Great webinar today featuring Ibrey Woodall of TEKgroup International and Keith Jenkins of the Washington Post on the subject of online media relations. I hope you had a chance to join us.
One of the takeaways for me as moderator was the need to really focus on the online newsroom component of your corporate web site. Don’t think of this as just an electronic replacement of your media kit, however — the newsroom should be open to all your visitors and should be your little media publishing platform. Remember, on the web, your newsroom is just a click or two away from the home page of the New York Times.
What should your online newsroom have? Here are some tips:
- Access to breaking news releases
- Background info and FAQs
- Contact info (including cell phones) for media reps
- Executive bios
- Downloadable hi-resolution photos of executives, products and logos
- Audio files of company executives talking about the company
- Product demo videos
- Searchable archives
Ibrey Woodall, who’s company develops online newsrooms, also recommends that the newsroom have the look-and-feel of the rest of your site, so people know that it is the official company newsroom.
Keith Jenkins also had an out-of-the-box idea that I wanted to pass along: having a chat/email function to be able to communicate with the CEO and other top execs.
TEKgroup has a list of company online newsrooms that it likes — here are a few of them:
