NewsCactus Blog

Instructions for creating news.URL

In order for the NewsCactus newsroom to function properly, you need to add redirect instructions on your Web host. The instructions, called a CNAME record, seamlessly take the user from your server to the NewsCactus server when they click on the newsroom link.

Blogger Help has directions under the topic “How do I create a CNAME record for my custom domain?” which includes instructions for many different Web hosts. You could visit Blogger Help, select your domain host, and review the step-by-step directions they provide.

In fairly simple terms, with the company hosting your website, you’ll add a CNAME record named: news (or whatever name you select for your online newsroom — such as mediaroom, newsroom, pressroom, info, etc.).

Then you’ll give the CNAME record a value specific to your company’s newsroom on the NewsCactus server. That value will be determined once you sign-up for the NewsCactus online newsroom software and is your company name or initials followed by newscactus.com. For example, if my company were Acme Windows, the CNAME value may be: acme.newscactus.com

CNAME changes are usually located under the host’s DNS control menu.

Please note: If not done correctly, changes to your website DNS settings could adversely affect your website. NewsCactus cannot be held responsible for errors.

Web logs, commonly known as blogs, are unique tools for communicators because they’ve made it possible for everybody to publish online. Although blogging seems to lend a much more amateur tone to communications thanks to the abundance of self-publishing software, professional communicators have been successfully utilizing them to promote their organizations.

There are two types of corporate blogs: internal and external. 

Internal blogs

Internal corporate blogs are those accessible to company employees and usually available on company intranets. Although the decision as to who can and cannot contribute to the blog is up to the company itself, a communal approach, where anybody may contribute, can be an effective way to encourage employee participation, a sense of community, high morale and other factors.

Allowing employees at every level to contribute to your corporate blog creates an open atmosphere and can promote open discussion about corporate policies, direction, criticisms or suggestions. 

External blogs

The other type of corporate blog is an external blog. Although the blog is maintained and authored by corporate staff, it is viewable by anyone with Internet access. These can be used to make company announcements, share viewpoints, respond to news articles or any number of other communications. More importantly, utilizing a comment system allows an organization to interact directly with its audience in meaningful ways. 

Encourage audience discussion

Comments give your company instant feedback and can be used to measure of value for new products or services in your customers’ eyes. This interaction can also provide invaluable insight as to what your audience thinks, wants, needs or feels. Comment systems encourage discussion between visitors. The most successful blogs are those whose comment sections are much more active than the blog itself. While there isn’t any professional communicator who would argue that getting a message to an audience isn’t a success, blogs carry much more potential. Imagine the value of not just getting your message to your audience, but having such an impact on it that they consider and discuss it among themselves. Blogs can also be used to find and directly communicate with influencers within a company’s audience. Reaching opinion leaders and influencers has always been a goal of public relations and blogs allow communicators to do so much more easily than in the past. 

Give your perspective

Corporate blogs are undeniably biased, but they also have several advantages. First, corporations have complete control over the content of the site. That isn’t to say that the blog should focus on corporate strengths and ignore controversies. As a matter of fact, blogs are fantastic opportunities to address issues and concerns from the company’s perspective. Providing timely, honest views about potentially contentious issues can have a dramatic effect on public opinion and adds to an organization’s credibility. 

Executive blogs

Another type of very successful blog is the executive blog. These blogs are written by top officers in a corporation and offer readers a glimpse into the minds of the individuals they view as the chief decision makers in a company. Executive blogs not only give corporations a face, but it also makes them more human, which makes them more identifiable.

As superficial as it sounds, a well-liked CEO can completely change a company’s image. You only have to take a look at Steve Jobs and Apple to see an example.

More importantly, executive blogging positions your corporate officers as industry experts. Industry journalists use expert opinions to illustrate their stories; taking advantage of this need leads to increased coverage and visibility. 

