Research from the most recent TEKGROUP International online newsroom survey, conducted in mid-2012 showed that journalists expect your organization to have an up-to-date, multimedia showcase of your news content. Not just a list of press releases, but an interactive and social media enabled communications center for your brand. Below are 8 steps to help create a more effective digital public relations presence.
- Mobile; ensure that your online newsroom is available in a mobile format (iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Droid) to ensure maximum reach for people that use those devices.
- RSS; offer a set of RSS feeds for your various news content. Examples might be “All News RSS feed”,”Sales and Financials RSS feed”, “Product XYZ RSS feed”.
- Crisis Communications; create a “dark” site for crisis communications efforts to help streamline the process of managing those situations.
- Blog; offer a blog from within your online newsroom highlighting some feature of your organization. R&D, sales and marketing, or perhaps a product development expert.
- Social; create a social media landing page that has one-stop access to all of your various social media outlets. Examples include Cigna and Toyota.
- Facebook; if appropriate, integrate your Facebook business page within your online newsroom. This will allow visitors to your website the ability to share content with your network.
- YouTube; create and maintain a YouTube account to integrate with your online newsroom. This will allow you to share videos from YouTube in your online newsroom.
- Twitter; establish a news Twitter account for your organization. This will allow you to publish directly from your online newsroom to a dedicate news Twitter following
With an online newsroom you can maximize the opportunities that you get for news coverage and shareability and can save time and money by automating certain tasks. Let your online newsroom work while you don’t.
Totally appreciate the practical advice here. Can someone explain to me what a “dark” site is, however? (Under Crisis Communication bullet.)
You are welcome! Typically, a “dark site” or “crisis communications center” is a set of webpages or a website that is behind-the-scenes, ready to be published, but not live. Then, in the event of a crisis, the “dark site” can be quickly turned on and made live and publicly available. This allows PR and communications teams to plan ahead and then when the crisis does hit, they are not scrambling around trying to find information and publish web pages to address the crisis. Ford Motor Company used a “dark site” when the Firestone tire crisis hit so many years ago, Delta Air Lines used a “dark site” when one of their Comair planes crashed. They had already prepared all of the information ahead-of-time with specs of all their planes, airport information, and numbers for families to call, in the event a tragedy ever struck. When it did happen, they were quickly able to publish a set of webpages with all of the pertinent information.
A “dark site” can help you be prepared and establish a set of content that is waiting in the wings to be published in the event of a crisis. Obviously, you won’t be able to prepare for all crises, but things like missed earnings, product recalls, top executive announcements and other events, you will have a little bit of time to create a dark site, get it ready, and then when the news does break, you are able to publish it very quickly and focus on managing the crisis instead of managing your website.
Hope this helps!
It helps a great deal, Steve! How do you determine what should be included on your dark site? Do you simply determine what some possible key crises might be and then prepare a site that way?
I think so yes. Some companies have weather-based crisis centers, in case of a hurricane or other weather based event that might close stores or locations. Some companies include product specifications in case of recalls or some sort of crisis surrounding a vehicle or other product. It surely depends upon the type of company that you are, and you certainly can’t plan for everything, but including various dark sites around potential issues is a great place to start!
It’s amazing how many companies don’t have an up to date newsroom or any newsroom at all – they make it really hard to find all of their news and it’s just a lost opportunity for everyone.
I launched my new company Launch.it for every company and PR agency to launch their news for free to create the largest search database (newsroom) and create a home for everything new to try and solve this problem.
I agree. There are a lot of companies out there and it has taken a while for some of them to adapt. Good luck with your new newsroom venture!