Welcome to your go-to guide to Newswires! The Newswire feature allows you to assemble a press release and send it to global, national, and/or regional wires; groups of publications and downstream partners.
This article will walk you through the following.
- What is Newswire?
- Initial Set-Up
- How to Send a Newswire
- Rejected Wires
- Translations and Financial Wires
- Difference between Newswire and Pitching to Influencers
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What is Newswire?
Newswire is integrated into the Meltwater Platform, so you now have the luxury of sending your release whenever you'd like (whether it's in real-time or scheduled), on your own and without the hassle of going through a representative.
Newswire will take a press release and put it on the wire, an electronically transmitted service providing up-to-the-minute news stories to news desks and journalists. With over 100+ newslines, you can gain targeted, guaranteed coverage in a particular geo or beat.
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Initial Set-Up
Before you send your first wire, you need to provide some details about your company (Name, Address, Primary Contact and a ticker symbol if you're public).
This approval process is in place to avoid spoofing and it takes the place of the verification call that used to happen with every single Newswire distribution. This process can take up to 24 hours to be completed. Because there is a one-time vetting process during the initial set-up, don't wait until the last minute to send your first wire.
To manage your accounts available to distribute wires:
- Select Influencers from the left-hand side navigation bar
- Select the Newswire tab
- Select the purple Actions button in the top righthand corner (if you do not see this, check your user settings)
- Select Manage Accounts
- All approved companies will be displayed in the list with a green tick icon
- To add a new company, Select + Add Company
- Complete the fields
- Select Ok
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How to send a Newswire
Check out this product tutorial which will walk you through how to send a wire on your screen!
- Select Influencers from the left-hand side navigation bar
- Select the Newswire tab
- Select the purple Actions button in the top right hand corner
- Choose to Create a Newswire
- Select the destination for your newswire.
This page will display the number of wire credit remaining on your account. For further details into the exact areas included within your wire credit, please select your relevant Newsline within this article here. - Select Next
- Complete the fields on the page, all fields with a * symbol are required.
Enter the Headline and point of origin within the designated fields and exclude this content from the body of the release.
When entering the Body content, we recommend copying the content from an already formatted document onto the text box. Remember to keep your formatting as simple as possible.
To include images, please note that these can not be embedded in the body of the release rather must be uploaded as attachments and require a byline for each image. - Select up to 3 Industries (trades) available for the wire circuit you've selected.
- Select up to 5 Subject Codes. Select the purpose for the release from the preset list (i.e. company announcement, etc)
- Include 3 - 5 Release Tags. Tags improve your release's SEO with downstream partners.
- Select Next
- Select one of the scheduling options for when you want your newswire to go out. Here you can choose the release to be distributed to 'Send as soon as possible', 'Schedule date and time', or 'Save as a draft'.
- Select Next
- Review the final version of your release via the Preview Release option.
- Under Send Notification Emails, enter recipient email addresses to receive reports on the wires progress such as the Cross Time and Full Reports.
- Select Save
Once the status of your release has been updated to Scheduled, please note that the details of the release have been submitted to our newswire distribution partner and can not be edited.
If you'd like to edit a scheduled distribution, please select the menu
icon on the release and select duplicate 
option at least 30 minutes prior to the scheduled time. Now that you have a second release, save it as a draft and go back to delete the original, scheduled release.
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Rejected Wires
If your wire is rejected that status of the release will update to 'Rejected'. For further details as to why this was rejected, please reach out to our team via Live Chat with the details of your release.
General rules to ensure a wire won't be rejected
- Ensure that you have a city AND state entered for the dateline. For example, if you put "North Carolina" the wire will be rejected, but if you put "Charlotte, North Carolina" it will be accepted.
- Make sure the text is formatted correctly and broken into paragraphs. If it is one block of text, it can be rejected.
- Translated releases must be sent through the wires@meltwater.com team. If submitted through the Meltwater application it will be rejected.
- The wire must mention your company, even if it is about another company.
- You must include a headline, body text, and a proper location (dateline).
- Emojis are not supported and cannot be included in your wire release.
- You can not transmit or allow to be transmitted any Content or Messages that: (a) it does not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationship; (b) are false, inaccurate, misleading, unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable; harmful to minors in any way; (c) infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary rights or rights of publicity or privacy of any party; (d) utilize any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail”, “spam”, or any other forms of solicitation; or (e) interfere with or disrupts the Services or servers or network operator networks.
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Translations & Financial Wires
There are regulatory requirements for earnings releases and financial wires with limit the ability for these to be submitting which the app.meltwater.com platform. As such our Support team will assist in the submission of these specialized wires.
Please note that if this is your first release we must allow time for additional account set up to ensure the distribution is formatted to meet regulatory requirements.
Wires which require translation also need additional processing time and as such our Support team will assist in the submission of these specialized wires. Note that the translated wires can be distributed at different times to the original wire if desired.
Please follow the below steps for our Support team's assistance with specialized wires:
- Provide your release instructions within the Wire Required Release Form
- Email the following items to wires@meltwater.com
- Completed Wire Required Release Form
- Press Release in a Word Document
- Issuing Company Logo in a JPEG format
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Difference between Newswires and Pitching to Influencers
Distributing a press release with the Newswire integration and sending an email to Influencers are both great ways for you to publicize your brand, campaign or issue. However, they should be used differently.
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Newswire Integration |
Pitching to Influencers |
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What and how? |
Coverage from a newswire is essentially paid media. Some even call it an advertisement. Because it’s paid, it guarantees a certain amount of coverage. |
Coverage from interacting with an influencer is earned media. You’re selling to a person, not a machine. Create very personalized communication in order to build a relationship. Remember: people don’t like to be spammed. |
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When to use them |
It’s good if you’ve got general news that you want broad coverage on. Examples: company announcements, new board members, funding & investment news, financial news |
If you’ve discovered an influencer who writes about things that are similar to what you want to publicize. Example: You found a tech writer that profiles female CEOs and you represent a tech company with a female CEO |
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How does a journalist interact with them? |
Traditionally, journalists subscribe to a newsline. Newswire services help them identify new stories & fact check. More often than not, journalists do not interact with them. Local papers & online sites will automatically reprint the release verbatim or pull headlines from distributions. They are also used by individuals in other roles, such as assignment editors, who distribute the releases to their writing staff based on their area of interest or beat. |
If the email looks like a brochure or a press release, they’ll probably delete it or mark it as spam. If the email is personalized and shows you’ve done some research, they may respond |
Where can I find out more information? I want to become a Newswire expert.
- Conner, Cheryl. “Press Releases Still Matter, But Not for the Reasons You Think.” Forbes.com. 28 Aug 2013.
- Finley, Kate. “Why Newswire Services Don’t Work (and When They Do)” spinsucks.com. 27 Nov 2013. ← great comments on this one
- Jas. “How Journalists Use Newswires.” Vitispr.com. 20 May 2015.
- Sprung, Rachel. “When Press Releases Do (And Don’t) Help Your Marketing.” blog.hubspot.com. 14 Jan 2014.
- Willaman, Mark. “Are Newswires Still Relevant?” hrmarketer.com. 5 Mar 2015.
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If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat!
Team Meltwater