Increase your reach

External corporate blogs also come with the added advantage of increased traffic and search engine rankings. Frequent updates add credibility and encourage visitors to return, which will help keep your search engine rankings high. Another good idea is to create an RSS feed for your blog.

RSS feeds automatically update users’ aggregators and alert them to new posts or bulletins on your blog. Essentially, rather than looking for new information, users have the information sent to them. As more people adopted the use of this technology, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to do the same in order to keep up with Internet trends.

Corporate blogs are powerful tools to reach your audiences. Several companies are already utilizing blogs and if you plan on keeping your company competitive, a corporate blog is a must have communications channel.

Dr. Azimi is in the business of extreme dental makeovers and routine dental care. His new website launched a couple months ago sporting a Flash design with heavy reliance on glossy images and special effects. There are many businesses, particularly in luxury niches, where Flash websites are the norm.

In instances where HTML text is not used on a website, it is very difficult to secure good search placement. However, using the NewsCactus online newsroom solution as part of an overall website strategy circumvents any search placement issues because of the way NewsCactus newsrooms are designed.

NewsCactus newsrooms use specific design features to help secure top search placement, like the way the news release page is named, backend keyword and description fields, and RSS technology for distribution on the Web.

Dr. Azimi relies on his online newsroom to distribute information about his practice. In fact, when you do a Google search for “downtown las vegas dentist,” the first dental practice you find (currently ranked number six on the page) is Dr. Azimi’s. He’s the only dental practice with a listing on the first search page. If that’s not good search placement for a very popular search term, what is?

How to test online newsrooms for search placement

This brings me to another point: if you want to know how effective a company or organization is at online placement of press release information, look for their news releases in their newsroom and begin searching for words and phrases included in their announcements.

In most NewsCactus instances you will find a link to the online newsroom on the first page of the search results. If you don’t, please contact us with the specifics and we’ll check into it, and if necessary, take back our bold statement.

Happy searching!

When we installed the Les Olson Company newsroom in October 2007, their company Web site was the first Google search listing when searching by the company’s name.

After about a week following the addition of its NewsCactus online newsroom, the company secured the second listing in Google, doubling its search placement on the first results page. The only additional cost was the monthly NewsCactus subscription.

Another way to secure more top search listings is to pay for them, pay-per-click campaigns, banner ads, etc. But that can be an expensive proposition.

Additionally, a NewsCactus newsroom provides much more functionality than an online ad campaign alone. Features include self-publishing announcements distributed through RSS, multimedia, additional links, news highlights, links to the company in the news and media contacts, to name a few.

Online newsrooms provide valuable tools to secure top search placement. Because of the way NewsCactus newsrooms are named, news.companyURL.com, the newsroom secures a second search results listing in addition to the company’s main website.

In our Web 2.0 time, no company should be without an online newsroom.

Consider this: many companies need, or choose, to develop websites using Adobe Flash technology. Because of the way Flash sites are created, they are notoriously bad for organic search engine placement.

Now for those of you who don’t know: organic placement happens because your site has all the right keywords; paid placement occurs when you engage in an online campaign, like a pay-per-click or banner advertising campaign. But I digress…

Another reason to utilize an online newsroom like NewsCactus is to take advantage of the keyword rich content that the newsroom will naturally contain. The content, in HTML, is fabulous food for those surreptitious search spiders.

Online newsrooms not only help secure top search placement, they provide a place on your website where you can have plenty of copy and loose the flashy stuff. Journalists are more interested in content than bells and whistles.

A key advantage to employing an online newsroom is you’re able to spice up your website, knock yourself out with the latest technology, pimp your site . . . whatever you want to call it, and still provide the searchable content necessary to secure top organic search placement.

Perhaps one of the trickiest parts of populating your NewsCactus online newsroom with content is editing digital images. While it may take some practice, it’s well worth the effort.

There are a couple, free tools that make this process rather simple.

First, we recommend Google Picasa image editing software. You can download and install it in a matter of minutes. A tour of Picasa’s features is available here.

