Online Newsroom Blog

The existing economic woes in the US and abroad have placed colleges and universities in a difficult financial position. Budgets are down, spending cuts have strapped resources, and institutions of higher learning are being asked to do more with less. PR and Marketing departments are being asked to not only keep up with the traditional media but also maintain a strong online presence as well.

 

Online newsrooms tackle this financial issue head-on. Without cutting PR staff or challenging university IT departments, online newsrooms aggregate social media, important news announcements, videos and pictures, all on one web page, with optimized content so site visitors can find information easily on search engines.

 

The content management system (CMS) that maintains most online newsrooms also allows PR and Marketing representatives to distribute critical information in real-time – whether it’s to an existing database of students, faculty and reporters, or to social media pages and RSS Feed subscribers – and without having to wait on IT approval. This capability is immeasurable during a major crisis like inclement weather, or even worse, a potentially dangerous situation on campus.

 

A good example is the UCLA Newsroom, which uses their online newsroom as a valuable resource for students and faculty to access and receive the latest news and announcements, and also serve as the media response center in a crisis situation.

 

Simply put, with educational institutions facing hard financial choices, coupled with the obvious transition to New Media formats both with the press and with students and faculty, an online newsroom is a perfect choice for college and universities to stay ahead of their message while saving valuable time and money.

 

 

This time on the Customer Spotlight our guest is Lacy Ravencraft, Public Relations Manager for Ewing Irrigation. Lacy discusses the challenges she faced prior to developing an online newsroom and the solutions it delivered. She also explains how their online newsroom has helped with Ewing's branding and online rankings.

 

Ewing has been a leader since 1922 in providing landscape, irrigation and golf course professionals with products and services to develop and maintain healthy environments. With over 195 locations nationwide, Ewing's products include water management solutions, agronomic supplies, landscape lighting, water features, hardscape and erosion control.

 

 

iPressroom’s Southeastern Sales Director and former PR strategist James Madden on Why Online Newsrooms are Important in Today’s New Media Age

As a former PR strategist, I represented companies in a variety of industries. I created media exposure for my clients utilizing traditional PR methodology. In the new media age, what I quickly discovered is that news doesn’t truly exist till its posted online. If a reporter can’t find the story on Google or on a company website, it simply doesn’t exist. Until I came to iPressroom, I hadn’t seen an all-in-one PR product that uploaded optimized materials to an online newsroom, sent materials to reporters or consumers, provided an information resource for the media and, at the end of the day, presented my ROI through analytics.

After observing effective online newsrooms over the last few years, a few points became obvious. Successful online newsrooms function best when they present the following options to visitors: downloadable videos and images, updated news releases and announcements, RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, social media connections, and reachable primary contacts. Reporters and consumers alike want easily accessible information, preferably contained on the same page. If they can’t find what they need, they grow frustrated and move on from the site.

As iPressroom’s Southeast Sales Representative, I would love for every company to experience how dynamic and easy-to-use our online newsrooms and CMS are to operate. But also, in today’s 24/7 media cycle, I encourage every PR professional to begin the process of creating an online newsroom for your company or your clients. It will save you time, it will save you money, and most importantly, it will maximize your company’s exposure. Myself or the rest of the experienced team at iPressroom will be glad to help get you started.

 

Companies and organizations are constantly striving to improve their exposure to the media and the consumers who buy their products and services. While traditional media still has its place, the Internet, with its 24/7 format and endless social media connectivity, has ushered in a new media age that has become the forefront of public relations and marketing strategies.

To stay ahead of the constantly evolving new media cycle, companies must develop online newsrooms that are powerful tools that serve as a news resource for reporters and customers alike. Online newsrooms must provide downloadable content - like pictures, video and podcasts - distribute important announcements, and function as a social networking hub for interested visitors to the newsroom site.

Chris Bechtel, president and CEO of iPressroom, and a noted lecturer on digital strategy to universities and organizations like UCLA, Loyola Maramount and PRSA, recently authored a white paper that lays out the first steps to building a dynamic online newsroom. Download the free marketing guide.

 

Chris’ “10 Actions That Lead to a Better Online Newsroom” provides a concise, succinct introduction to how companies can establish an online newsroom and enjoy the immeasurable benefits they provide.  Here is a sample of some of Chris’ valuable tips:

• Once live, a good online newsroom should always be updated with F.A.R.E (Frequent, Authentic, Relevant and Engaging) content.
• Incorporate social media functionality so visitors to your online newsroom can share your news with others.
• Utilize the latest web design techniques and best practices to assure that your online newsroom is easily navigable and has a high position on search engines.

