Public Relations Tips: Online Media Rooms

You want to make your media room as user friendly as possible. This is a great way to keep the media involved, and coming back. Anyone who is truly serious about media attention will provide an easy-to-navigate, compelling media room. Go to your web site right now and review it with a critical eye. Then whip the site into shape so every reporter gets a grand welcome and ends up wanting to stay. You might even try calling on your best media contacts to help you design the site, then invite them to do a test run to see if it's user friendly.
For more advice on how to best attract, handle, and keep the media coming back by creating an easy to navigate, user friendly site, see Special Report #22 "How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back"

Posted by Rachael at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Even though having a kick-butt online media room is crucial to success, it is also important to consider the following: At events the media are covering, be sure you make printed media kits available. Not all journalists have access to computers when they're on the road.
It's OK to make only a few images such as color slides available in your printed media kit. Then refer the media to your online media room, where they can view a larger sample of what's available.
Even if you have an online media room, make news releases available by fax or e-mail, particularly in breaking-news situations. Many reporters want something they can hold in their hands, or file along with other paper documents.
For more advice on how to best attract, handle, and keep the media coming back to your online media room, as well as your other events, see Special Report #22 "How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back"

Posted by Rachael at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Even though having a kick-butt online media room is crucial to success, it is also important to consider the following: At events the media are covering, be sure you make printed media kits available. Not all journalists have access to computers when they're on the road.
It's OK to make only a few images such as color slides available in your printed media kit. Then refer the media to your online media room, where they can view a larger sample of what's available.
Even if you have an online media room, make news releases available by fax or e-mail, particularly in breaking-news situations. Many reporters want something they can hold in their hands, or file along with other paper documents.
For more advice on how to best attract, handle, and keep the media coming back to your online media room, as well as your other events, see Special Report #22 "How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back"

Posted by Rachael at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When creating your media room, consider the following tips:
Your PR department, not your webmaster, should take the lead when designing a media room. Webmasters are good at what they do, but most of them don't understand what journalists need.

Your online media kit must be available in HTML. Remember that different journalists have different needs. Some of them work with sophisticated computers. Others, however, might be using an older PC with a 28.8 modem, which slows them down on deadline.

Give journalists a choice of resolution. Some editors prefer low-resolution photos. Most media outlets need high-resolution images, usually 300 DPI or better, in JPEG, TIF, EPS or JIF. Make it easy for journalists to find what they need by putting all the images under one icon on the tool bar. They can click the icon, then choose what they need.
To get even more great tips to help you learn more about how to create an effective, usable, and downright awesome online media room, see Special Report #22 "How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back"

Posted by Rachael at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your online media kit should include the same elements as your printed kit. Before you build it, think about what you want to accomplish. Your Number One goal should be to include anything that will make a journalist's job easier and faster. The kit can include the following:

Company history
Bios and photos of key executives
Facts about the company
Lots of free information, including articles and speeches written by company executives
The latest news releases. Include the PR contact's name and phone number on each release
A list of your products and services, with product photos
A Q&A sheet
Links to related sites
Reprints of articles written about you
A list of media outlets that already have covered you. This should include TV and radio shows where you have appeared as a guest

Don't worry if you can provide only some of the items on that list. Remember that journalists are usually on deadline. They shouldn't have to wade through mountains of information to find what they are looking for.
To learn more about how to create an effective, usable, and downright awesome online media kit, see Special Report #22 "How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back"

Posted by Rachael at 07:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: website, media, press, media_room, online_media, online_media_room, website_mistakes
Here are some of the most egregious sins a web site can make that confuse, offend and generally turn off visitors, including the media:

Home pages with big, clunky photos that cause sites to load too slowly.

"Wallpaper" backgrounds usually made up of the company's logo repeated in row after row. Then type is slapped on top of it. It's like reading print on top of wallpaper, and often it's illegible.

Hard-to-find addresses, phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses. I once found a web site for a public relations company that had the phone number buried three layers into the site. Don't hide this information under a "Contact Us" key either. Post it right out there on the home page, or on every page of the site.

Information that makes the site look outdated. For example, the phrase "We can deliver in time for Christmas!" shouldn't appear at the site in February.
For more examples of things you shouldn't do online see Special Report #22 "How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back"

Posted by Rachael at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Getting people to your site initially is important, but getting them back to it again and again is how you make money and boost sales. The following are some great tips for getting people to your site:
 Publish an e-mail newsletter weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. It's a great way to position yourself as an expert, sell products and spread the word about you.

 Offer a tip of the day on your home page.

