First up is a UK-based press release distribution service, at PressGo releases are distributed online, through RSS, Twitter and email to the UK’s largest online community of journalists.

We’ve also added Business 901, a great online pr/marketing reference site that also provides PR services.

Keep the suggestions coming!  We’ll do our best to add the links right away, with your help the PR Dashboard is becoming one of the most comprehensive public relations resource sites out there.

Here are few numbers:

The NY Times had 18.2 million unique visitors in December and USA Today’s traffic jumped up 15%  to over 11 million visitors.  The Washington Post?  Up 12% to 9.5 million.  Even more impressive is the staggering growth seen by smaller publications.  For example, the NY Daily News increased by 99% to almost 6 million visits, the LA Times increased their visits by 73% from a year ago.

It’s unlikely that the traditional newspaper is going to go away anytime soon, but these numbers should prove the point that the ‘online news’ is here for good.  Publishers who want to stay current, and profitable, should be sitting up and taking notice if they haven’t been already.  Publishers and PR people alike should take advantage of the boom in online readership.  Rather than bemoaning the downfall of the traditional paper, embrace the fact that people are still getting their news from these trusted sources – and there are now even more ways to get your clients into the spotlight.

Example: You’ve got an awesome new product/service etc. so naturally you write up a press release.  Now you can either submit it to Oprah and wait for them to find and notice yours out of the thousands they receive daily and call – OR you can tweak your release to be SEO-friendly and submit it to a distribution service.  Ensuring that your press release reaches a wide variety of search engines, blogs, websites and even journalists who are actually very interested in your product/service and will write about it.

Maybe you do both, but the point is that you’re going to be better off diversifying and letting a larger number of people find you, even though they may be in smaller niche markets.  David Meerman Scott had 2 ideas on how PR is evolving that are particularly applicable to this strategy (from his blog):

1. The old ways to get noticed were to buy expensive advertising and beg the media to write about you and your products.  The best way to get noticed today is to publish great content online.
2. Don’t talk about what your products and services do.  Instead talk about how you solve problems for your customers.

PR and the world of the press release is changing, traditional media sources are on the decline and online distribution methods are more accessible and producing better results than ever.  That is why we say go ahead and reach for that low hanging fruit.  While all your competitors are fighting each other for access to the top you’ll be building a solid base of customers and attention.  And who knows, maybe if enough of the small-time players are singing your praises the big media outlets will take notice eventually anyway.