Comnicate Blog – Online Newsrooms

Looking for ways to promote your business better? Is there a tool that other companies are using to promote their brand, and one you are missing out? The answer is a nifty website solution called the Online Newsroom.

An Online Newsroom is of great benefit to any company, and key to any search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by your company to get the visitations that are so important. A recent study showed that journalists and site users (your prospects and customers) expect you to have an online newsroom as part of your website.

So what exactly is an Online Newsroom?

An online newsroom is a microsite that is part of your main website, dedicated to sharing your organizations news and information. With an online newsroom your business can self-publish news and announcements, integrate your social media, communicate with your stakeholders including customers, suppliers, supporters, employees, shareholders, business partners, industry thought-leaders, and more. The newsroom also enables journalists to track your organisation, subscribe to your RSS feeds and receive your regular updates. Its also your storage library for digital assets, including your public documents, photos, graphics, even videos.

A newsroom is valuable to businesses that want to build good relationships with their stakeholders and audiences. These stakeholders have a direct impact on the success of your business. And if a business is unable to give them the information that they expect, they may goelsewhere.

A newsroom addresses this need and provides the perfect media tool to embrace your audiences. It allows company announcements to be sent to all stakeholders, in multiple digital formats, via multiple gateways, and viewed on different devices or appliances. It also provides an overall framework for managing your social media.

The great thing about an online newsroom, is that you dont need to design and build one. At Comnicate Media, we specialise in building newsrooms that will work with, and mirror, any existing website. Click here to see an example of a Comnicate Newsroom.

Some of the typical features of a newsroom include:

Permanent Library for Announcements, Photos, Graphics, Video
News & Press Announcements Dispatched with One -Click
Inbound Public News Feeds and Re-Broadcasting (Industry News Sharing)
Inbound News Feeds from your Social Media sites (back linking)
Secure News Area (For Journalists)
Email facilities for sending out your news
Access Buttons to Social Media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc
Investor Updates and/or Stock Exchange Announcements
Employee News Management – Identification, Collaboration, Distribution
Inbuilt Video & Storage
External Video Access (i.e. YouTube)
Inbuilt Voice Podcasting & Storage
Crisis Management Communications
Analytics Information to measure the performance of all media communications
Google, Yahoo, Bing, Search Engine Optimisation
Hierarchical User Access Security Levels

The great thing about an online newsroom, is that Comnicate has made it very easy. Comnicate Media provides cloud-based newsroom solutions that will mirror your existing and future websites. In fact – you can have your newsroom up and running in a day. Remember, if you are planning to build a new website, dont waste thousands on unecessssary softwaredevelopment, just add a Comnicate newsroom to your new website. And we keep the newsroom software up-to-date with best-practice features and functions.

Comnicate is always keeping their finger on the Newsroom pulse, and with all this information we have put together a few of our Best Practices for online Newsrooms. If these few are not enough, make sure you check out the full version of our 21 Point Checklist Best Social Media Newsroom.

To begin with the basis of any media or newsroom is simple; make your content accessible and easy to share with others. Beyond this, there are a number of practices that can be used to leverage the aptitude of your corporate newsroom.

Here are our top 3:

1. Easy News Access – Making sure your media newsrooms is easily found is one of the most important things you can do for your company and its online presence. A clear and concise link to your newsroom should be prominently displayed on the main page of your website, we suggest a name that is easily recognisable with its function like Media Centre or Newsroom. You may also want to consider your SEO; your page should be able to be found from all major search engines, if youe struggling with your SEO strategy, check out our handy tips.

2. Fast Access to PR Contacts - Contact details for the Public Relations representative of your company should be openly shared and easily found. Some websites tend to be somewhat secretive with these details. Often you are confronted with a maze of clicks before you finally stumble across an email address, only to find an ambiguous, general info address. You may even want to consider listing the contact details of your PR rep on multiple pages of your newsroom, as well as a central directory.

3. News release in Optimized format – Your most recent media releases and posts should be the first seen by visitors to your newsroom. Professional newsrooms present each release with a headline, date and one-line summary. It is important that your releases are clear and labelled. It is also imperative that these posts can be easily shared and forwarded. Incorporating social media tools will ensure that the sharing process is smooth and seamless.

For some ideas of format and design check out our Newsroom.

In past posts we have looked at how social media humanises your business and how trends influence online marketing strategies. This year we have watched the growth in individualised marketing trends on a very micro level. Companies are using online platforms like Twitter to answer every beck and call of their humble customer. For example, when an avid customer of an American steak delivery company tweeted, wishing for a steak upon his arrival at an airport, his wish was granted by a tuxedo-clad employee.

Comnicate has been fascinated by a number of these stories that have come out this year and believe that it is the answer to many online marketing dilemmas of today. The internet opens the door to a huge network of people and information. It is easy to be overwhelmed by such immensity, and many businesses realise their insignificance among the vastness of online corporations. Success lies in reversing this trend and using the internet to reach out to customers on the most individual level possible, and really listen to them.

Small and large businesses alike, can benefit from engaging with customers online, here are a few more tips to get your creative juices flowing:

- Add a photo and tagline to your Facebook or Twitter account.

- Solve at least one customer pain point a week, even if this means seeking them out.

- Ask your customers questions, keep them relevant to your business, and you might be surprised where their answers take you.

- Put aside dedicated time each day or each week to focus on your social media platforms.

- Speak to customers as equals, not as a business and follow up on things that you discuss.

Recently Comnicate released a blog article on some of the most commonly made SEO mistakes, and since SEO can be such an instrumental part of your marketing strategy, we have put together some more tips for a successful SEO strategy.

One of the most important aspects of SEO is ensuring that your keywords are working the right way for your company, and that you avoid keyword overloading. In the past many companies have made the mistake of stuffing their online articles with their keywords in order to build a better search engine ranking. However, this results in not only a poor quality of writing, but is useless to reader, and likely to get caught in Google spam filters. In the long run you will receive better results by releasing useful and regular articles.

It is equally as important to be extremely mindful of the origin of your links, and that they are grounded in relevant and reputable sources. In our previous SEO blog we pointed out that not all links are made equal. This is especially important if you use link wheels as part of your SEO strategy. Link wheels are created when smaller or mini-sites and pages are created and hidden just for the purpose of cramming them with back links. Be wary that if you have not been caught be spam filters yet, you can guarantee that you will in the future.

The popularity of the internet, and in turn search engines can mean success or failure to a number of businesses, regardless of their size so do not scrimp on your SEO. If you are looking into hiring and SEO expert, ask to see their results and check all references.