For Mac users, you can use iPhoto which comes preinstalled with your computer.

When working with digital images, keep in mind the following guidelines:

Modules

The image needs to be 186 pixels wide. The height can be whatever you want.

News Highlights

The image needs to be 72 by 72 pixels. You can crop images into a square by holding down the shift key while you crop with your mouse.

Multimedia

Your original file can be whatever size you prefer. You can use your newsroom to post images for use by print publications or on the Web. We recommend you identify the file type and size in the title of the image. Thumbnails images are like News Highlights, limited to 72 by 72 pixels.

Format

Keep in mind that RGB files are for use on the Web and CMYK files are for print. If you’re using Photoshop, be sure to use the File > Save for Web option for your thumbnail images (you wouldn’t use this option for an original file intended for download by print publications).

Of course, there are still other options when it comes to your NewsCactus images:

• You could have a graphic designer prepare the images using the specs outlined above; or
• You could email the image to us to take care of uploading it for you.

It’s the multimedia functionality that makes your online newsroom more than just the standard news release distribution service. You should use images to add depth and additional information to your news. You know what they say, “a picture’s worth a thousand words.”

For some, the creation of an online newsroom can be cumbersome, include dozens of hours in meetings with other team members and take months to complete.

For others—like those who sign-up for the NewsCactus online newsroom service—the process is simple and can be completed in a matter of hours or days, not weeks or months.

When companies subscribe to NewsCactus, they handle three aspects of installation:

1. Create the sub-domain, news.companyURL.com;
2. Add a home page Newsroom link; and
3. Populate the site using the NewsCactus administrative interface (click here for specific implementation guidelines)

We take care of three tasks on our end:

1. Set-up the NewsCactus database;
2. Customize the newsroom to look like the rest of the site; and
3. Provide over-the-telephone training, walking the new user through the online interface to populate the site.

This process can be done in a matter of hours, depending on how Web savvy the user is. Normally the NewsCactus newsroom is up and running within a couple of business days. It’s just that simple.

Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, works like an email inbox for the Web. It allows you to select information from various Web sites and view them from a single Web page.

The information you select is like tuning your television to a specific channel. Maybe you’d like to keep up on the news by selecting the RSS feed from CNN, or the weather by selecting the RSS feed from weather.com, or your family by selecting your favorite relative’s blog RSS feed…you get the picture.

The cool part about RSS is you’re in control. You don’t need a spam filter to sort out all the junk messages because you’re in charge of what messages you want to see on your RSS reader home page.

Google Reader is an easy to use, free RSS reader. If you’re an RSS newbie, I recommend watching the introductory video posted on the Google Reader site.

Also, this Common Craft video provides a good explanation of what RSS is and how it works.

RSS is the technology that distributes NewsCactus news releases. Journalists and those interested in your company can subscribe to your RSS feed to receive notification in their RSS reader of each news release you post in your newsroom.

Some journalists may still ask for e-mail alerts for new announcements, and we can add an e-mail subscription module to your NewsCactus newsroom if you wish, but RSS is really the technology of the future. RSS makes e-mail list management and dealing with spam messages obsolete.

For years we have engaged in Web design, interactive development, blogging, etc. We’ve worked for clients and for ourselves on Blogging Vegas.

Now it’s time to focus on sharing the wealth – what we’ve learned from communicating online basically since the Web came into existence.

We plan to bring our expertise to bear on this blog, which for now is generically called the NewsCactus Blog.

Your captains: Pete Codella, APR, owner of Codella Marketing, and Dave Rosowsky, owner of Image Domain and WebPencil. We are co-founders of NewsCactus, the most cost-effective online newsroom service on the market, and the only one developed by an Accredited public relations professional.

For us, this blog will become our vehicle to comment on industry trends, share ideas and expertise, and help others better understand the possibilities afforded by interactive, online communication.