Showcase your global media contacts
Getting personal will set you apart from the crowd when building better media relations.
How to Optimize your Newsroom for International Audiences Part 2 of 4
As journalists continue to use the web to do parts of their research, they have come to expect certain features from a company’s online newsroom. For example, it should present a clear and concise idea of what the company does, how it started, and where it is based. It should prominently display the latest news and events, as well as state the various ways a visitor can contact a person or department within the company.
Provide reachable contacts
Believe it or not, reporters seeking contact names and phone numbers often can’t find them on websites (or even in press releases). The traditional pressroom tends to just feature the name, e- mail address and phone number of just one or two contact persons a journalist can reach for questions or comments on a story.
By contrast, Velux offers an easy to find list of spokespersons on topics and by geographical market. The contacts page also includes some simple FAQ’s that already might answer the most common questions.
It is vital that your newsroom allows you to feature online business cards of all your contacts. These cards should feature the contact’s picture, job description, telephone numbers, email addresses, and Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.
The link to social media profiles of individual media contacts has become increasingly important as it helps journalists and influencers follow the spokesperson as a relevant source of news. In recent studies, 75 percent of journalists describe social media as “completely” or “to a large extent” necessary to promote and distribute content.*
Taking the extra step in today’s social media landscape, it is essential for a brand's or a company's media staff show its human side. They need to be approachable.
Besides providing these contact cards, it would even be more helpful to clearly state what subjects, questions, or business areas that particular contact could help with – saving time for journalists and other influencers looking for the right source to get the needed information from, and increasing your brand's chances of earned media conversion.
However, providing contact details of your comms team does mean they need to be accessible. You probably know best of all if reporters can really connect with you? Meaning that besides the fact your contact details are clearly mentioned on the release page, think about your availability: is your daily schedule filled with meetings, your mobile phone on mute and your direct line places callers straight into your overflowing voicemail? If this is the case, then maybe you should indeed not put your contact details on display, but at the same time you might need to question your priorites concerning earned media.
In this day and age of bot-phones and web-based artificial intelligence, your stories might just get better footing because reporters and bloggers can actually talk to a person while on the story.
PressPage provides a SaaS PR platform with additional services for creation of advanced social newsrooms, virtual press centers and online media hubs. It enables brands to publish and distribute rich content, and provides direct insights into the results. PressPage empowers PR professionals by adding efficiency and effectiveness to their daily work routine.
*) Source: 2017 Global Social Journalism Study.