Online Newsroom Blog

When Noah Kravitz left PhoneDog, a US-based mobile news website, he took his 17K follower Twitter account with him – changing his user name from @Phonedog_Noah to @noahkravitz.

 

(Full Story – AFP)

 

The company took objection and fought back by trying to take back control of the account.  Now, the company is seeking damages of $2.50 per user, per month; a total of $340,000.

 

Twitter accounts often blur the line between personal and professional, and if this case reaches a decision in court it will be among the first to address who owns Twitter accounts and what they are worth. 

 

"The costs and resources invested by PhoneDog Media into growing its followers, fans and general brand awareness through social media are substantial and are considered property of PhoneDog Media LLC," the company said. "We intend to aggressively protect our customer lists and confidential information, intellectual property, trademark and brands."

 

This claim seems lofty, it will certainly be a legal struggle to define a list of followers who are publicly available with one mouseclick as either customers or confidential information, but no one is denying that PhoneDog invested time and money growing this channel for marketing and communications purposes.

 

This is a great case to follow if you are in charge of developing your corporate social media policy.  It’s also a good reminder to always clearly define in writing beforehand who owns social media accounts used to promote your business unless you want a judge to do it for you.

Google has spoken.  Freshness matters.  New content and frequently updated content are getting a big boost in visibility thanks to the commonly dubbed Freshness Update. Estimates are claiming that this change now affects over 35% of all search results making it three times more powerful than the famous Panda update.

The first post in this series centered on company blogs.  This post will talk about the second piece of the freshness puzzle, online newsrooms.

 

As most of you reading this know, online newsrooms are what iPressroom does.  We’ve been a newsroom vendor for over ten years.  In the nearly five years I have been here I’ve been involved in the creation of dozens of newsrooms for the nation’s top brands.  In fact, it’s a little daunting to condense a subject this familiar into a single blog post so I’ll keep to brass tacks and spare you the sales pitches.

 

Here are the top five pieces of advice I have to get the most search engine bang for your newsroom buck: 

 

This is a pretty obvious one, and only applies to the people out there who still don’t have a newsroom, but I’ve got to get it out there. 

 

I see so many companies that have a blog and don’t have a newsroom and I’ve always wondered why it wasn’t the other way around.  You have to work to put out your blog posts but in most cases there is plenty of PR content and staff trying desperately to promote it.  This content is likely lying around not getting coverage.

 

The advice I give to clients is that if you are making PR content, it’s crazy to not have a newsroom of some sort on your site.  It can be one simple index or it can have all the bells and whistles, but if you are already paying money to get your company’s message out there you absolutely need a place where journalists, bloggers and the public can access and research this information.  Coverage will continue get more and more digital and if you don’t have digital access than what good is all that PR?

You want to host full press releases, original articles, and real resources to represent your brand.  A lot of people making a newsroom will just link to their press releases, photos, or other content because they are already used to putting it all on Flickr or PitchEngine.  I’ve seen people put a lot of hard work into building elaborate RSS filters to laser focus relevant external news to their audience.  This was really cool and probably helpful for the site visitors, but when the Google Panda update came along it wiped out the search positions for all of these industry news hubs and content linkers.  It treated them like common content farms or link graveyards. 

 

The lesson was clear.  Your content needs to promote your brand, you can’t rely on external content to do it.  This counts your partners, your social media posts, and all the other off domain sites that you usually think of as “yours”.   Host it, don’t link to it.

Keep your content alive through edits and updates.  Whenever you are creating new content and you use a link back to a press release or product page, go back to the page and update it with the new information.  The City of Carlsbad, one of our clients, has a page where residents can look at the city council meeting agendas.  Instead of making a new page every week, they update the information on a single URL that they promote in newsletters and on the website.  The result is instead of a ton of pages with no visibility you have one strong page with the right info that will come up in search.

Since sorting content is a lot easier than searching for it, the trends that you see on Facebook and Twitter now you will eventually see down the road in general search.  Google has been invested in providing trending topics three years before the #hashtag was born and it's sure to become a more prominent part of conventional search in addition to helping you out with social media.  Think about this now to position your content for the next big update instead of scrambling to keep up.  This entire post is hopefully a good example of linking your business news to currently trending topics (or it might have been if the real work hadn’t pushed it back so far). 

This is a crossover tip from the last installment and it’s no less important.  Find out what pages on your site drive the sales and link to them from your news whenever you can.  Every company should have a simple list of keywords and landing pages and everyone making content should know them.  Your sales pages are not frequent or timely so you need to link them up to content that is.  That’s how you take long term advantage of newsworthy content.  If you don’t have a basic list of sales pages and what keywords to link them with, make it your New Year’s resolution to have one by January 1.  If you only take one thing away from this post take this.

