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In a 2009 survey of 1000’s of journalists by TEKgroup Worldwide, 43% mentioned it was tough to discover a firm’s newsroom, and greater than half mentioned it was exhausting to search out the identify of the corporate’s media contact and how you can attain her or him. That is a dismal stage of assembly the wants of those that are able to provide your group invaluable publicity and credibility.
To keep away from irritating media individuals who come to your web site pondering they may wish to spotlight your organization in a narrative, observe these eight finest practices.
1. Navigation. Use apparent signage within the construction of your website for the placement of your on-line newsroom. By far, the best choice is a serious navigation hyperlink referred to as merely “Information,” “Press” or “Media.” Second finest is providing the knowledge the media want within the “In regards to the Firm” part of the positioning.
2. Press releases. Present a searchable gallery of the group’s releases, with the newest ones first. By no means present this materials as PDFs – solely as common HTML pages. Since one can’t reduce and paste names and quotes from PDFs, media folks regard corporations offering publicity materials in that kind as horribly clueless.
3. Media contacts. Journalists are on deadline and won’t submit an online kind to achieve somebody who might or might not get again to them promptly. They need the identify, electronic mail handle and phone variety of the one that’s able to assist them straight away. If there are completely different media contacts for various divisions of the group, checklist these and their areas of duty in your on-line newsroom.
4. Information clips. Media folks wish to scan by way of earlier protection of your organization. All the time clearly sign the distinction between your releases and third-party protection.
5. Govt bios and firm historical past. Make these factual, readable and fascinating in model. Don’t fill them with “advertising and marketing converse.”
6. Pictures. Acknowledge that print publications want high-resolution photographs (300 DPI), whereas on-line media require low-resolution photographs (72 DPI). Present each sorts of photographs for immediate obtain.
7. Video and audio. Reporters like the best way these spherical out the portrait of your group. Shorter works higher than longer right here. You probably have movies or audios lasting longer than 10 minutes, present a transcript in addition to the clips.
8. Social media. Point out how reporters can join your Twitter feed, go to your Fb web page, learn your weblog and so forth.
How are you going to be certain your on-line newsroom meets the wants of media folks? Corral just a few of them who’ve by no means visited your website and sit them down in entrance of a pc. Give them a number of journalist-related duties to carry out with none hints from you, equivalent to discovering the media contact’s identify and telephone quantity, details about your social duty actions and the proper spelling of the identify of the senior vice-president for South American operations.
If customers can carry out these duties with a minimum of 90% success, nice. If not, revise your web site to be extra media-friendly and retest it. Having an efficient on-line newsroom prices little, and its payoff – a better public profile – may be fairly enormous!
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