Covenant Media

Archive for May, 2010

Electronic press release kits are the same as regular press release kits – the only difference is that they don’t have any pleasantries for the journalists. Well, and they are distributed in CD or over the internet. When it is made available online, editors of newspapers working around the world can download the content straight from the news syndication website. They can also receive them through email. There aren’t any restrictions, especially when it comes to delivering news online.

 

Electronic press kits (EPK) have the news article or press release. It also has necessary background information of the company. They can be quite extensive, as you can include all relevant data in the kit for the editors to explore. A good option for marketers and everyone who wants to get his/her news across to a maximum number of people. Companies, non-profit organizations, political parties, etc all now use EPK for possible inclusion in newspapers, magazines and websites.

Drafting electronic press release kits require some skills and understanding of what the editors need. No editor will like to make his editorial space another advertising billboard. They need news – what is in it for the readers type news stories. Your success with EPK depends on your ability to convey in clear language that there is something for the readers. Newsworthy events, development of new technologies, curious uses of different products, etc all make for news. If the release has no news value, it won’t get published.

Video News Releases

They are also like EPK. The difference is they are aimed at television channels. A news video, which can be included in the local channel as news, companies can get some exposure through VNR. Just like in case of EPK, you need to have a newsworthy or interesting story weaved into the video. You can very few seconds to sell the story, you need to make sure the video passes like a bullet. There are techniques that you can use to make your VNR irresistible by TV news editors.

Apart from the local TV channels, you can also target the websites catering specific geographic locations or target demographic groups. There are several websites now available online, streaming videos. The visitors of such websites use high speed broadband connection and they watch the videos just as TV programs. When planning VNR production, make sure you target this group too.

There are different strategies of gaining attention of the editors. They include releasing a funny or entertainment video, a compelling news story that editors can’t overlook, and videos featuring celebrities are always in demand. They go to both TV channels and websites delivering online videos.

Entertaining or informing news releases also go to newspapers – both local and national papers. Some editors pick shorter news items – less than 200 words, while others have 700 word releases OK. Also think about the newspapers and magazines that give snippets of less than 20 words.

When it comes to electronic press release kits, your primary requirement is to get your release printed or published in websites. We can help you reach hundreds of editors in a matter of minutes.

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Keywords: Electronic press kits, video news release, epk, vnr,

Category: Communications, mass media, news, or similar

 

What Exactly is ‘Paid Media’?

Paid media includes all the display ad networks, tier 2 search engines, contextual ad providers, CPV/Pop-Up ad services, email and ezine list rental companies, social media channels, and various other networks that sell online ads.

Why are business owners using Paid Media to drive sales?

The answer here is very simple. When marketing online, you really only have 2 choices. You can either do it all yourself, using article directories, free video sites, classified sites, and other ‘high time-investment/low cost’ methods. Or, you can hire a professional internet marketing consulting firm to do either search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC), or paid media.

We all know that the first set of choices above can result in a few sales, but will be very slow going in terms of actually driving massive amounts of traffic to your site. Articles are inexpensive, but you’ll literally need hundreds of them to be published to get the same amount of traffic that a well managed pay-per-click campaign can provide you in even a few days.

We all also should be aware that search engine optimization in and of itself WILL NOT guarantee website visitors. Yes, SEO can help your site rank higher in the search engines for certain keywords related to your industry, but nothing says that people will actually click on your listing one it ranks on the first page of Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

So now we’re left with pay-per-click (PPC) and paid media. PPC is a very effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website, but does have a few downsides. First, it is extremely competitive. Second, although Google is a monster, and controls 70% or so of the search traffic today, (Bing and Yahoo make up about 25% of the rest) search traffic is only about 20% of the overall ad inventory one can get online.

In other words, if all you are relying on is PPC to drive traffic to your site, you’re missing out on 80% of the available exposure out there online.

Paid Media – the answer to your traffic needs!

So what are some paid media platforms?

advertise.com | adready.com | clicksor.com | ampkeywords.com | adsonar.com | pulse360.com

are just a few. There are literally hundreds out there. What they will provide you is a professional advertising platform that will make your ads accessible to the 80% of ad space that IS NOT Google. Remember the last time you were on a huge, Tier 1 website and saw some ads contained in a rectangular box somewhere on the page? These advertisers are using paid media, and are getting their marketing message out to hundreds of millions of hungry potential customers every single day.

Feldman Law Center – As the foreclosure backlog grows, a new class of American homeowners as described by a recent article in the Washington Post is growing by the month. These are homeowners that have fallen into a financial limbo where they are badly behind on payments, but their lenders have not yet foreclosed on the home. “I have even begged them for a foreclosure,” delinquent mortgage-holder Charlotte Jensen said. Behind on payments and not willing to wait for an eviction notice, she filed for bankruptcy, and left the home. Nearly a year later, still with no further payments, Bank of America has yet to take back the home.