The marketing guide has a myriad of other useful suggestions that I highly recommend in creating and implementing your online newsroom. You can also contact the digital strategy experts at iPressroom – www.ipressroom.com - to obtain your free marketing guide and find out how you too can start your successful online newsroom.

 

 

Matt Owen of Salamander Hospitality

 

 

 

 

This time in the iPressroom Customer Spotlight Nate Purpura from eHealthinsurance.com discusses how iPressroom's media content platform helped fulfill their online communication needs. Nate highlights the challenges they faced in developing a real-time newsroom, their unique position in the marketplace and how their online newsroom allows them to effectively deliver their message, and how working with iPressroom helped them achieve their communication goals.

 

Featured in Newsweek and on CNN, eHealth delivers health insurance expertise to over two million customers nationwide with a broad range of resources for family, individual, small business, short term, medicare, dental and life insurance needs.

 

 

Whether your company is large or small, global or local, public or private, your public relations team helps to frame the message that affects you and your valued customers. Our recent news is filled with oil spills, floods, and product recalls. These events can quickly elevate or destroy the image, and ultimately the profitability, of a company. Communication representatives must stay ahead of these events with a strong and timely response that doesn't just include press releases and press conferences. Coordinating messages, information distribution, and seamless answers to media inquiries can exhaust your existing resources. Ask yourself: Are your PR resources ready to manage a major story? The first step starts with an Online Newsroom.

 
Some recent examples have illustrated the importance of an online newsroom:

• Toyota's recent recall demanded a timely response to the media that included thorough information that answered questions and concerns from consumers and the media. Their online newsroom, http://pressroom.toyota.com, received thousands of hits from reporters and analysts everyday and kept Toyota out front of the news cycle. Toyota took forward action during the crisis, helping to restore consumer faith in their product, recently indicating their company would show profits in 2010.
• BP has kept the media informed through their online newsroom with their tactics to combat their current oil spill, avoiding the spin common in today's news world when company's don't quickly deliver their side of the story. Despite a current solution to the problem, their proactive approach certainly stems from lessons they learned from the Exxon Valdez catastrophe and has portrayed the company as taking charge of the situation.
• During the recent floods in Nashville, locally-headquartered Dollar General donated much needed food, supplies and financial resources to thousands of victims in the affected three state area. With their online newsroom and information distribution through the internet they can get the word out to encourage more customers to do the same. Their positive impact on local residents will certainly not be forgotten.

In light of these critical events, does your online newsroom possess the infrastructure to meet these PR demands? With an online newsroom that combines up-to-the-minute news announcements, pictures, social media, and videos, the company online newsroom becomes a virtual news site, a CNN.com of sorts, allowing the PR department to stay ahead of the rapidly changing news cycle, delivering the message the company needs to deliver. Reporters are notified of updates through an online newsroom database, and rather than receiving thousands of calls requesting information, reporters are diverted to the online newsroom to download the information - saving valuable time and money.

 

Regardless of the size of your company, the cost benefit of an online newsroom is immeasurable, considering the millions that are potentially won or lost when companies fail to control the message the press ultimately delivers. So ask yourself, what is your current online newsroom capability? If your PR team needs answers to these questions, you need to contact iPressroom, www.ipressroom.com, and begin creating an online newsroom that can meet the PR demands of today's evolving new media environment.

 

For PR professionals, the evolving media landscape has created some enormous challenges in recent years. Creating exposure for clients in the media has made many PR professionals face some stark realities about where they can garner coverage for their clients. Data gathered by the Audit Bureau of Circulations indicated that newspapers in 2009 lost nearly 11 percent of their paying readers from April to September, compared with 2008. They also indicated that purchases of U.S. magazines at newsstands and other retail outlets fell almost 10 percent in the second half of 2009. 

With dismal figures like that, its become abundantly clear that the Internet is the obvious choice for maximizing media coverage. With the extended reach of search engines and databases, companies can reach thousands of media outlets and maintain a position on the web for as long as readers chose to click. And with blogs and social media, companies can steer their message towards larger audiences. If you haven't developed a new media strategy for you and your clients, now's the time. Print media isn't dead, but is certainly not as important as it used to be. Furthermore, people don't always remember the news they read in the paper last week, but they can always find it on the web. Many reporters and analysts already say that if you're company isn't on the web you don't exist. Here are some suggestions that might help this dilemma:

