NewsCactus Blog

Announcing Creating the Online Newsroom

A Public Relations Society of America Jan. 31, 2012 webinar. Pete Codella of NewsCactus joins Steve Momorella of TEKgroup to present a free-for-PRSA-members webinar covering all aspects of online newsrooms for corporate communicators, public relations pros and online marketers.

In this digital age online newsrooms have increasingly become a staple communication resource for the public relations professional.

Recently, with the proliferation of social media, the online newsroom has evolved further into a must-have digital tool for all areas of communication, including investor relations, employee relations, marketing, and brand awareness.

Join online newsroom experts Pete Codella of NewsCactus and Steve Momorella of TEKgroup as they share best practice online newsroom examples in a PRSA webinar on January 31, 2012 from 3 to 4:15 p.m. (Eastern).

They’ll provide tips on how to leverage an online newsroom to help increase exposure and decrease content distribution costs. And they’ll outline why a centralized, social media equipped online information headquarters is a must-have part of your public relations toolkit for mainstream journalists and news consumers.

In this webinar you’ll learn how to:

• Position your online newsroom as a go-to resource in your industry
• Ensure that you have all of the essential elements that mainstream journalists expect
• Integrate social media features into your online newsroom so that people can easily share your news
• Make decisions based on research with journalists and news consumers on features and functions of an online newsroom
• Use content marketing to help increase exposure and brand awareness for your organization
• Produce content that supports the search optimization strategy of your organization
• Utilize multimedia — documents, images, logos, video and audio files — to tell more of your story
• Determine the best approach for your organization: build a newsroom yourself or use a hosted service

Detailed online newsroom case studies will be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of using digital communication tools and integrating social media into your communications efforts.

The webinar is free for PRSA members and $200 for nonmembers.

Registration is available on PRSA.org.

In 2006 the social media press release template was released by Todd Defren of Shift Communications (see the release announcement here). It basically served as a wake-up call for public relations practitioners, calling for the traditional press release to be reconsidered and reborn.

The template introduced a new tool to the public relations toolkit.

Many fought the presumption that the press release was dead and needed to be re-worked, opting for tradition over progression.

Still today, public relations firms, companies and organizations continue to distribute press releases to share their latest news.

In this blog post let’s discuss two concepts:

1. the press release, and
2. the social media release.

The Press Release

The press release is not dead. As stated above, it’s very much an active part of many organizations’ communications outreach.

However, the concept of creating a statement and distributing it to news media with the goal of having that news shared in traditional news channels most likely is dead.

For starters, traditional news channels as the only game in town are a thing of the past. Since the social media press release template was introduced in 2006 we’ve seen shifts in the media business at an accelerated, unprecedented pace.

Also, journalists, like the rest of us, are bombarded with so many messages that the likelihood of one of them choosing to write a story based on a release they receive is minimal at best.

The press release is more aptly described as a news release. It’s a story told by an organization. A story they feel is important and newsworthy. Its audience extends way beyond journalists to every kind of constituent.

The Internet has paved the way for organizations to reach nearly all key publics online.

Today, the old concept of a press release is more about telling your organization’s story online, in a way that’s informative and engaging. Organizations may even opt to include entertainment in the way they share stories. Some have called this communitainment.

In short, each organization should think more of itself as a publisher of its own news instead of relying on traditional media outlets to tell their story.

The Social Media Release

Studies show that news shared in a social media release format receive more attention than traditional releases (check out the 2010 RealWire study).

Why is it that the social media release format lends itself to more engagement, awareness and activity?

It’s because of the way the story is shared. It’s presented in bite-sized tidbits of information. The core story is supported by brief statements of fact, links to additional resources and plenty of multimedia from audio to pictures and video.

A key difference is the ability for the reader to share the content through their own online social channels, as in Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The same trend in corporate websites, from static online brochures to more current, dynamic, content management driven sites, is what we’ve seen in how news is shared online.

Today, the concept of the social media release is less about adding bells and whistles to a traditional release and more about webifying the release.

A Social Media Newsroom

This is where the concept of an online newsroom is vital.

