NewsCactus Blog

I’m participating in a conference presented by Ragan Communications and the Public Relations Society of America titled “Social Media for Communicators — A Web 2.0 Summit for Internal Communications, Public Relations and Marketing.”

A common thread of discussion is blogging. What is it? How do you do it? What are best practices?

The theme of the conference seems to be the idea that the Internet today is about two-way communication. Gone are the days of producing a fancy corporate Web site and calling it good for several years.

People today expect timely information, responses to industry trends and crises, and the opportunity to watch, listen and interact online.

Because of my experience in creating the NewsCactus online newsroom tool, I keep going back to the utility offered by the service. It really is similar to a blog a company can use to communicate with a key public, which in this case is the media.

In so doing, the company opens a dialog with journalists (and other interested parties) where it provides media rich content, additional links and drives the conversation.

NewsCactus uses RSS just like blogs. It also provides the tools communicators need to post timely information just like Blogger or WordPress or any other blogging tool. Once set-up, there’s no need to wait for IT to update content.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that companies that do not use an online newsroom are leaving out one of the easiest, simplest and most effective tools for communicating with journalists.

In fact, I believe online newsrooms will replace phone calls, faxes and e-mails as a journalist’s preferred method of receiving pitches from corporate communicators.