Online Pressrooms: Surprising Benefits
Your 3 p.m. deadline is looming, your boss is becoming intolerably demanding, and you’re frantically searching the web for research to complete your report. Imagine the relief when you stumble upon the ultimate resource. It’s overflowing with goodies relating to the topic you’re covering – statistics, quotes, articles, pictures, graphs, and the like are abound. With only minutes to spare you compile the necessary details, complete the report, and scurry the final piece over to your boss. Ahh, tranquility. Well, at least until your next deadline, which is in 38 minutes and counting…
Welcome to the world of news reporting.
Unfortunately, reporters don’t always have the luxury of time to conduct thorough research before writing an article or giving a broadcast. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for organizations to have robust online pressrooms for the media to access. By providing reporters with access to information that will make their jobs easier, and their work more accurate, organizations can create greater brand affinity and top-of-mind status among the media. A well-developed pressroom can even help increase positioning in search engines (we’ll get to that in a little bit).
So, how do you build an online pressroom? And how do you get the press to find it?
You’ll discover that building a pressroom is a basic exercise and it’s relatively easy if you have the right resources. To get started, here’s a brief checklist to mark off before launching your pressroom:
- Determine the pressroom architecture and how it will be presented on the organization’s home page and throughout the web site
- Aggregate press releases and news articles/broadcasts (try to go as far back as 3-5 years)
- Develop an electronic, downloadable press kit inclusive of fact sheets, executive biographies, corporate backgrounders, etc.
- Determine what type of imagery will be used in the pressroom for media access (e.g. headshots, logos, product images, etc.) and aggregate all imagery
- Identify and aggregate other resources that should be made available to the press (e.g. presentations, whitepapers, calendar of events, financial data, blogs, etc.)
- Identify people who will be listed in the pressroom as primary contacts and who will receive all incoming media calls
Before going live with the pressroom, be sure to review all materials with your in-house PR team or PR firm. Dependable PR professionals can help ensure all content is written in a press-friendly fashion. This is really important because your organization’s reputation and credibility are on the line. If reporters are turned off or frustrated by the way content is written and/or presented, they won’t soon return. Your pressroom needs to create a certain perception, and being perceived as a press-friendly resource is a baseline requirement.
The next step is to find someone to build the pressroom – either your in-house web designers or a marketing firm. Whoever builds the pressroom should have a valid understanding of how reporters think and work. They should also be well acquainted with how pressroom development (and constant updating) can help your organization’s placement in search engines. Believe it or not, pressrooms and many other press-related activities can increase search engine rankings, especially when they are modified regularly with up-to-date news and information. Pressrooms created with relevant content, coded according to standards, and updated regularly, will have a greater chance of garnering visibility in search engines so reporters can find you.
However, as any reputable PR pro will tell you, relying on the media to find your organization online because of your pressroom shouldn’t be your primary approach. One of the best ways to have your pressroom “found” is by telling your core media group about the new resource. It can be as simple as sending an email, writing a letter, or picking up the phone to tell your contacts about the new pressroom and all its features. If the pressroom isn’t substantial enough to warrant a call on its own, consider coupling the announcement with another item during your next media blitz.
Online pressrooms are easy to build, relatively inexpensive, and when developed properly they do wonders for how your organization is perceived by the media. In this digital day and age, there is no excuse for going without an online pressroom – especially when something so simple can help search engine positioning at a nominal cost.
Some of my favorite online pressrooms are those of larger companies. Although your organization may be smaller, taking a look at how the big boys play is always useful and can help spawn new ideas.