A microsite that serves as an organization’s home base for sharing its news — that includes all sorts of media, contact information for key spokespeople, brief statements of fact and links to plenty of additional resources for the story — is likely more important than distributing traditional releases on a news wire.

Why?

Because as organizations tell their own story, as they self-publish in every way a traditional publisher would — either in print or broadcast forms — they reach influencers and every key constituent in ways that previously were impossible. Plus, they do so in their own voice, without the filter of a journalist.

The social media press release is a stepping stone for public relations, marketing and communication professionals. It brought us out of the old way of writing press releases to the concept of sharing them online in ways that are easier to digest.

Now, successful organizations will find it even more beneficial to devote an entire website to content that used to be sent only through press release channels.

That website is a social media equipped online newsroom that truly webifies press releases.

Here’s a video of NewsCactus founder, Pete Codella, speaking after the Ragan Communications and PRSA Social Media for Communicators conference in Las Vegas earlier year about the benefits of using an online newsroom:

You’ve surely heard the expression word of mouth. But have you heard the expression word of mouse?

I first heard it from Park City Mountain Resort’s director of marketing and communications, Krista Parry (@krista_parry).

The concept is simple: word spreads these days like lightning through the Internet. Social networks carry messages to the edges of the Web, away from the central hub (i.e., a corporate Web site) to the outskirts, so-to-speak.

For a public relations practitioner, that’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The more you can get engagement from others and have them share your message, the more effective you’ll be.

Word of mouse is where it’s at!

So how does an online media room help with search placement?

If you’re creating press releases and distributing them directly to the media and/or through the news wires, and not publishing them yourself in an online newsroom, you’re missing one of the most effective public relations tools in our digital age.

You already have the content, why not display it in your own newsroom?

An online press room that includes social media sharing tools makes it easy for others to share your message on their sites, like blogs, Facebook pages, favorite YouTube channels, Digg, Delicious, etc.

Having our information on several Web sites gives you more tickets to the online search lottery. Just like buying more than one lottery tickets gives you a better chance of winning big, publishing your keyword rich content on dozens of sites gives you even more opportunities to control the first page of search results.

If you’re controlling most of the organic content in online search, you’re winning the online public relations battle.

How does an online newsroom save you money?

Consider this scenario:

In 2006 I had a PR client with about 10 company subsidiaries. We were distributing two to three press releases through various news wires each week. We were benefiting from placement of the announcements on a couple dozen news aggregate sites. But we weren’t publishing the releases online for each company and we were spending a few hundred dollars each week.

Their IT department was robust, but overworked. They had no capacity to accept the almost daily press releases and then code a Web page with the information on the various company Web sites. It was what I was pushing for, but it just wasn’t a possibility with their existing resources.

So I began searching for an online press room solution that we could subscribe to, which would allow me, their public relations counselor, to upload press releases and manage the online newsroom section of their sites.

What I found was only a handful of services all charging more than $1,000 a month for their service. Multiply that by 10 and it became an unrealistic proposition.

So I went to work to create a new solution. Through a close relationship with a Web development company, I created NewsCactus, a hosted, social media equipped online newsroom solution for public relations and marketing professionals.

We initially charged $200 a month for the service. It’s now only $99 a month.

At less than one hundred dollars a month, the NewsCactus online newsroom solution is affordable for just about everyone. And it does just what I described above . . .

It puts the power of publishing press release content directly in the hands of the public relations or corporate communications professional.

Of course, companies and organizations can create their own online newsroom page. Then there are design and maintenance costs. As well as time and money spent researching online press room best practices.

For many companies, in these tough economic times, doing more with less is the mantra. NewsCactus helps companies do just that. For a $99 a month subscription NewsCactus clients have access to a powerful, social media and multimedia equipped online newsroom solution.

Feel free to browse the NewsCactus client examples to see the online newsroom solution in action.

Technology, more than any other thing, has caused the convergence of traditional advertising, public relations and marketing. Call it marketing communications, or claim it all falls under one of those three umbrellas, the fact remains: to be effective at securing customers or influencing opinion (and ultimately action), you need to master inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is the process by which you drive traffic to your content, specifically online content.