1. Where do you want your news to reach? The first destination is to the search engines and databases, whose news archives allow readers to access your news quickly and easily. Most people don't realize that media outlets also obtain their news from the same search engines you visit everyday. Posting your news through optimized press releases distributed by newswires is a great first step. You also want to discover websites important to your industry sector - spend some time on the web and find those sites that are important to your business' success, and establish relationships with their representatives so you can send news to them directly to post.
2. How current is your company website? Search engines recognize updates and fresh content on a website when they consider its search engine position. Take the time to update your website with current news and announcements you've recently made, your latest products and services, and utilize proven search engine optimization methodology. Once that's established, follow your progress through analytics like the application Google provides.
3. Do you post your news to your website? It's critical that whatever news reaches the web also reaches your own company website. This might seem simple, but by posting it to your company website, reporters and interested parties have immediate access to your information. It also increases your news' "shelf life" so anyone looking for information can always find it through a search engine query. This can be accomplished through an online newsroom, created by companies like iPressroom. With online newsrooms, you can post news releases, announcements, pictures, videos, blogs and social media in one easy-to-find page, all the while controlling the look and message you want to display to the public. Reporters will have no trouble finding your information with an online newsroom.

As a PR professional, don't fear the web and hold on to antiquated print media practices, embrace it. The days of landing a story in a newspaper or magazine were wonderful but the satisfaction was short-lived. With new media strategies you have an opportunity to gain far greater exposure, attract new readers and deliver a larger, more sustainable ROI.

 

While the fundamental principals of PR remain the same, the methodology in achieving PR success for our clients has evolved dynamically with the increased use of new media. With that said it doesn't hurt to take a moment and analyze what we can do to help our clients excel in the critically important new media environment.

1. Talk to your clients - This might seem overstated, but sit down with your clients and assess their web strategy. Some important questions to ask include: Who visits their site? Is eCommerce important for their profit margin? Do they incorporate social media into their business? Do reporters and interested customers obtain info from the site? How often is content refreshed and updated? Their answers will help you determine what the direction of their new media strategy.

2. Establish Web Analytics for your clients- Each and every client on your roster should have an analytics program in place to give a regular report of web position and performance. Keywords relevant to your client, visitation demographics, etc. are important gauges of their internet presence...and your PR success.

3. Develop Fresh, New, Updated Content - Whether it is a client announcement highlighted in a news release, a blog posting from an exec, or a product video recently shown at a trade show, these materials are wonderful examples of fresh content to include on the client's site and on relevant industry sites. The power of your client's web presence is best utilized when news and marketing info is fresh and relevant. Placing stories and articles in print have an expiration date, while web content has a longer shelf life and greater accessibility to reporters and interested parties. So along with posting new materials on their site, find trade sites, news databases and blog posts important to your client and begin posting their highlights.

4. Create an Online Newsroom - A cost effective way to post updated news, pictures, videos, blogs and corporate information is through an online newsroom. Online newsrooms allow reporters to access information while the PR professional controls what is seen and heard on the site. Its a great tool for big product rollouts or even crisis strategy, especially when hundreds of reporters and analysts hound you for additional information. Toyota's recent recall was a testament to the power and effectiveness of the online newsroom, with thousands of reporters visiting their site for key information. With the online newsroom, all the information reporters need is all right there on one easy-to-use page. A good site to visit is iPressroom, www.ipressroom.com, and see the power of online newsrooms.

5. Online Education is Paramount - And finally, Sir Francis Bacon's quote, "Knowledge is power," couldn't be more true for new media. Whether you are a veteran of the web or a rookie to new media techniques, constantly educating yourself, your staff and your clients on the internet and the latest tactics for web success is fundamental to your ongoing success. Their are hundreds of online education resources to consider.

Photo credit:www.flickr.com/photos/bz3rk/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

As a veteran journalist and newswire executive, the global reach of the Internet and power of new media is mindboggling.   Where once access to media and the masses was limited, now both are within reach with a few keyboard strokes.   The reverse is also true.  News information about your company and you are easily accessible by the media via the net – good and bad.   All of which makes it even more important that companies and individuals be aggressive and proactive in seeking to manage what is being said or written about them in this “new media" world.   

 

It requires a strategy that starts with an easy-to-use, information-rich website that includes mediums ranging from news releases to blogs to podcasts, etc.  "One size does not fit all" in today’s communications environment, or more appropriately, one communication method doesn't cover all your bases in a sound media strategy.

It is imperative that companies and their communication directors have a detailed and well-thought out media strategy that encompasses all means of communication.    As everyone has seen, the term being “out front” of the news event is more true today than ever.