Mar 04, 2009
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Archive for the ‘online press rooms’ Category
Online newsrooms are the heart of effective online organizational communications, as I tweeted on #journchat last week.Twitter and Facebook may be major arteries, but your online newsroom is where awareness is converted to measurable social, informational or ecommerce transactions with the least resistance.
But before you get mired in the muck and start thinking tactically about how to staff and manage an effective online newsroom, there are important strategic best practices to consider first.
In this post, I’m going to address one of the most important strategic best practices: ease-of-us.
Jakob Nielsen, “the guru of Web page usability” according to The New York Times, says there’s a correlation between the experience someone has in your online newsroom, and their perception of your brand, product or service.
If the in site search function in your online newsrooms is clumsy, if reporters have to fill out a request form to reach a media contact, or if your video plays with excessive buffering, users have a poor experience and your reputation suffers.
If you’re a PR person, and you’ve taken the time to create compelling press materials that are genuinely interesting and newsworthy, and someone goes to your online newsroom and can’t find it as easily as they can through Google, or they can’t watch your video cause it downloads too slow, the impression is one incompetency, and your reputation takes a hit before you even start communicating.
In the right hands, Blogger, YouTube, Flickr and Feedburner are tools for serving all formats of content, effectively and efficiently. But more often than not — in the hands of someone with no experience designing interfaces that promote positive user experiences — cobbling together a handful of Web 2.0 services is a recipe for a bad user experience.
Just to hammer that home, remember, if the user experience suffers, your organization’s reputation suffers. So if your job is reputation management, guaranteeing a positive user experience is task number one.
Before you hire anyone to design your online newsroom, look at the sites they’re designed for other organizations and make sure they’re easy-to-use and navigate. Make sure they’re seamlessly integrated into their host site. Make sure they’re aesthetically appealing. And make sure they demonstrate best practices.
Because if they don’t, you could wind up painting yourself into a corner with a vendor that doesn’t know how to create an interface that leads to a positive user experience.
Next, I’ll be blogging about another important strategic best practice for online newsrooms, and what you should look for from a PR software vendor pitching you on an online newsrooms solution.
Photo By: Spackle Toe
0 CommentsMar 03, 2009
Online Newsrooms are the core of any effective organizational communications program. Other channels may extend reach and build influence, particularly for the individual, but there’s no where like your own website to convert awareness into measurable transactions. The website is the single, most credible source for conveying company news, according to a survey of 1200 journalists [PDF] by PR Week and PR Newswire. In fact, the only source considered more credible then an organization’s own online newsroom, is a third-party newswire service.
But if your online newsroom is the centerpiece of your external communications efforts, how do you get the right people to notice the news, photos and videos you’re posting?
Search engines are the number one way people source opinions on products, brands and services, according to Tom Smith’s report “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers [PDF].” But what can you do to accelerate the process of getting your news in front of the people you’ve been previously informing through other channels?
That’s where email newsletters come in. According to Tom’s study, 99% of internet users communicate via email, outstripping every other online channel from an adoption stand point. And those same people cite email from a friend or colleague as the number two most common way they source opinions on products, brands and services.
So in terms of importance, online newsrooms, search and email and the first, second and third areas any organization looking to migrate their communications online should be focusing on.
So while Twitter, Facebook and social media releases get the PR digerati’s attention — and I am *very* excited about these channels too – I would argue that the research and adoption rates clearly show:
- Online newsrooms
- Email marketing
- Search engine optimization
…are far more important starting points for public relations and corporate communications professionals looking to get their arms around online organizational communications.
You need an online newsroom you can manage content in yourself, because if you’re still relying on the web team down the hall, you are marginalizing your future, and your department’s future.
You need an easy way to search engine optimize press releases. And you need a way to send out email newsletters to your house list as a way of building awareness for your online publishing efforts.
Over the next few days I’ll be posting about best practices for online newsrooms, press release SEO and email newsletters.
If you’re a marketing or public relations practitioner seeking an easy to use platform for managing your own, custom online newsroom with search engine optimization and integrated email newsletters, tweet @chrisbechtel, email us at info@ipressroom.com or call +1-310-499-0544.
Photo By: Pop of Photo
It’s time to streamline your online newsroom, according to Former CBS News correspondent David Henderson. But exactly who should you be streamlining it for?Above is the online newsroom for UCLA, which my company iPressroom built and hosts. To keep it up to date, a staff led by Kevin Roderick gets news from PIOs at the 14 different colleges, prioritizes which ones will be published to which columns and keeps the newsroom fresh daily.I interviewed online usability expert Jakob Nielsen about best practices for online newsrooms almost three years ago, and while he disagrees with Henderson about what you should call your online newsroom (14:58 “…people really know what you mean when you say pressroom), his insights about:- Online reputation management
- Correlation between online user experience and brand perception, and
- Common mistakes organizations make when launching an internet pressroom…
…are as true today as they were when he spoke them.I travel around regularly teaching New Media PR Boot Camps to PR, marketing and corporate communications professionals looking to come up to speed on online communications and always remind my attendees that while blogs, podcasts, RSS, Twitter and social networks get all the attention, the online newsroom is the center point of organizational communications, online or off.
Just as you wouldn’t invite someone over to your house without cleaning up first, if you’re going to participate in online conversations, you need to get your website in order first.At iPressroom, which specializes in building online newsrooms that can be managed by nontechnical personnel, we’ve built a number of newsrooms like this one, this one, and this one that are not just effective online media relations resources, but which go a step further by showcasing company news in a way that works for the public as well as the press.
Let’s face it, the print news media business is fighting for its survival, Apple has nearly check mated the music business with access and ease-of-use, and with more than 12 billion videos being viewed monthly online, TV news is probably next.Organizations can no longer rely on the news media to tell their stories. And as the fourth estate continues to wane, forward thinking organizations are realizing that they need to tell their stories in way that is not just factual and informative, but interesting and entertaining as well.
If you’d like to listen to other interviews about best practices for online newsrooms, these ones may be of interest:- Cisco Online Newsroom Manager Jeanette Gibson – Economic benefits an online newsrooms.
- Wall Street Journal Personal Technology Columnist Walt Mossberg – What he expects to find in your online newsroom.
- NY Times Technology Editor Steve Lohr – Online newsroom search engine optimization.
What do you think? Should online newsrooms be built primarily for journalists, or do they need to work for everyone? Send me a link to your online newsroom and let me know.Or tweet me @ericschwartzman.
