Creating an Online Press Room
- Creating an Online Press Room
- What You Need in Your Online Press Room
- Determining Access to Your Press Room
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Creating an Online Press Room
When a journalist needs a photo for a story or web article, where does he go? If you’re smart, the answer is your company’s online press room – a part of your website devoted to photos, press releases, and other items of interest to members of the media.
How do you create one of these online press rooms – and what materials should you provide? Read on to learn more.
What an Online Press Room Is—and Why Your Company Needs One
In the old days, when a journalist needed a product photo or something similar, he had to call up a contact in your company’s public relations department – who probably didn’t answer the phone directly, meaning the journalist had to leave a message and wait for it to me returned. The PR person then verified the journalist’s identity, figured out what he wanted, contacted someone else in the marketing department to locate a photo of the product in question, then stuck the print in an envelope and mailed it to the journalist. The entire process took several days if not a week or more – not ideal for journalists working on deadlines.
Today, however, you can distribute all manner of materials to the press over the Internet. While you can email digital photos to journalists, an even better solution is to create a section of your website just for journalists, where they can find and download product photos, press releases, and the like – immediately. It’s faster than the old way of doing things, and a lot easier on both parties.
This section of your site for the media is typically called an online press room. Ideally, it should contain all of your company’s press releases, product photos, brochures, catalogs, and how-to videos – in digital format, naturally.
Indeed, an online press room should be a key component of your company’s overall PR efforts. It can be used by any number of sources, including print publications looking for photos and artwork, broadcast media seeking short clips of your product in action, websites and blogs looking for photos to embed or link to, journalists and bloggers seeking information about pending articles, investors (or potential investors) looking for company information, and dealers and distributors who need images and information for the ads they run. Even the general public can find an online press room useful when they’re seeking more information about potential purchases.