There are many components to inbound marketing. Included among them are:

• Search engine optimization
• Search engine marketing
• Blogging
• Participation in online forums and communities; and
• Social media.

An online newsroom accomplishes many of these components, and here’s how . . .

The top 9 reasons why an online newsroom helps with inbound marketing

1. Press releases inherently contain keywords and appropriate information for your company or organization, product or service. This helps with SEO.

2. People are searching for information. Increasingly old print mediums are falling behind the Internet when it comes to locating desired information. By self-publishing your information, you provide it ‘straight from the horse’s mouth,’ so-to-speak. Your newsroom provides for both SEO and SEM.

3. If you have a good online newsroom, your news and announcements are tied to an RSS feed. That’s the same technology that powers blogs and makes blogging such a powerful search placement tool. Utilizing RSS in a newsroom turns your newsroom into an equally powerful search placement tool. Remember, it contains keywords and you update the information frequently. A press release a week will go a long way to position you at the top of online search results. This meets the blogging component.

4. If your online newsroom makes it easy for people to share your information, then you’re participating in social media. People should be able — with very little effort — to share your news through inbound links, tagging, or on social networks like Facebook. It also helps if they can print your press release with little effort and have a document that looks and feels like a press release with your corporate logo and contact information included.

5. Posting press releases makes it easy for brand champions to share your news with their online communities. It’s not so much about reaching that one top tier publication as it is about how deep your network is and how many individuals will share your information with their friends. It’s about leveraging your network. This is word of mouth marketing, and technology helps it work better than ever.

6. Online marketing strategy is no longer encompassed by a corporate home page. In fact, you ought to consider Google search as your home page. The more search results you control, the more likely you are to succeed at online marketing. Instead of utilizing your dot-com site as your main Internet presence, it should become a news portal — a place where you link to all your Internet properties — which can include your newsroom, blog(s), Twitter account(s), Facebook page(s), employees’ LinkedIn pages, Flickr account(s), YouTube account(s), online reference libraries like Digg and Del.icio.us, etc.

7. An online newsroom, like your main Web site, becomes a news portal where you link to all your Internet properties. This increases traffic to your sites.

8. A good newsroom will include multimedia such as images, photos, graphics, documents, video and audio files. With multimedia files associated with your press releases, you have a much greater chance of someone sharing your information either online, in print or in person. We live in a YouTube era where people want it all: words, audio and video.

9. Interactivity is key. A newsroom provides multiple ways to interact with your company. From viewing executive biographies and headshots, to linking to your social media sites, to sharing video about your latest product, the newsroom (like your home page) should be a place where your key constituencies can ‘touch and feel’ your company. A list of press releases barely scratches the surface of what an online newsroom should be.

There are many reasons not to blog, including:

• the legal department won’t approve it
• laws don’t allow certain types of disclosure
• there’s a lack of resources with which to create, write and maintain a blog
• there’s no appetite for managing comments

Some choose to blog without allowing comments. But that flies in the face of one of the underlying goals of new social media — to provide for open, online dialogue and discussion.

At NewsCactus we recommend, if you’re going to blog, that you moderate comments. Have a comment moderation policy posted, and follow it. That way everyone knows the rules up front.

For companies that just can’t justify blogging, there is another solution. One that yields the same search engine optimization and marketing benefits. One that doesn’t require comment moderation. And one that doesn’t even require too much additional work creating fresh content.

That solution: a corporate newsroom.

Newsrooms are an often underutilized Web resource and public relations tool.

Most people (like C-level executives) now accept that journalists expect an online newsroom. They expect 24/7 access to the standard fodder — like press releases, executive biographies, company background information and perhaps multimedia files like photos and logos.

An online newsroom can go a long way to actually free up the time of corporate communicators and public relations professionals. When you put pertinent background information online, with a press release archive, the media doesn’t have to contact the PR person to get simple requests taken care of or questions answered.

Additionally, most companies are already producing press releases. Once they’re approved, in addition to being distributed to the media, they should be posted online.

