DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

If you want to be found online (and if you're trading online, why shouldn't you?), one of the best things ways to boost your website content is to create an online news room on your site. It's a great opportunity to post wonderfully rich and detailed search engine content. Creating your very own online newsroom is too good an opportunity to miss, but even larger companies with PR advisers often miss out on this. And web designers that say they offer search services have actually asked me what an online news room is, and what should it contain.

But that's fine, because it means there's all the more chance for you to romp up the search engine results if you do use an online newsroom to build up your content.
It's not the only way to build up content. In fact, an embedded blog, like this one, is one of the fastest methods you can use to make an impact on your search engine performance.

But an online news room not only adds to your other content. It is really important if you want media coverage to point back to your site. Since most online media coverage is very highly rated because of the massive amount of content they carry: a link from them to you is a powerful booster to your own site rankings.
Plus good quality media recommendations carry the vital editorial endorsement factor, which is like a super-charged testimonial. If you get a good media comment, it's wise to quote it again and again, at every opportunity, as it will carry a lot of weight.

How does an online news room work?

The reason online newsrooms work is because reporters rarely read news releases these days: they are swamped by them. But they do what anyone does when they need information. When they're asked by an editor to write about a topic, they turn to Google to search for relevant information. So it really matters that you put useful content about key issues that are relevant to your industry up there in your online news room.

The online news room allows you to put up all your news releases and articles, plus background on your company, bios of key people etc. It builds up into a large body of highly relevant search engine friendly content that will help the media write about you. And boost your website performance in online searches.

You can also add product and service background information. In fact anything a journalist might be interested in. Of course, if you have press kits, they should go up. And photos (but be sure to have a link or a request form for high resolution images as web pictures are far too small for print media). Maybe you run events that the media would be interested in? Or have good blogs, videos or pod casts that can be linked to? And financial information that you are willing to disclose - maybe about your backers (with their approval, of course).

But it's not just for the media. If you run the analytics, it's amazing how many ordinary site visitors like to see what you're putting out to the media. The online news room is a very popular page on a website. That means you are communicating your company progress and background to all sorts of useful people: potential recruits, investors and clients, plus suppliers and advisers. In fact, everyone involved with you. Existing staff, friends and family, for example, will all be better able to recommend your business if they can tap into good quality information on the site. Especially if it is distilled into media-friendly factual nuggets stripped of all the marketing BS.

It's really important that people can find their way round the information in the news room, so it has to be search-able. A recent survey of journalists in the US showed well over 90% needed news search-ability on a site. At the most basic level you can put up a list of headlines with jump links to the release text below, but that will only cover a screen-shot sized list of headlines. Anything more needs to be properly search able, but it is not rocket science as Google has a 'search this site' option you can highlight. I'm sure your web designer will come up with something more elegant if you wish.

Good PR people should be able to come up with an inexhaustible supply of ideas for releases to keep your newsroom fuelled.

Labels: media relations, on and offline PR, online news room, online news rooms, online PR, PR 2.0