 

Thanks for reading.  iPressroom wishes you and yours a safe and happy holiday season.  If you’d like any help with newsrooms or a demo please visit our online newsrooms page or give us a call.

Google has spoken.  Freshness matters.  The trendsetter in search rolled out new algorithm changes that will affect one in three searches.  In a nutshell, new content and frequently updated content are getting a big boost in visibility.  Why is Google making the change?  They have to compete with more real-time sources for new content like Facebook and Twitter, and while the definition of “going viral” is for peers to directly share content, it makes a lot of sense for Google to try to bridge some of that gap.

 

A lot of PR people dismiss news like this as purely technical, but this is great news for PRs.  You are making the kind of content that this update favors, so pop a Mentos and let’s take a look at how to wring the most freshness out of your daily routine.

 

For the next two weeks I’m going to go over how to overhaul your online activities to get a much more current website.  It’s not hard to provide the fresh content that search engines crave, in fact, you are probably already doing most of the work you need to.  The mission of this post is to make sure you get the rewards.

   

The first installment focuses on the most obvious source of fresh content, your corporate blog. 

 

Having a corporate blog is no longer a luxury, if you want to keep relevant on the evolving web you need to have one.  The web isn’t a big collection of digital billboards anymore, it’s the living organism that you interact with every day.  Today most PR happens online, but how much of that is happening on your actual blog?

I’m just going to make the assumption your company already has a blog (if you don’t…it’s well past time to start), but few company blogs are correctly set up to leverage the fresh content you are producing to help out their search visibility.  Here are the five most common problems with company blogs:

Take a critical look at your company’s blog and let’s go over these problems one by one.

This is the easiest thing you can change to reap big gains from the latest Google update.  You already have fresh content and it’s already getting search priority, but unfortunately that doesn’t do your company’s website any good because your blog is off domain.  This is easy to fix.

 

Wordpress, Blogger, and all real content management systems can be easily pointed to a subdomain on your site without changing your routine for uploading content.  Check your blog to make sure it’s inside your domain and if it isn’t have someone fix it.  Make sure your IT department remembers to redirect old blog domain to the new subdomain URL.  Done and done.

You’re already active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so forth.  Is your company’s blog?  If your audience cares enough to check out your blog, they probably want to see what you’re saying in their favorite platforms and vice versa.  There is no reason not to integrate your latest tweets or your Facebook wall into your blog.  Readers should have easy access to all of your third party activity, and should be able to easily like, tweet, and share your blog content at the click of a button.  You’ve heard this for years and it’s just as relevant today.  This connectivity generates fresh links, and to a search engine fresh links mean fresh content.

This is a scary one.  There are a lot of reasons that companies don’t open their pages up to user comments, ratings, or reviews.  There are technical things to consider beyond just the danger of giving up some control of the message.  For one, there’s a lot more comment spam than thoughtful analysis out there.  If you don’t have a method for screening and moderating user content than you can end up not only hurting your brand, but also potentially hurting your SERPS by leaving links to malicious sites or known spammers up on your pages. 

 

The upside is if you are willing to actively monitor and moderate your comments sections, search engines see that your pages are being updated frequently, another big indicator that your content has not yet gone stale.  People are getting used to interacting directly with the brands they associate with, it’s a trend that is going to continue so take advantage of it.

This is a big problem with a lot of sites.  Many people have jumped on the blog bandwagon only to find that it wasn’t a great fit for them.  Blogging has a lot of benefits, but if it’s treated as just another corporate duty you won’t realize any of them.  There are plenty of executives who like the idea of blogging but don’t have the time or the proper skillset for it.  Retire any stale or inactive blogs.  If the people writing the blog don’t care about it, there’s zero chance that the readers will.  Halfhearted content poorly represents your brand and it’s worse than nothing at all.  Either take over this content yourself or make sure someone in the business of communicating does.  There’s nothing wrong with executive access if it’s a good fit, but in most cases PR can speak your message much more effectively.

Take a look at the content of your blog.  Do you have different product content?  Different Industry content?  Corporate and financial?  You probably do.  Now here’s the big question, is your blog sorted that way? 

 

Take advantage of the different categories that you can break your blog into and tailor the way you point back to your corporate site to reflect them.  You might need to sit down with whoever does your site analytics to get a feel for how the traffic should be going back to your corporate site. 

This is the way to harness the power of fresh content for the pages that are not frequently updated but are important.  These can be brand pages or more likely, conversion pages that are making sales. 

