The Online Press Room

Before you compose that press release and click the Send button, put yourself in a journalist's place. Here's someone who is swamped by hundreds of releases a week and is trying to hit a deadline for a story. The journalist needs fast, accurate, succinct information, in a place that's easy to locate on the Net. If the journalist is writing about a company, the first place he'll turn to is not the stack of press releases that most often go ignored, but to the Web.

Journalists start by either visiting a target company's website or turning to the search engines to look for businesses that manufacture, distribute, or sell the product or service they are writing about.

Your company now must give serious thought to how journalists can quickly and easily access the information they need from your website. This demonstrates the necessity of an easily navigable site with a clearly labeled press room (see Figure 18.1) that quickly satisfies the journalist's need for basic information.

Figure 18.1. Intel has a good example of a press room designed for journalists.

Constructing Your Online Press Room

So what makes up an online press room? First, a press room is like an online press kit. Online press kits are really no different than the printed kind. If you visit a booth at a trade show and identify yourself as someone with the press, any established business should be able to hand you a press kit. When you design a separate press room for your website, imitating what's in a professional press kit will ensure that you touch on all the necessary bases. After all, this is what journalists and reporters are looking for.

This is what a reporter wants from your online press room:

• In clear concise language, and not in business jargon, describe your company and what makes its products or services unique. Tell what impact your product or service has on your industry, and what problem it solves. Here's your chance to describe your unique selling position again. This is where you sell the sizzle, not the steakthe benefits, not the features, of your product or service. Don't claim that you're going to be the next Amazon or Microsoft, but make an effort to distinguish yourself from your competition.

• If you have images or photographs of your productor even a downloadable demoprovide links to those files in the press kit, along with links to any plug-in required to view them.

• List the key people in management, and detail their professional and business background. State what position they hold in the company and why they are qualified for that position.

• Give a press contact. This is very important and most often forgotten. Choose your best company spokesperson, one that can tell a compelling story about your company. Give the press a direct line and specific email address to contact that person.

• Ask if journalists would like to receive future notices about your company and products, and give a choice of how they'd like to be contactedemail, fax, telephone? Get their permission up front to make sure any future releases will end up on their desknot in their wastebasket.

• Finally, list all your latest press releases and media mentions in order, with the most recent first.

Warning: A PR No-No

Never make reporters register to enter your press room. If you do so, you can count the time they stay on your page in milliseconds. Sure, you run the risk of making your press kit available to others than the pressincluding your competition. But that's the nature of the Net. When you create an online presence for your company, you open your kimono for the entire world to see.