The total of the backlog is estimated at one million borrowers, sits on top of the one million foreclosure actions that had been taken this year through May. It presents a major obstacle for any kind of rebound or stability in the country’s hard hit real estate markets. It’s also an obstacle than can drive the market lower and then keep it there indefinitely. Banks are currently doing the best they can not to flood the market with foreclosures but each sale, when one occurs, is counted as a “comp” for appraisal purposes. Everything similar gets indexed to the comp until the next sells at a lower price. For evidence of properties being kept off of the market one need only look at one of highest foreclosure states in the country. California had 111,000 foreclosed properties which could have gone to auction in May. Of that number, only 17,000 went to auction and only 2,000 sold. If those kinds of numbers repeat for just a few months, the state will have a backlog that will take years to unwind. Properties that aren’t sold on the way down would most likely be sold as prices stabilize or start to bounce back, which would mute any recovery.

“Lenders are having an immensely difficult time handling the capacity. They are torn between loan modification, short sales, foreclosures, and they are finding they can’t do all these things at once, and do them well, so we’re seeing a lot of things falling through the cracks,” said Howard Glaser, a housing industry consultant and a housing official during the Clinton administration.
Mortgage lenders and investors in that scenario would be looking at more losses as a result of the mortgage crisis. “It just means foreclosure rates are going to keep rising,” said Patrick Newport, an economist for IHS Global Insight. Without an end to the downward spiral in prices any kind of meaningful recovery in the economy will be impossible.

Another issue is the growing conflict of interest between mortgage investors and the companies that service the loans for them. In many cases, what is good for the servicers is bad for the investors and vice versa. For instance, in a home loan modification versus foreclosure situation, the servicer will favor the modification because it keeps payments and fees they can charge on them alive. The mortgage investors, seeing the potential for a decrease in cash flow as a result of the modification, will favor foreclosure as a means of getting their money out of the deal. The resulting stalemate can cause a house to sit in limbo while the servicers and lenders decide a course of action. For the homeowners in the situation, the stalemate can be beneficial as it allows them to stay in the house but the stress of knowing that an eviction can come at any time is tough to deal with.

While some of the backlog reflects the inability of lenders to keep up with the sheer volume of delinquent properties, another reason is an intentional slowdown in the pace of foreclosures as government and industry try to work with borrowers who want to stay in their homes. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage financing companies, put a temporary moratorium on foreclosures late last year, some states imposed moratoriums, and many of the country’s largest lenders voluntarily participated as well. The extra time gave lenders time to see how the guidelines of the Obama Administration’s “Making Home Affordable” would work and which borrowers could be helped by modifying their current mortgages under the plan. Many of those moratoriums started expiring at the end of the first quarter of this year, and foreclosures have been setting records on a monthly basis since then.
With potentially millions of foreclosed homes on the market and more coming every day, Prices have been hit across the country. The prices for existing homes fell another 16% in May versus the prices one year prior.  The growing backlog of homes in limbo indicates that foreclosure rates are likely to increase dramatically during the second half of this year and into 2010. Some estimates are calling for foreclosures to reach 2.4 million by year end. Bob Bellack, chairman of Zetabid, which auctions foreclosed properties, said “Prices will fall to the point where you have equilibrium, and it won’t reach that until there is no longer this foreclosure overhang.”  
Financial firms that carry mortgages or mortgage-backed securities on their books are scrambling to stem past and anticipated losses with any means possible. Whether a sign of desperation or not, mortgage investors have thrown their support behind  the Hope for Homeowners plan, a leftover from the Bush Administration which was considered an absolute flop the first time around. Intended to help over 400,000 homeowners at its outset, the plan originated only one loan. If the economy doesn’t turn, and without some sort of government assistance, continued foreclosures will result in continuing rounds of losses for investors.

Being in limbo has allowed some homeowners the time to save money while not making mortgage payments and take action through the home loan modification process to save their homes from foreclosure. In general, however, statistics don’t bode well for homeowners once they start missing payments. According to a March report from NeighborWorks America, a large housing counseling group, 60 percent of homeowners go into foreclosure after missing more than four payments.
Normal protocol is for the foreclosure process to start after the third payment has been missed but now it’s common for a foreclosure process to take nine months or more to get started, said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. “No one is in a rush, lender-wise, to deal with the property,” he said. “If you have to sell at a loss, why rush?”
Another protocol has lenders writing down the value of the home six months after an owner stops making payments, but the total loss is not recorded until the property is sold in foreclosure, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. “Some may feel that the property is worth more than the market can bear at this time, and they are willing to wait until the market improves”, he said. “They don’t want to sell it into a completely depressed market.”

The typical foreclosure process varies by state and has been slowed down by the constant incoming volume. The timeline of the process is also dependent on who actually owns the mortgage and whether a bankruptcy has been filed by the homeowner. One of the biggest issues in the process now is that the phase preceding eviction, sale at auction, isn’t happening. Lenders, considering their workload and the costs of each foreclosure, aren’t eager to start a process which isn’t likely to be seen through to completion so limbo is the next best option.  
“During that period, where the property is in limbo, until there has been a sale of the property, the homeowner is still the owner, technically,” said John Rao of the National Consumer Law Center. Despite being seriously delinquent, homeowners can apply for a home loan modification to stay in their homes, even if they were turned down previously. Success after being turned down can be achieved if the homeowner has been hired into a new job, is generating more income, and/or by hiring legal representation to renegotiate the terms of the existing mortgage. The odds of approval are also increasing due to lenders’ reluctance toward taking more properties into foreclosure. Whatever they may have thought about home loan modifications before, at this point they’re a better option than either foreclosure or sitting in limbo.