Many journalists now accept the Web for use as a basic research tool. They start their research on your organization by accessing your website directly. Others start their research by using a search engine such as Google. This creates a need for you to ensure you have optimized your site for the major search engines.
The journalists’ search is helped immensely when your website has a clearly labeled media section that can provide answers. Their job is also helped when you have an easily found “About us” section on your home page.
The top five reasons journalists give for visiting an organization’s website are to:
· find the contact information (name and telephone number) of a spokesperson;
· check basic facts about the organization (eg spelling the name of the CEO, checking where head office is located, etc);
· discover the organization’s version of events;
· check financial information;
· download images to use as illustrations in stories.
Organizations spend a lot of money on websites, but unfortunately, the media sections of websites often fail to provide the most basic information for media use. The media area needs to be simple, clean and free of the excessive puffery found on many websites.
The media area of your website should obviously contain current and recent (within the past 12 months) news releases with a searchable archive facility of earlier releases. It can contain the full text, in HTML format, of recent speeches by your chairman or CEO, with an option to access sound bites of the speech highlights. It can contain copies of formal reportage such as annual and half-yearly reports to the stock exchange, the environmental protection authority and other government bodies.
Routine information should be readily accessible in the media area. For instance, details on the background of your top management, with their high-quality photographs, can be included in online media kits. Copies of your organizational structure and policies may be included. A corporate calendar of events may be available. Links can be established to photographs of products.
A diligently maintained media area may also contain other value-adding information such as story ideas, file footage of your organization’s operations and perhaps some organizational case studies.
Journalists don’t take your word as truth. They access media releases mainly to see how you are trying to position yourself. Your credibility improves when the media area of your website contains links to external sources, including media coverage, since articles from third party sources such as newspapers, magazines and television coverage are more credible than your own information output.
Journalists usually work to tight deadlines. They need fast answers and don’t want to wait for irrelevant downloads cluttered up by irrelevant pretty pictures and fancy designs. Many journalists work freelance and/or from home where some have slow dial-up connections. Some also have old computer equipment and software. Non-standard data formats like Flash and Quicktime tend to clog up their Internet connections. The simpler your website format, the better.
When they are up against deadlines, journalists don’t want to wade through red tape to reach your spokesperson. The last thing they want to do is to register their details to access your media area when they just want to have a quick look to see what is posted in your media area. And they need phone numbers and a live person right now, not when your office opens tomorrow morning.
Your website also needs to take the universal nature of the World Wide Web into account. For instance, it is customary in the United States to write a date in the sequence of month, day and year. However, in many other countries it is customary to write the day, month and year. This may seem trivial, but some journalists’ have ignored certain media releases because they assumed the information contained was stale. As an example, 3.10.2006 is seven months different from 10.3.2006.
If journalists can’t find what they are looking for on your website, they are likely to reduce or eliminate information about your organization in their article. Their ability to find information on your site will also affect their impression of the site and therefore their attitude towards your management.
Research by Web usability expert, Jakob Nielsen, found that journalists who participated in a usability study could only find 60% of basic information on the corporate websites of internationally known companies. Among other tasks, the journalists tried to find basic information about each company’s financial statements, management, commitment to social responsibility and PR telephone number. These were professional journalists, skilled at finding information and skilled at using the Web.
Another alarming way to look at the result is to consider that 40% of the information couldn’t be found. Leaving 40% of media enquiries unanswered should be a crime!
What’s worse, the journalists in the test could find a PR telephone number only 55% of the time. Although a website can answer many basic questions for journalists, they still invariably want to talk to a live person as well.
The way to fix these problems:
1. Conduct an audit of your website to see how easy it is to navigate.
2. Check your website PR information, especially your online newsroom if you have one, to determine how well it supports journalists’ tasks.
3. Consider conducting your own usability testing. Ask reporters who cover your industry to visit your site to find standard information.
The effectiveness of your online media relations activities may be measured by the number of visits to your newsroom and by the number of journalists who have given their email addresses to you for receiving news releases and other information.
Make it easy for journalists to find information in your website - To learn more about this author, visit Kim Harrison's Website.
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