Online Newsrooms: The “Wow” Feature that Delights Journalists and Promotes Your Brand

To gain online readership, news organizations have taken a headlong dive into multimedia. Online newspapers and trade journals now make copious use of video and interactive multimedia elements. Long married to the written word, traditional print publications in their online editions now resemble TV broadcasts.

Their online audiences like it. Viewers of online entertainment and sports publications expect every story to feature some form of multimedia, usually streaming video. Research by publishers of general news and trade publications clearly shows that their audiences prefer stories with multimedia elements. Publishers and journalists now look to include multimedia in as many of their business stories as possible.

As a result, video and other multimedia content have become expected and necessary elements in online newsrooms. Also known as press rooms or media centers, newsrooms with multimedia attract journalists to websites. The “wow” factor of multimedia often induces journalists to feature the content.

Journalists view online newsrooms as an everyday resource: 66% visit an online newsroom every week and a third visit them daily, according to a survey of 248 media professionals by TheNewsMarket, a video content provider.

“Shortform video clips are fast becoming an expectation among journalists looking to feed new visual online formats, as are complementary assets including infographics and pictures with text,” states the report the Digital Revolution – Shaping the Way Journalists Consume Content. However, despite the growing importance of online newsrooms, they often don’t meet journalists’ needs.

• Less than 17% of survey respondents rate them as very useful in their current form.
• 45% find the lack of useful material very frustrating.
• Over half get frustrated if they can’t download high-resolution content.
• 41% want clearer rights information about using content.

Online Newsroom Best Practices

In light of those complaints, TheNewsMarket offers these recommendations to PR professionals in charge of building and populating online newsrooms:

• Ensure that content is relevant, up to date and regularly refreshed.

• Make high-resolution images available for downloading, ideally in a range of formats (JPEG, PNG, and GIF). Over half of respondents rated a multimedia gallery as their primary need. Over half would sign up to an online newsroom if it offered multimedia content but would not if the newsroom contained only press releases.

• Display usage rights and restrictions for each asset.

• Make content accessible, shareable and downloadable. Emphasize coherent and intuitive organization. Place every possible element that reporters might use for a story on a single page. Many online newsrooms require reporters to locate images in text lists or in thumbnails in a gallery on a separate web page or require reporters to subscribe to an email list to access videos or images. Those barriers hamper a journalist’s ability to compile stories that reflect PR’s message.

• Send alerts of newsroom updates via email or offer journalists a choice between email or social media alerts (but only to journalists who have opted to receive the notification service). Almost two-thirds of journalists prefer email alerts, compared to 17% who like RSS alerts and 14% who like Twitter.

• Make social sharing an integral feature of the online newsrooms. When journalists find content in an online newsroom, they sometimes like to share the link directly with their audience.

Other Press Room Tips to Attract More PR Coverage

Other research confirms the value of online newsrooms for corporate public relations and emphasizes the new preeminent role of multimedia. According to a Business Wire Media Survey, the online newsroom is second only to the home page as the most important online resource for journalists researching an organization,

Journalists are not the only ones visiting online newsrooms, said Ibrey Woodall, vice president, Web Communications Services at Business Wire, which offers a platform for building and maintaining corporate online newsrooms. They’re also frequented by bloggers, investors and consumers who use the online media centers to research the organization.

Woodall recommends that organizations.

• Place a link to the newsroom in the corporation’s top navigation bar.

• Follow SEO best practices. That includes using alt text for images, descriptive labels for images, an XML site map, and proper page titles.

• Use branding for the newsroom that matches the look and feel of the corporate website to help avoid confusing journalists on the hunt for information.

Bottom Line: Online newsrooms are now an essential public relations feature for corporations, nonprofits and government agencies. However, the newsrooms frequently frustrate reporters seeking information and multimedia content about the organization. Following these tips can help PR avoid that unfortunate situation and create a first-class online newsroom.