Media & PR: Online Newsrooms - ten tips on how PR should present the company to the media

published 2005

If you use the web for researching anything from new products to current industry issues, then you would probably agree that good sites are those that make it easy for you to find what you’re looking for. 

So, take this test. Pretend you’re a journalist and click on to your company’s web site to see how you’d rate it as a source of information. Rank it on ease of functionality and richness of content.

From previous research conducted by PR Influences, with rare exceptions, most Australian corporate web sites do not measure up well to such a test.

In view of this, here are our top ten tips for turning a very average news section of a corporate site into a media-friendly online newsroom.

1. Talk to your IT department
   
   In large corporations, the management and maintenance of the web site usually resides with the IT department, so you may well have to build a case for any changes you will want to make to the existing architecture of functionality.

2. It must be accessible from the home page
   
   One of the navigation bars on the home page must be called News, Media, Press (although this last title tends to alienate broadcast media) or similar. There is no point in sitting the link to your newsroom behind other home page navigation buttons such as About Us, Investors, or Corporate.

3. Undertake a content audit
   
   Newsrooms are about far more than archived media releases. Most of the content you will require for an information-rich newsroom is probably scattered throughout your corporate site. Go searching for the executive biographies, the photos of people and products and the financial information that will need to be linked to or replicated on the newsroom.  Then think about what you couldn’t find - items like copies of speeches or presentations that could be good background material for journalists.

4. Build a searchable database
   
   You’ll know from your own web researching that a keyword search can save so much time.  Provide journalists with search options such as by date (for press releases) by product category (for latest products from companies such as consumer electronics) or by keyword. (You’ll notice on our PR Influences home page you have the choice of searching by topic or by keyword.)

5. List personal contact details
   
   One of the core media relations functions for public relations people is to build relationships with journalists. Yet so many News sections of corporate sites have something like media@companyname.com.au as the contact email address. Such an address gives media the impression that you either don’t care about relations or your company has such a high staff churn rate that they don’t want to identify who’s there to handle enquiries. Contact details should include name, title (if there are options for whom to contact), email address and phone number.

6. Feature your spokespeople
   
   Ensure sure you include biographies and photos of executives and senior management, but make sure they are authorised and capable of speaking with media. There’s not much point of highlighting someone who is not authorised to speak on the company’s behalf. You may also consider including links to any worthwhile presentations these executives have given recently.

7. Include meaningful numbers
   
   Journalists often like to know about your numbers.   Depending on the type of company, these numbers can include revenue, share price, capitalisation, results, market share or recent percentage growth.  If you are a listed company then items such as annual reports should be accessible from the newsroom as well as through your Investors pages

8. Make media kits available
   
   The good thing about online media kits is they don’t involve printing and posting costs, so make sure they’re accessible from your newsroom. Include the usual items such as fact sheets, product/services sheets, latest media releases and executive biographies. You can also include white papers if you have some local/localised ones.

9. Encourage journalists to register
   
   Many industries are driven by issues of constant interest to journalists who need to keep on top of stories as the issues develop. For this reason, many journalists are prepared to register for alerts from companies regarding specific media releases or announcements. Consider such a registration facility for your company as a means of getting your side of an issue to journalists before your competitors do.

10. Site analytics
    
    Ensure that you can measure your site’s visitations in various ways.  You should be able to pull reports that show which areas of your site have been of most interest to visitors, how many visitors downloaded items such as media kits, particular media releases or left requests for follow-up information.  The more you know about how it is being used, the more you can capitalise on what materials you post to it.

To illustrate the importance of building an online newsroom, here are some findings from a recent survey of journalists undertaken in the US by TEKgroup International, a developer of online newsrooms.

The survey asked what journalists were looking for in online newsrooms, and key results were:

• 83% wanted to access PR contacts
• 81% wanted to research archives
• 62% wanted to obtain company financials
• 90% wanted to obtain information on brands
• 83% wanted to obtain press releases
• 85% wanted to access photos
• 60% wanted to obtain executive biographies

Note: The author of this article is a Sydney based senior independent corporate PR consultant who works exclusively with PR Managers helping them with management of the PR Department or their relationship with their PR agency. In addition he provides specialist corporate PR and communications advice where issues or change are impacting on an organisation. He also blogs regularly on PR and communications topics similar to those in this article.

See an Australian Online Newsroom study published in March 2010