 

It’s a bad idea to change up these pages just to make your content fresh.  That copy should be laser focused on making the sale.  So do your sales team and CEO a big favor and tie those pages directly to your relevant, frequently updated content. 

 

There are plenty of creative ways to do this, but the most user-friendly are category landing pages and contextual sidebar links in each distinct section of your blog.  This change is harder to make but is well worth the time.  The internet is a constant information war and eventually this will be the only way to keep up the visits to these high-performance pages from both search and social traffic.  Why not make the change now? 

Stay tuned as the iPressroom team goes over how to keep your PR content fresh for 2012.  Next up, online newsrooms!

 

 

Information graphics, or infographics as they are frequently described, are increasing in number across the web.  Utilized by bloggers as well as mainstream media to communicate and illustrate complex data and information in an easy to understand visual format, infographics can be annotated maps, timelines, charts, graphs, comparisons or even a combination of all of these.   

Of course in media relations today, most of the pick-up we are looking to get comes from online sources, whether they are mainstream media outlets such as the NY Times or influential blogs or online only outlets.  For most all of these, a press release is not going to get picked up - but the content provided along with it might, if it's compelling and seen as valuable to an outlet's audience. 

So, to increase your likelihood of pickup and placement on a key media outlet, here are 5 Reasons Why Infographics Are a Media Relations Must for Online PR:

In summary, as media relations has now become web-centric, infographics, the combination of complex information presented visually, should become a must have component of your press materials for any outreach. Here's an example of an infographic our client eHealthinsurance created and posted to their blog and online newsroom:

 

Finally, if you need resources for finding infographics or creating your own, this post, by ProBlogger has some great tips.

Have good examples of your own - share them in the comments!

In today's tight economy, non-profits are faced with numerous challenges - one of those key challenges is increasing exposure in today's saturated 24/7 media cycle.  One tool that aids that effort is the online newsroom. Empowering non-profit PR professionals to post new, optimized digital content to the web, online newsrooms serve as a forum to not only share the latest news, but present information critical to that non-profit's cause. It can also serve as a window to encourage participation and contributions to assist the organization.

 

To achieve an increase in media exposure, the online newsroom offers videos, images, social media and traditional news all at the same site. Reporters and individuals interested in learning more about a specific non-profit can easily find answers to their questions with a few simple clicks of the mouse. How is this accomplished?

 

These multiple functions are managed by a web-based CMS, like the ones the experts at iPressroom, http://ipressroom.com, provide for their clients. The CMS not only posts material to the newsroom, but allows the PR professional to distribute that same digital content on the site to newswires, targeted media and audience lists, and social media channels. Respected organizations like the American Heart Association, http://newsroom.heart.org and iFred, http://events.ifred.org, are excellent examples of non-profit online newsrooms in use today.

 

Increased exposure for non-profit organizations can result in greater engagement by those who want to help the cause and may also create an increase in resources for operation. Regardless of size or budget, organizations can find an online newsroom that meets their needs and enhances their online media position.

September 11, 2001 will forever be remembered for all the friends and family we lost in New York City, Washington DC, and Shanksville, PA.

 

9/11 has also served as a reminder of the sacrifice made by police and firefighters, military personnel, and everyday citizens who risked their lives so others may live.

 

iPressroom would like to express our sincere regrets and condolences to those who lost family members, and our heartfelt appreciation to all those emergency first responders and men and women in uniform who not only saved lives, but paid the ultimate sacrifice.

 

You will not be forgotten.

 

The iPressroom Team

10 Reasons Your Online Newsroom Needs An Upgrade

 

No doubt you're under increased pressure to do more with less. It's often overwhleming, driving outcomes in media relations, marketing, monitoring corporate reputation and social media all while trying to keep up with new tools, the latest social media app and urgent issues. Your online newsroom is a simple and fundamental place to start and with a few upgrages can help you streamline your efforts, saving you time, money and helpong you drive more results. It might seem like a big task with too many others needing involvement, budget approval, and technical know-how. But with hosted services such as iPressroom, you can have a newsroom that matches your brand, in your control, with all the capabilities you need to reach 1,000s of journalists, bloggers and influencers within a matter of days.

If you’re in communications, PR, or marketing, you know how critical it is to be visible in all the places where your target audiences spend their time. And you know, as a consumer of news and information, that there is a lot competing for your attention.  So, how do you rise above all of it and stand out from the pack and make a real connection that will actually further your marketing and communications objectives?

