NewsCactus Blog

Have you read about the NewsCactus online newsroom benefits and features on our website?

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With the convergence of technology and advent of Web 2.0, the public relations practitioner’s standard old press release has had a makeover.

If your company is still sending text-only news releases by mail, fax or email as the primary way of sharing news, you’re missing a terrific opportunity.

Using the Internet, press releases can have so much more depth. In fact, you could probably only use the Internet and reach more people — consumers and journalists — than you ever could the old fashioned way.

Various surveys show that approximately 90 percent of journalists use the Internet to gather information for a story, find story ideas and read the news. Some 70 percent of Americans now primarily read their news online.

If your online newsroom is a simple, chronological archive of press releases, NewsCactus can help optimize your news for greater search engine placement.

Here are some key ways by which the NewsCactus online newsroom allows public relations practitioners to do much more with their press releases:

Search Optimization

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again — because NewsCactus news releases include keywords and descriptions in addition to the text of the release, and because of the way the individual pages are named, NewsCactus releases secure top search placement for your company, its products or services.

Multimedia

Include audio or video to help tell more of your story.

Important Links

Link keywords to other online resources such as research, white papers and articles in the media.

Social Media Tags

Users can share your news with others using a variety of Web 2.0 social media.

Distribution

Let users manage the way they receive your news, either by subscribing to your RSS feed (don’t worry, journalists are way ahead of the pack when it comes to using RSS) or electing to receive daily emails containing your news. And you can view RSS statistics and email subscribers.

Search

Every single online newsroom item is searchable using Google Custom Search, making it easy to find just what you’re looking for.

Schedule for Release

You can elect to publish your news release right away, save it as a draft or schedule the distribution for a future day and time.

By using an online newsroom you gain increased visibility on the Web. In fact, most NewsCactus customers now have two first page search links: one for their company, and a second for their NewsCactus powered online newsroom.

Some of our customers are so eager to set-up their online newsroom that they would rather not wait for their website DNS settings to be updated.

There is a solution. Clients can work around waiting for a CNAME record to be updated for the http://news.yourURL sub-domain by creating the following entry on your computer’s host file.

For PCs, in Windows Explorer, locate the file called ‘hosts.’

You’ll probably find it at: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

Edit the file using a text editor like Notepad.

At the bottom of the file, add this entry: 208.109.205.100  news.yourURL

Save the host file.

By updating the host file on your computer, you’ll be able to view the newsroom as it will appear on the World Wide Web once the http://news.yourURL sub-domain is established with your host.

Please note: if not done correctly, changes to your computer’s host file could adversely affect your computer. NewsCactus cannot be held responsible for errors.

We’ve all seen the pesky headlines asking whether or not the U.S. is in a recession. We know that now’s not the best time to travel overseas if you’re a budget-conscious consumer. So what do businesses need to do to gain a competitive advantage in tough times?

In a soft economy, some executives cut back on marketing, advertising and public relations. However, other executives realize the potential for carving out a niche during an economic downturn, and then reap the benefits of new positioning when the market picks up again.

From a corporate communications perspective, just about the worst thing a company could do is cut-off communication with key constituencies in order to save a few bucks. The challenge, then, becomes smart, cost-effective marketing.

Frequently, when businesses are cutting back on advertising budgets, there are bargains to be found. If you have considered a campaign previously and felt you couldn’t afford it, now may be a good time to revisit your ideas and work out deals with media representatives. With fewer advertisers in the game, you’re more likely to get a break.

From a public relations perspective, it’s a great time to get your message out. If others are cutting back or limiting the amount of information distributed, then ramp-up your communications and you’ll gain greater market share.

Online marketing, search placement and positioning have long been a very cost-effective way of corporate branding. Especially now, when some advertisers have pulled the plug, your company should be participating.

Look for additional ways of securing top search placement, increasing website traffic and securing new business online. The NewsCactus online newsroom is an excellent tool to accomplish just that.

The first place most people now go for information is the Internet. Have you ever conducted the “sucks” search? Go to Google and type in the name of your company, CEO, or product, and then the word “sucks” and see what comes up. You’ll be amazed at what people are saying.

Online research and monitoring is vital to controlling your own key messages.

Companies and organizations that fail to utilize the internet to promote products, services and team members are missing a valuable piece of the marketing communications puzzle.

Online communication tools include Web sites, newsrooms, blogs, and a host of social media sites. Many companies utilize newswire distribution services. Some post press releases on a Web site. Others omit utilization of a powerful distribution tool known as Really Simple Syndication, or RSS.

An online newsroom or blog that provides an RSS feed allows you to self-publish. In essence, you bypass media gatekeepers of times past and enter the arena on your own accord.

As with all communications mediums, there are pitfalls.

You Should Post Frequently

An inactive newsroom or blog has the appearance of ‘no one’s home.’ It’s a great tool. Once you’ve got it, you should publish something at least weekly.

Hone the Skill of Writing for the Web

Remember that people are busy. Who do you know who will sit down to read an 800 word essay on a Web site? Keep it brief; break it up with headings, sub-headings and bullet points.

Know Your Key Audiences and Keywords

As with any effective communications campaign, you should have key messages developed for target publics. Consider the words people would enter into their online search engine to locate your news. Would they search for widgets in Wisconsin, or white widgets? When you write, incorporate keywords in meaningful ways, especially in news release headlines.

Recognize That Some Will Resist

Many believe e-mail to be today’s main communications staple. Have you considered how many spam e-mails you receive each day, how many e-mail filters there are on the market, or how many people fail to effectively manage their e-mail inbox?

Using RSS turns the tables by giving the recipient the ability to select communications channels. We live in an age of consumer-driven communications channels that requires professional communicators adapt and adjust tactics.

