Creating and Sharing Articles on PRSafe

Create interesting articles and support your expertise.

What Is a PRSafe Article?

The focus of PRSafe is news but we also include profiles for you to display your expertise to a growing number of PRSafe users including journalists, investors and potential customers. We allow article submissions and publish the articles to your profiles.

So that we don't cloud the focus of PRSafe too much, we don't publish article submissions to our news feed subscribers or send out over other distribution options. But, if a user views one of your news releases and wants more information about you or your company, they can visit your profile and see any articles you've submitted. Any journalists or other writers can find your articles when searching for experts or potential sources for stories.

If you see articles online, you expect to find links, contact options and photos; so keep that in mind when creating your articles. Ensure your links function, your contact options are valid and your photos are clear, relevant and contain proper descriptions.

We do not accept articles written by an outside organization. So, if you read an article in the New York Times and try to republish it on PRSafe, you better be the author or have some special approval from the New York Times. Otherwise, we'll hunt you down and my dog will most likely lick you to death. We may occasionally ask for proof that you are the author or search online to ensure the article isn't published by another organization under another author.

Finding a Topic

A great article, similar to a great news release, will be about a topic that will resonate with readers. Great articles are interesting and tie into current events, people of interest, current news or popular topics. If a topic is currently trending on the Internet, tying into that topic could produce extraordinary visibility.

Don't just create a sales sheet and list your company's products or services or spam your article submission with links and key words that could cause our editors to delete the release. Read our submission guidelines for specifics about what we permit and what not.

Articles should comply with our general site submission guidelines and should fit into one of our topic-based categories.

If you are writing to support your expertise, ensure your release is focused and provides the reader with a lot of detail they might not find somewhere else.

Publishing interesting articles can attract additional visitors to your news releases so if submitting releases, try to keep your article writing in line with your news releases. If you are writing articles separate from news releases you might submit for your company, you should consider creating a separate account.

As you submit more articles using PRSafe, measuring your results through PRSafe Monitoring and Analytics will help determine future topics.

Sample Topics and Ideas

Some ideas for creating interesting articles that may support your expertise or get more subscribers for your profile.

1.Keep it short. Quick tips. Problem solved.
You're a dentist and your clients have crooked teeth. Really crooked teeth. And, you have the solution.

2.How to.
Your company's new body spray just reached a sales milestone. Write about how people are using it.

3.Interview. Do an interview and write about it.
Your CEO flies planes when he's not trying to come up with the next great product. Write about it.

4.Make a list. 12 ways to do. 10 things not to do. We found 75 different types of X.
Your law firm get the same type of cases all the time but instead of turning cases away, you have seven different ways to handle them.

5.Product reviews. Review a popular product or one that fits within your expertise. Review your product or someone else's.
Buggy Whips are old technology. Electric-powered engines are newer but your foldable jet propulsion suit is so small it can fit in your pocket. Write about it.
Include graphs, charts, lists, videos or photos to add some visual stimulation to your article.

6.News lead in. Write about something in the news and reference a PRSafe news release if applicable. Tie it into a PRSafe news release or other article
A group of people were just hurt while trying to cross a shallow river. Write about how you build bridges.

7.Republish. Have an out of date article that needs a fresh viewpoint. Rewrite it.
If you're an expert in hurricanes and your area just had one, write about why the hurricane is like the last hurricane.

8.Other experts. Source articles from various experts at your organization and just credit them appropriately.
The IT guy at your company is a genius and he just spent the last two years building a widget for your company. Write about him.

9.Events. Tie into holidays or other popular events.
Write about cancer research if your organization holds fundraisers.
Write about why you decided to be a writer and what makes your writing style unique, if you just announced your new book.
What is so different about the conference you attended as a guest speaker.

Your business is built around being able to do something your market values. You may be a one person company and not a writer so you might want to hire someone to write your articles for you.

Writing a Headline

A great PRSafe article headline should include the core topics or key words of your article. It should tell the reader within the first 100 characters why they want to read more.

Don't post blatant advertising or marketing pitches. Not only because they may not comply with PRSafe submission guidelines, but they may turn users off.

Capitalize all words except prepositions or words with less than three characters such as; a, as, the, to, etc.

Sum It Up in the Summary

The summary of a release is the middle ground between the Headline and the Body. It tells users, in a little more detail, why they want to read more. It is often used by search engines to describe your news. Keep the summary objective or factual and limit it to the core details of the supporting release body.

Your summary should tell people why they want to read your article. But be brief, remember, you still have an article to write. The summary generally shows up in search results or in the snippet people see when they see our feeds. So, use key words in your summary that will get readers interested and accurately reflect the topic of your article.

To get an idea of what you might want to write, visit Google and look at results. For any result, you'll see a one line underlined, increased-font headline and then a brief description of the result. Write the summary as you would want to see your article display in search results.