If we are pitching media and influencers directly, that’s one thing, but often we need to extend our reach beyond the people we already have relationships with – to people we have not interacted with previously. Further, the media relations process has really shifted away from direct pitches – a lot of journalists (and bloggers especially) do not want to be pitched directly by phone or email, preferring to source stories through social networks, search and directly from contacts they already have.  To increase the likelihood your organization will be found when journalists, bloggers, influencers and customers are looking…

Listen: It starts with listening of course. When you arrive at a party, you don’t just start talking at people, you find people talking about things that you are interested in and can add value to, and when there is a pause and you have something to say that will further the conversation, you put it out there. We need to apply that same skill online. We need to listen to not only what our customers are saying but what influential bloggers and our target media are writing about.

Be F.A.R.E.:  At iPressroom, we recommend following the content model we call F.A.R.E, which stands for Frequent, Authentic, Relevant and Engaging.  If you’re in PR, you no doubt know how to create compelling pitches to journalists and perhaps bloggers that focus on tying pitches to news trends and ensure what’s being pitched is significant, interesting and new.

In this new landscape of paid, owned and earned media, what author and blogger Geoff Livingston calls “the Fifth Estate”, we want our content discoverable and we want our content in the places where people spend their time we can’t pitch them, we have to add to the conversation by posting Frequent, Authentic, Relevant and Engaging content, so they will find us.

Use Keywords:  This cannot be overstated. Today it’s a must to ensure for every organization, campaign, product, division, you have a clear set of 5-10 key phrases that you have validated as relevant to your target audience and are frequently searched. Niche terms (those only searched by smaller numbers are ok) especially if they help you to reach a motivated audience that is truly interested in your topic. You don’t have to be a search engine optimization expert, just put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and ask yourself, “what would I search for?” Then use a Keyword Research tool to find the terms that are searched the most. Or get the list from your organizations SEO consultant or marketing group.  Either way, ensure you have a validated list and then make use of those keywords in everything you publish online. Find ways to link those keywords and phrases back to the same place on your website. See our post Best Practices for Including Links, Images and Video in Press Releases and our post on What is Search Engine Relevance for more on this topic.

Distribute to social media AND your website: People are spending more and more time on social networks, and we want to reach them there, engage with them and then bring them back to our own website. Take a cue from top content publishers, NY Times, NPR, Mashable to name a few. They post content in Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn and other places but include links to drive you back to their sites to engage with you there. All of us need to do the same. A recent Altimeter Group study found that among 140 Corporate Social Strategists "Website Integration" [of social media] was the #1 priority for 46.7% of respondents.

 

According to Altimeter, “This is an important objective because social integration with your website allows readers to stay on your site longer. This also encourages social sharing and community in a location (your website) that you have more control over (versus external social channels like Facebook and Twitter).”

 

At iPressroom, we view Social networks and other 3^rd party sites as “neighborhoods” and your organizational or corporate website and online newsroom as your “home”. All roads should lead to home. So, post all of your content to your home first and then distribute out to those other neighborhoods. Many CMS platforms (including iPressroom’s CMS for Online Newsrooms) have the ability to publish and distribute content to your website and multiple channels including social media, wire services, email, SMS and more.  

 

Use multimedia: The comScore Video Metrix service reported that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in June for an average of 16.8 hours per viewer. Further, numerous studies have shown that adding multimedia to a press release increases the likelihood of viewing the release as well as the time spent on the page. So, visitors will stay on your site longer when there is multimedia content. Again, make sure everything you post to other sites (video to YouTube, photos to Flickr, podcasts to iTunes) is also on your own site because as we stated above, you want your “home” to be rich with content and drive people to visit and engage with you from other neighborhoods. With a CMS like iPressroom, you can even distribute photos directly to the AP Photo Archive and reach 1,000s of photo editors directly.  If you’re using a wire service, ensure that your own website can support a multimedia press release and then issue a media alert or tipsheet or standard release with links to “View multimedia associated with this release”. Again, you want the traffic on your own website, not the wire service. No reason to pay top tier multimedia press release fees when you need to place all of the multimedia content on your own website and drive journalists, bloggers, influencers and customers back to your own site, and engage with them there. See our related post on 3 Reasons You Need a Social Media Press Releases on Your Site.

 

Lastly, creating the content itself can be an overwhelming task, but doesn’t have to be. Find easy ways to leverage the people, expertise, assets and opportunities you may already have right in your organization. There are also fantastic services for creating video content available, plus audio podcasts can be a simple and inexpensive avenue for generating multimedia content.

 

In summary, if you’re looking to increase your visibility online, support your targeted media relations activities and reach new people, follow the steps above and publish, publish, publish!