Now instead of communicating to hundreds or thousands of e-mail subscribers, you can communicate to hundreds of thousands of Web surfers plus those who subscribe to your RSS feed.

Internet market share is there for the taking. It’s available first to progressive self-publishers. Don’t be afraid, embrace technology and start publishing online today.

Journalists today rely on the Internet to provide research for stories. According to numerous studies, they almost always consult a company’s Web site as an initial, primary source of information.

Although many companies provide basic information or a section for news releases, the best Web sites and those appreciated most by the press, provide access to easy-to-find, in-depth and up-to-date information.

However, making information available on your site is only the first step to developing an effective online media relationship. Just as important is ensuring the information is timely and easily accessible. The best way to do this is to create and maintain a dedicated online newsroom that’s easy to find from your home page.

A newsroom provides journalists with a single location in which to find information. Experience teaches that a newsroom in itself isn’t a magical key to press coverage. Understanding what journalists need and expect to find is paramount when designing an online newsroom.

When journalists visit newsrooms, certain information is considered must-have, including:

Contact Information

This is often considered by many journalists to be the single most vital piece of information on your Web site. Journalists have expressed extreme frustration when direct contact information wasn’t readily available on company Web sites.

Although listing contact information for a public relations representative may lead to unwanted or unimportant calls, it is much more important to provide that information to journalists. Neglecting to add contact information to your Web site creates an obstacle for journalists, which is the exact opposite of what you want. It may also discourage reporters from visiting your site again in the future.

When providing this information, generic e-mail addresses, such as PR@yourcompany.com, instills little in your company. Reporters are weary of such methods since no name is provided for follow-up and they don’t know when they will receive a response. Direct e-mail addresses and phone numbers have proven to be much more effective.

Remember that the online newsroom exists primarily to make it easier for journalists to write about your company or organization.

News Releases

Using the NewsCactus online newsroom, clients have complete control over their news releases. Distribution can be immediate or scheduled for the future and is handled through RSS feed, which has several advantages over e-mail.

Although a newsroom should go beyond merely archiving past press releases, this is still an important step. Many journalists will review old press releases for more information when they research story leads, so it’s important to make them available, and searchable, online.

Research/Study Data

Although it may not seem important to list this information on your Web site, it is an excellent opportunity to provide more information about your company. Including research data, preferably both in-house and third-party findings, not only makes the company seem more transparent and unbiased, but may also help establish your company and its executives as authorities in the industry.

Corporate Background

Even for large and recognizable companies, a corporate background is a great tool to add to your newsroom. Journalists will often use this and corporate financial sheets to fact check stories. Background information you include in your newsroom can be anything that relates to your company, such as an industry background or news stories about events that affect the industry as a whole. Hard information and statistics can go a long way in telling your company’s story.

Executive Team Information

These should include photos and biographies for the entire executive team. Although not as important as contact information, executive biographies and photos are appreciated by journalists who may use the information and photos to add a more human angle to their story.

Photos and Multimedia

This is a basic item every company should be sure to include in its online newsroom. Although several publications have their own photographers, smaller content producers, such as bloggers, often have to rely on company provided photos to illustrate their stories.

Adding product photos, executive photos, downloadable logos, pictures from special events and other images can increase the amount of coverage or visibility your company receives. Be sure to include both low- and high-resolution images and to specify file size so the user knows what to expect.

This is also an excellent opportunity to include sound clips, video, animation or any other pieces of media you have on file.

Links and Related Sources

No matter how much information you provide in your newsroom, you could always provide more. After all, we live in an information age.

When reporters work on stories that require multiple sources, it can be advantageous to help them with their research by pointing them towards other sources of information. Always remember that the easier you make it for the press to write stories about you, the more likely it is that they will.

Archived Coverage

Archive every past news story about your company in your newsroom, including unfavorable news stories. Why, you may ask? This gives you a chance to address any negative issues previously reported. Providing such editorials or linking related stories can lead the reporter to write from a more favorable angle or write an entirely new story if the bad news has already been covered.

Provide a search function to make it easier for journalists to find stories based on subject, headline, news source, date written and any other qualifiers.

Special Events

This is an excellent way to show how that your company is involved with the community. Special events provide great opportunities for news coverage, especially when your company works with local media, other businesses or nonprofit groups. Dedicate a section of your newsroom to special events, future and past.

Upcoming events should include information about the event, times and dates, contact information and a list of partners. Past events should also include follow-up summaries and photos of the events.

White Papers

If your company produces white papers, you should include them in the newsroom. Authoring white papers will lend credibility to your company and again, can position you as experts. White papers can help both new and experienced reporters by providing them more in-depth information on various topics.

Awards and Recognition

Your online newsroom should have a section dedicated to any awards or recognition your company or any of its employees receive. The most obvious benefit of demonstrating recognition by peers, industry or third-party observers is that it adds credibility.

Press Kits

Press kits are still excellent tools for providing more information to journalists writing stories about your company and should always be included in your online newsroom.

Distributing your press kit online can be done easily and economically. Electronic media kits aren’t nearly as resource exhaustive as their physical counterparts.

Information in press kits should be more detailed and work to support news releases. Make sure to include executive biographies, fact sheets, photos, multimedia, downloadable logos or illustrations.

The NewsCactus service allows subscribers to upload as many PDF press kits as desired.

One of the many advantages of an online newsroom is that it frees public relations representatives from fielding unnecessary calls by reporters asking questions that could easily be answered in a Frequently Asked Questions page or elsewhere in your newsroom.

Help the media help themselves by providing a wealth of online information and making it easy to navigate. The more information you provide and the easier it is to find, the more exposure and visibility your company is likely to enjoy.

When creating an online newsroom, the bottom line is to create a reliable source of up-to-date, accurate information for the press. Simply put, it will improve your media relations.

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.

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!