But not just archived by year in a chronological list of announcements. They should be searchable. They should be linked to an RSS feed, applicable links to additional resources and multimedia files. They should be share-able through social media. And even better, they should be categorized into types of news (something we’re working on for the next version of NewsCactus).

Done properly, an online newsroom provides a company with the perfect vehicle to share its news without having to create an authentic blogger voice and manage comments.

Through properly structuring the release URLs and including behind-the-scenes keywords and descriptions, a newsroom can support a company’s main Web site in search results. The more platforms you manage, the better your chances of controlling more of what we online marketers call the Google Golden Triangle.

We recently conducted a poll of professionals on LinkedIn regarding the practice of posting press releases in some sort of online newsroom.

We were curious to see, in real life and from real business people, how many of them use the Web to display corporate press releases.

Of course we’re biased and believe the practice of publishing press releases online should never be overlooked — it’s just so helpful for search engine marketing.

The results weren’t too surprising, although the spread was.

Our question was: Do you or your company post press releases in an online newsroom?

Participants could answer:

• Yes – 100% of the time
• 75%
• 50%
• 25%
• No

Of the total responses, 56% always, or 75% of the time, posted press releases online (the breakdown was 35% always, and 21% 75% of the time). 42% never did. There was a pretty equal split between those who use the Web to publish their own news and those who don’t.

Not surprisingly, the majority of those who publish press releases online come from enterprise or large companies. Mostly people from small companies don’t publish their press releases online.

However, respondents ranged from industries such as accounting, engineering, human resources, marketing and public relations. Those involved in public relations and marketing made up the percentage of respondents who always or usually published press releases online.

Our takeaway here is those involved in business communication are utilizing the Web to publish press releases as part of their job responsibilities.

Another interesting statistic is that the younger the respondent was, the more likely he or she was to publish press releases online. That finding mirrors Internet usage.

Online press release publishers included business owners and those in management positions. As expected, C-level executives and vice presidents were not the practitioners who published press releases online.

Finally, women respondents were more likely to publish press releases online than men. This finding is in keeping with the distribution of men and women in the public relations and marketing functions.

In its most recent CEO survey, PRWeek reported that 70.5 percent of CEOs cited their Web site as the most effective means of communication during a crisis.

31 percent cited a company blog.

Having a corporate newsroom augments information on a Web site and certainly better positions a company to respond to information, and misinformation, in times of crisis.

This mirrors the digital trend away from printed resources to online resources.

An online newsroom is a pivotal piece of the online data puzzle.

The NewsCactus online newsroom is mobile friendly. Newsroom visitors on mobile devices are able to easily navigate and locate company information.

Mobile marketing is one of the fastest growing trends in the communication industry. Using a tool that’s mobile compatible puts you and your organization ahead of the curve.

By way of example:

At a recent social media seminar I announced that the PDF handouts for my presentation were being published in my newsroom simultaneously as I spoke.

One of the features of NewsCactus online news release distribution is scheduling the date and time for publication. Before leaving for the presentation I set the publish time to be noon.

At the conclusion of my presentation one of the attendees approached and complimented me on the content in the Codella Marketing newsroom. I asked how he was able to see it so quickly, since I knew he hadn’t left the room to surf the Web on his desktop computer, and he said he looked it up on his phone.

Not only was he able to view the handouts, but he was impressed with how slick the auto-publishing process was and how well the newsroom looked on his mobile device.

There’s a trend in the public relations industry to provide more than the typical written press release. Many organizations are utilizing news wire distribution services that include multimedia distribution of logos, photos, audio or video files.

The reason for this trend is people are now accustomed to multimedia online. It’s not just about the written word.

Additionally, savvy public relations practitioners realize that journalists are no longer the only audience for press releases. Through the power of the Internet, those releases can be viewed by bloggers, shareholders, customers, etc.

For this reason, an online newsroom is vital.

Adding multimedia items to your press release in your newsroom helps tell more of the story. We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. Enough said.

From carefully crafted news release headlines, to behind-the-scenes keywords and descriptions, to social media bookmarking, the functionality of a NewsCactus online newsroom covers all the bases.