CorpComms Magazine

Digital communications platform iPressroom has released a new guide to help PR companies optimise their online newsrooms for the age of 24/7 Internet activity.

Interaction between the PR industry and the press remains a lynchpin of communications activity, with PR professionals still placing the greatest stock in clippings and media response, followed by web traffic when evaluating the success of their campaigns, according to a recent survey by The European Public Relations Education and Research Association.

So iPressroom has delivered tips for making the most of communications firms' online news resources. Overall, the guide advises communications professionals to be house-proud about their press room. 'Your online newsroom is your home - make it a place people will be able to find, hear about, and come back to visit.'

If you are using your newsroom solely for press releases, updates may be a little erratic. To maintain a steady stream of content, try adding 'soft news' or 'post content in other formats - such as blog posts, infographics, audio or video content - that leverage existing resources and company events.' The acronym FARE sums up the cardinal content characteristics of Frequency, Authenticity, Relevance and Engagement.

Keeping the media centre regularly updated has other benefits. Search engines prioritise fresh content so recycle, repackage and re-broadcast content from other channels. To make your site easy to find, 'ensure your newsroom is search-engine optimised with the appropriate site architecture, HTML coding, keyword density and targeted inbound links from quality sources.'

If you are exclusively targeting journalists, you may be overlooking your wider audience of consumers, investors and shareholders. Create a media centre with content categories that provide valuable content to each visitor. Also journalists are diversifying as a breed and textual newsflashes may not cut the mustard with all of them. Bloggers and podcasters will reward your efforts if you supply print ready photos and broadcast quality video, or embeddable flash video players and widgets that they can then host or retweet.

To play to the social media pundits, give an opportunity for users to share and distribute content on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg to spread the word. On a more traditional note, give them the facility to print content.

Once you have got users into the newsroom, you need to help them navigate it. This is helped by a consistent layout in terms of font, colour and a functional CSS template, alongside a content management system that prioritises and updates content regularly and 'breadcrumbs' to return you to the Homepage.

Encourage visitors to your newsroom to go deeper into your main site, refer them to contacts in the PR department. Give them the opportunity 'to post a positive comment about a product or service, buy a featured product, make a donation to your company's philanthropy, obtain investment information, sign-up for your blog or online newsletter, or simply refer a friend to your newsroom.'

Set up CAPTCHA codes to protect your media contact details from the dreaded spam bots.

Keep an eye on your traffic. Set up an analytics service that tracks and monitors your links, keywords, and visitor demographics to see what users are looking at, sharing, commenting on or signing-up for within your site.

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