, but coverage would have gone out about your company. That would be difficult to find out about, however, without the use of a media monitoring service.

Combined with Parts 1 and 2, these three blog posts have outlined your options for tracking your metrics after using press release distribution. However, in closing it is important to emphasize that obsessively tracking your release’s performance after each press release is really not that necessary. The key is to use press release distribution regularly and consistently and over time you should see an increase in traffic to your website and interest in your company. It just may take a while to pay off. That kind of result cannot be shown in the metrics of just one release, no matter how extensively you track them.