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Articles
How to Make Friends and Attract Reporters with an Online Press Room
By Kay Paumier, Communications Plus
The term online press room refers to an area on the web that is dedicated to providing the news, visuals
and other information reporters may need to cover your company or organization.
A good online press room has several advantages.
• It gives reporters 24/7 availability to current, timely and important information.
• It can reduce the load on your PR staff by minimizing email and voicemail.
• You can track traffic to the press room, giving you an additional tool to measure the effectiveness of your
PR campaign.
The online press room could be a designated area on the general website or a mini site with its own URL.
If the former, make the link obvious on all pages – especially the home page– and make sure it takes only
one click to get to the press room.
Here are some other tips to help make your online press room effective.
Content
Make it complete. David Meerman Scott, author of "Cashing in with Content" (www.davidmeermanscott.com),
recommends you review your site from the perspective of reporters who know nothing about your organization
and provide all the information they'd need to understand your business. Also provide in-depth information for
the reporters who know a fair amount about you.
With that in mind, I recommend that you include the following material on your site, as appropriate for your
business or organization:
• News releases, both current and archived as far back as possible. It’s a good idea to include the contact
information on the releases, even when that information is available elsewhere.
• Past press coverage. Post or link to favorable articles about your company, but get permission from the
publishers first.
• A fact sheet, backgrounder and other information outlining your organization's mission, product or service,
history, management and the like.
• High-resolution, downloadable graphics in several formats (e.g., JPG, GIF). It is also good to provide
instructions (e.g., "right click," etc.) on how to download the visuals.
• Contact information for the internal and external PR representatives. The lack of contact information is
a pet peeve of many reporters.
• Presentations, including slides and streaming audio/video.
• Case studies and testimonials.
• FAQs, answering the questions reporters frequently ask.
• A list of the events your company is participating in, including trade shows, webinars and speeches.
• Bios and photos of company spokespeople.
• Bio(s) of the internal PR representative(s).
• Links to blogs, podcasts and archived webcasts.
• Annual and quarterly reports.
Obviously, not every company needs all these materials. For example, my client Construction
Communicator (www.constructioncommunicator.com) has a "news" link on the home page, which leads
the reporter to releases, presentations, visuals, a datasheet and listing of recent articles featuring the
company. That covers the basics for reporters who cover contractors and architects.
On the other hand, Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com) has all the "basics" plus blogs, podcasts, video
and more. That is appropriate for Sun's more technical media. The important thing is to provide the
information your target media want and need, in a format they can use.
I also recommend you consider including the following:
• An online "request-an-interview" form.
• A sign-up form to receive news releases and other information directly.
• A sign-up form for an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed so that you'll be notified whenever the
site is updated.
• Both HTML and PDF versions of important documents.
• A feedback form, to let the reporters "rate" the job you're doing.
• Pre-loaded dark pages, which can be activated in the event of crisis.
For all this material, write for the web. Adapt documents (such as your corporate fact sheet and
backgrounder) for online use; do not simply post them. The web is not just a brochure with a mouse.
It requires different writing skills.
And keep all content up to date. Post your news releases the day of the announcement. Feature
important announcements on the home page as well as in the press room. It's difficult to take a company
seriously if its website is woefully out of date.
Navigation
Also make it easy for reporters to find information. They will not stay on your site if they have trouble
finding what they need.
Some tips:
• Provide search capabilities so that reporters can find all materials on a given topic quickly and easily.
How many times have you been frustrated when you couldn't find the answer to a simple question?
If this happens to reporters, chances are good they will leave your site and look for the information
elsewhere, quite possibly at a competitor's site.
• Consider organizing the information in different ways – by product line, vertical markets, geography
and the like. The American Camp Association (www.acacamps.org), for example, organizes its articles
by "About ACA" "How to Select a Camp," "Benefits of Camp" and "Camp Trends," making it easy for
reporters to focus on their area of interest. Amazon (www.amazon.com) lets visitors search by country,
and Fujitsu Microelectronics America (www.fma.fujitsu.com) makes its releases available by date and
by product line.
• Wherever possible, hyperlink to other documents on your site. For example, your news releases could
have hyperlinks to photos, bios and other material that would help give a full picture of your announcement.
Other Tips
• Do not make reporters sign up to access the press room.
• Make it easy for them to print out material if they want a hard copy.
If you are the PR or communications professional, make sure you have direct control of the content of
the press room. PRNewswire (www.prnewswire.com) even offers online “content-management” software
specifically for this purpose.
When done well, the online press room can significantly boost your publicity program. Give it some thought.
Make it complete. Keep it up to date. You'll be glad you did.
Kay Paumier is the president of Communications Plus, a PR agency located in Fremont, CA . Kay can be
reached at info@communicationsplus.net or call 510-656-8512.
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