 Invite visitors to take a quiz and test their knowledge of something related to what you are selling.

 Offer something free if visitors will fill out a short survey, answer a question (a great way to take a poll or survey), cast a vote, take a quiz or give you a testimonial that you can use in your marketing.
For more great ideas to get people to your site again and again and boost your sales see Special Report #17, "63 Powerful Ways to Promote Your Web Site to Draw Traffic and Boost Sales"

Posted by Rachael at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perhaps the one thing that can make or break your company website or online Media Room is hard-to-find addresses, phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses. Don’t hide this information under a “Contact Us” key. Post it right out there on the home page, or on every page of the site.

Provide the PR person’s telephone number, fax number, cell phone or pager number, an e-mail address and, if you’re really helpful, a home telephone number. If your PR person isn’t comfortable with so much personal information out in cyberspace, one option is to provide some of this information behind a password, although the media generally hate having to jump through this hoop.

If using a password, make it easy for journalists to sign up for it. Remember, journalists are on a deadline and will often need to contact someone within your company outside regular business hours. If your contact information is not readily available, the media will not hesitate to pass you over for a story.

For more ideas on constructing a media-friendly Media Room and some great examples of companies’ successful media rooms, check out How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back

Posted by DK at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. Don’t bury your press releases where no one can find them. If you’re going to have press releases at your website, make sure that there’s some way to find them from the home page.

2. Post your press releases in plain old HTML. Don’t put them in PDF format. Believe it or not, some people put their press releases on the web site in such a way that you have to download them.

3. Make sure your website is set up in such a way that search engines can get into the inner pages of your site.

4. Put a button on their home page called “media room” or “press room.” If the media is coming to your website just to nose around, to see if you’re worth interviewing or calling, they can click on that button and immediately go to the new releases and backgrounders, Q&As and profiles.

More helpful tips can be found at Secrets for Getting Through to the Media Online.

Posted by DK at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before you build your online Media Kit, think about what you want to accomplish. Your Number One goal should be to include anything that will make a journalist’s job easier and faster. Provide lots of free information, including articles and speeches written by company executives, a list of your products and services, with product photos, a Q&A sheet, links to related sites, etc.

More sophisticated web sites even give the reporter the option of searching archived company news releases on a particular topic, then reading the releases that come up after the search. Remember that journalists are usually on deadline. They shouldn’t have to wade through mountains of information to find what they are looking for.

Journalists love anything and everything that makes their job easier. For more a more in-depth look at how to make your online Media Kit everything a journalist wants, check out How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back

Posted by DK at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just as you create a paper media kit, create an electronic media kit right at your
web site under a button called “Media Room” or “Press Center.” This is the place reporters can stop if they need background or story ideas without having to navigate the entire site. They are less expensive than producing and mailing hundreds of media kits.

It’s easier to update electronically, as printed kits can become outdated very quickly and updating them can be very time-consuming and expensive. Journalists, also, don’t want to have to store big, bulky media kits in their newsrooms. They can simply bookmark your site, then return to it when needed.

For more tips on creating an online Media Kit that keep journalists coming back for more, check out How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back

Posted by DK at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Poor-quality electronic photos, whether on your company website or in your online Media Kit generally turn off visitors, especially the media. You can post images to the web the 72dpi format that most web-based image files are set at. However, because of the compression formats for web-based images, they are not ideal files for print media.

If you want to make print-ready images available at your site, you should link to a high-resolution version of the image that will only download to the visitor’s system once they've clicked the link. Journalists appreciate this forethought on your part and will come to you more often if they know you’ve got great pictures that are already formatted for them.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, yes, but only if they are the right kinds of words. To find out what else goes into an online Media Kit, check out How to Create an Online Media Room and Keep the Media Coming Back

Posted by DK at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just as each different type of media outlet (radio, TV, newspapers, magazines) communicates their stories in different ways, each has a different set of needs for information in a media kit. Tailoring your media kit to fit their needs not only saves you from having to send out unnecessary materials, it also makes you look great in their eyes because you're sending them exactly what they need.

Radio

The radio bookers hardly do their research a lot of times, so a lot of times if you do provide good interview questions, they will practically read right down the list. You also want to provide some backgrounders for them so that if they actually are doing their research, they can read up on it and feel knowledgeable. They usually will not look over the product or the book all that carefully. They may not even get into it all. You just want them to be able to look at it, do a talk show, and sound credible based on what's right there.

Newspapers

Continue reading "Tailoring your media kit to fit the recipient" »

Posted by DK at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)