Pressrooms 3: Don’t bug me

In our two previous instalments on online pressrooms we discussed their function and content. Media relations, poor pressroom design and how to avoid bugging the pants off the media is what we look at this time.

As mentioned before the essence of a good online pressroom is usability, relevance and searchability. The media want to go into an online pressroom and find what they are looking for quickly and easily. When they leave we want them to have an up to date and accurate picture of our company, its products and services. We want them to have a good overview of who we are and what we are about.

Unfortunately, the media do not march to the beat of our drum. Nor do they necessarily have the same outlook. It’s naïve to think they share the same agenda as us. They have their own job to do and it’s sometimes a difficult one. What we as small or micro-sized businesses have to appreciate, and many don’t, is that the media, while useful to our ends in many respects, are not our PR department or some unofficial arm of our marketing team.

In creating an online pressroom what we can hope for, in addition to fair and balanced treatment, is the means, albeit in a limited way, to set the agenda. Though it can be viewed as an advertising space like the rest of our site, an online pressroom should be less ‘markety’ and focus on media relations, telling our story in a newsy and media-savvy manner.

The best online pressrooms have attempted to get inside the heads of the media by identifying potential stories, features and being pro-active on expected lines of enquiry. If you’ve had previous contact with the media or occasionally produce news releases you will know already what “makes a good story”.

A Scottish tabloid journalist known to the author ranks stories as GLS (Good Local Story), VGLS (Very Good Local Story) and so on upwards. No doubt this is a personal system but it does perhaps shed some light on the media mindset where the newsdesk response to be avoided when trying to place a story is “So what?”

By setting the pace in our online pressroom with themes, issues and topics we can allow ourselves a little measure of optimism that our efforts will have some tangible influence in our press coverage. Bear in mind that PR is something of a black art where the only real power possessed is that of subtle persuasion and where Return On Investment can be difficult to gauge. Good online pressroom design and content is therefore essential to the plot. But what constitutes bad online pressroom design?

Major bugbears are pressrooms that are out of date, awkward to use and have no means of searching through news release archives. These, of course, are the obvious ones, what are the unwitting offences that irritate the media?

Here is a sample of the top teeth graters we have uncovered:

• Difficulty finding the pressroom
• No contact details for anyone to call with media queries and requests
• The latest news release not being posted on the site at the time of issue
• A dearth of background details, info and FAQ
• Being asked to register to access the pressroom
• Being asked to supply an email address to access the pressroom
• Lack of clear time dating* of releases and other materials
• Lack of high-resolution publicity pics and logos to download
• No way of registering for future releases
• Flash and other unnecessary whistles and bells

* For the avoidance of doubt, write dates out in full, not in numerals. 9/11/02 means 9th of November 2002 in the UK, but in the States would be read as September 11, 2002.

Previously - online press rooms | online press rooms 2