Think of the summary in terms of a movie trailer. The reader should get a sense of what your release is about, but not too much that they don't want to actually see the movie.

The First Paragraph

The first paragraph of your article is the lead. The reader saw your headline and maybe read your summary. Now, they want to learn more about the topic and want supporting details, but not a lot of jargon and fluff. The first paragraph should include the key topics and key words of the article, but it's different than the summary in that it introduces the reader to your information. It should be written in concise, accurate, direct and factual words that help to convey the reason you're submitting your article and why readers should pay attention.

The Article Body

The body of your article should be in line with your summary and first paragraph and should not make people feel you just did a bait-and-switch. You should include supporting facts, possibly including quotes and links to supporting information such as websites, white papers or presentations.

Again, avoid sounding too sales-pitchy. Your goal with every article should be to keep the reader interested and make them want to read more, not lead into a sales pitch or some lengthy reason on how to order your product. Direct sales pitches or advertising may also run the risk of being removed from PRSafe if they don't comply with our submission guidelines.

PRSafe doesn't allow cut-and-pasting of releases from third-party applications such as Microsoft Word, and we don't have a WYSIWYG editor. Pasting of third-party code or text from other applications such as Microsoft Word is a security risk, as are WYSIWYG editors. Also, the results of pasting often don't display correctly on the published web page. A final reason is that we want to keep our readers safe from spammers and foreign software.

If you want to copy-and-paste your release into PRSafe, you can use a text-based editor such as Microsoft Notepad or similar application that removes foreign code and characters. Or, you can simply type and edit your release in the box provided.

We know sometimes you might take more than one sitting to write an article so save it as a draft if you need to go back in and make edits.

You can and should include links to supporting information, but don't make your release look like a link farm. Keep outside links limited to about 1 per 100 words.

Your article-body should be short and less than 600 words, but more words are possible. A length of 400 words is ideal, but we realize that sometimes more supporting information is required.

Photos, Graphics & Attachments

It's important to include graphics and attachments to engage and support your article. If you have photos, simply upload the photos and include a brief description. Journalists interviewed recommended including no more than two people in a photograph, and you should include proper credits if the photo was taken by a third-party. If you include more than one photo, ensure they are not repetitious and are relevant to the release topic.

If you want to include charts of financial spreadsheets, you should convert the files into PDF's and upload as an image. Importing tables into the body of the article is not permitted due to security risks.

Boilerplate Statement

We include boilerplate statements in our release form but they aren't necessary for articles. Boilerplates are information you use often such as investment or financial disclaimers, legal notices or other information that you typically include with all publicly distributed information.

You can use the boilerplate if your article submission is published by your company and you regularly include company information or legal disclaimers when publishing information.

Contact Information

Your company may have general contact information, but you should ensure your article has article-specific contact information. We provide messaging on your article, but you should also include options for people to contact you directly, if preferred. If interested parties want to reach you for more information, they need to have appropriate contact information depending on whether they want your products, want to attend your event or are journalists in need of reaching an official representative.

It's vital that all articles include accurate contact information. PRSafe does not disclose contact information, and our messaging ensures all email addresses and other contact information is private. Preferences can be set up to ensure you have control over how other members contact you. Messaging may include reactions, comments, story ideas, etc.

Check – Don't Wreck

Article copy should be checked, double-checked and triple-checked. If you submit inaccurate or incorrect information, it may be difficult to fix. You can always change and resubmit your article, but you need to ensure your article is well thought-through, edited and free from any errors.

If you need help writing or editing your article, you should consider hiring a professional writer or editor prior to publication.

Distributing on PRSafe

PRSafe provides multiple means for submitting and distributing news but we don't distribute articles. If you want to get more views for your articles, you can get more visitors to your profile. People can subscribe to your profile and receive future articles.

Don't publish gobbledygook as doing so may impair your ability to reach targeted readers of your news releases and other content in the future.

PRSafe profiles were designed to allow for posting and distributing news on the Web, through popular social media channels and through pre-determined distribution channels on PRSafe. Some of the great features of PRSafe include the ability to submit a free release or articles and get visibility through your existing earned followings on other social networks and services. PRSafe provides a hosted option for you to manage your releases in a single application, ensuring your message is consistent across multiple channels.

PAID DISTRIBUTION

We do not currently offer paid distribution or promotion of articles. If your article has a news angle, it can be published through our distribution. But, if you submit an article as a news release just to get attention, we may reclassify the submission as an article and credit your account with a release credit. Release credits can be used for distributing approved releases in the future.

Measuring the Results

PRSafe is great for measuring your influence in the market. After submitting your article, visit the reporting tab and you'll find data on who viewed your article, total views, social metrics and more. Use the results to make informed business decisions. Measure the success of your articles based on the metrics that matter most to you.

Need Help?

For help, contact us at 1-888-233-7974 (International 01-410-230-7976)