Tips to Make Your Online Newsroom Matter
Let’s call like it is. The current media landscape is a constrained space.
Fact – there are fewer reporters and traditional media outlets to pitch.
Fact – media outlets are still inundated daily with an excessive amount of press releases from PR pros on topics across the board.
Fact – the Web now affords us all more channels and opportunities than ever before to disseminate news to target audiences.
If your company, organization or clients are not currently taking advantage of an online newsroom, now is the time to step back and think about how to put one in place. Small businesses and companies will argue that they simply don’t release news frequently enough to warrant having an online newsroom. To that end, I would encourage everyone to think about using online tools and channels to Be The Media.
As you’ll see in the PowerPoint below, Lee Odden differentiates between “pull” and “push” tactics that can be used to distribute news. These pull tactics are largely based on proactively centralizing key content within an online newsroom to help create a searchable resource for journalists to discover your news.
As opposed to just thinking about an online newsroom in terms of static news releases and a couple executive bios, you should envision the page as a central resource for housing key content. Why not use your newsroom to house weekly videos with an expert at your company speaking about a specific niche topic? Using consistent keyword titles and tags and filing all of these videos into one playlist, you’ll be creating a solid content package that will track well on the search engine front, where a journalist is most likely to conduct their initial research around a topic. All analytics around the videos, including search referral terms, can of course be tracked through YouTube Insight.
If you’re uncertain as to where to start and how to structure an online newsroom, I’d encourage you to check out the posts below:
How to Create an Online Newsroom – I like the reminder here about integrating social media into your page.
Quick Tips for Building Online Newsrooms – Nice bullet points to keep in mind, particularly about tracking and measuring to see what type of content draws attention.
How to Build A Better Online Newsroom – Jeremy Porter does a great job with this post, showing comparisons between existing newsrooms used by Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
In addition, I’d HIGHLY encourage you to check out this presentation below. It’s one of the most resourceful PowerPoints I’ve come across on Slideshare in some time. Lee Odden does a great job of breaking down the importance of using an online newsroom to drive search.
Feel free to add your own tips below!
-Scott
Digital Leap 
Scott wonderful post this one really helps me out right now. I have just started to dive into helping my client leverage their Newsroom for SEO and this is a great article full of info and resources.
Fantastic, glad it is helpful Kevin, hope all is well in OH! Cheers.
Scott,
Fantastic post. I think that there is a lot to learn here, in a very easy to swallow kind of way. I think the door is opening nicely for online news rooms to make a big difference. I will be passing this one along.