Make it easy: Build an online newsroom

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As public relations professionals we are constantly trying to garner attention for our clients in the community, media, and among other target audiences. Why not make it as easy as possible for them to gather the information they need? Put all the information necessary for a good story in a little package, by making an online newsroom.

At a recent PRSA Capital District Chapter presentation, Mike Lesczinski, public relations manager for Excelsior College, discussed their award-winning online newsroom they developed specifically for the reasons listed above. He shared his insight through a 10-step process:

1. Consider your resources. Maybe you have a full-time writer, photographer and videographer to interview sources, cover events and generate enough content for your online newsroom. If not, then consider how the content will be generated, whether it’s written, video or sound. You may have to occasionally put on the “reporter hat,” said Mike, to go out and interview/cover stories yourself. In any event, identify how the content will be gathered.

2. Identify your goals. What are you ultimately trying to achieve? In Excelsior College’s scenario it was to tell the many stories of their campus. Whatever your goals may be, you can’t create an online newsroom without first identifying the purpose.

3. Determine your content. Once you’ve identified your goals, you can then determine your content. Mike stressed the importance of providing content in all formats: written, audio and visual (images and video).

4. Identify your stories. Based on your goals and content, what will your stories be? And what is the best way to display them in your online newsroom? It’s always good to take video or audio content and transcribe it into written format – the more information in different mediums the better.

5. Choose a design. Whether you will be posting your content on your website, blog or others, it’s important to remember, the latest and most relevant content should be above the fold. So someone who visits doesn’t have to go searching throughout the page to find what their looking for – the latest should be at the top.

6. Optimize and integrate. Decide how you’re going to integrate your story onto your new platform and share it across other platforms.

7. Target audience delivery. Whoever your target audience is, figure out what it is they want to see. Mike gave a great example of what they did at Excelsior – asked the admissions department what questions they get most from students. The answer was: how does visiting a library work with an e-school? The next story they created, focused on how students visit the library at a distance learning school.

8. Become a media resource. A media kit is absolutely pertinent to your online newsroom. There should be information including a fact sheet, background information on your company, interesting facts, expert profiles and a media contact person.

9. Measure and adapt your strategy. Using Google Analytics, or another monitoring tool, you can track what content is getting the most visits and clicks on your page and then adapt your strategies based on your findings.

10. Leverage for earned media. Finally, with all the content you have built into your online newsroom, you should use it to gain media attention.

At the end of the presentation, there were some helpful tips on how to provide the media with what they need, which is photos and informational content – enough so that a story can be written. Timely information is always best, and the easier it is to access, the better.