Jon Newman, a partner of the public relations firm The Hodges Partnership, wrote a post about his company’s Facebook Fan Page. In the post, he wonders if it could replace their company’s online newsroom given the fact that its free, and easy to update and add content to. Newman received several responses to this post, one being from Steven Momorella of TEKgroup

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International. In Newman’s next post, he posted Momorella’s rebuttal to replacing the online newsroom with Facebook, and states that everyone should take a look at it. Here is what Momorella had to say:

According to Momorella, one problem with Facebook as the online newsroom is the fact that not everyone has a Facebook, and therefore will not be able to access your Page without an account. Also, journalists that are on deadline are not likely to access your Facebook Page, request to be a fan of your page, and then wait to be accepted in order to get the information they need for a story. They just don’t have the time. Also, when it comes to some information that you would like to password protect, you are unable to do so with the Fan Page. Likewise, if you wanted to send out information to a key group of reporters before it is released to everyone, you cannot do so. Another aspect that might pose as a challenge is photo sizes. Journalists need access to many different size photos whether it be high-resolution or low resolution. However, the photos that show up on the Facebook Fan Page are thumbnails that cannot be pulled for use.

When it comes to the design of the Facebook Fan Page, Momorella stresses that your limited to a template and you have no option to create categories, such as contact information, biographies, etc. The fact that the Fan Page is not broken into categories causes navigation to be difficult, and reporters need easy navigation if you want them to use your content. All of these limitations can hinder your brand image.

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Momorella also stresses with online newsrooms you have the option of having email alerts where you can send press releases, photos, audio, and video to your media contacts. However, with Facebook you don’t have that option, which stands in the way of getting your information out quickly and effectively. Also, there is limited search engine optimization because Facebook is a closed community. In addition, you don’t have control over keyword tags, therefore, making it hard for your Fan Page to show up in Google Search, and other search engines.

On top of poor SEO, Facebook does not have the tracking option to monitor how many views the site gets, and how many images are being looked at and downloaded. However, with an online newsroom you can check the status of who is accessing it, how frequently they are accessing it, what is being downloaded, and how often content is being downloaded. This allows you to measure how effective your online newsroom really is.

Lastly, you can’t create a social media release, which can include, multimedia and press releases, using a Fan Page. Reason being is the fact that in the Fan Page images are separate from videos, and separate from news. Everything is scattered throughout the page, which does not allow for packaging. However, with the online newsroom you can create a page or a press kit that has all the multimedia and news about any event packaged together.

Momorella states that not only is the above important, but credibility and security are also important aspects that a company should consider before creating a Facebook Fan Page as their online newsroom.

So the question now is should you or shouldn’t you replace your online newsroom with a Facebook Fan Page…I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

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Facebook; a social networking site that has over 300 million active users, and allows you to connect with anyone, anywhere. Being a Facebook user myself, I only thought of it as a way to connect with old friends and new friends that I have met in college. I never considered the fact that it can be used to create an online newsroom. Facebook can be used as a way to liven up your online newsroom, while being cost effective at the same time.

According to Josh Peters, a freelance social media consultant, the Facebook Fan Page can be used as the format for setting up your company’s online newsroom. Peters states that the Facebook Fan Page can be more appealing then a regular online newsroom given the fact that it can be put together easily, can have many views, and can include different options for updating and personalizing. Also, nothing stands in the way of signing up for one. Peters also mentions that it is a great way to get information out about your company.

Paul Dunay, a marketer and blogger for Buzz Marketing for Techonology, stresses the fact that setting up a Facebook Page is free. You hear that nonprofits? It is free. He also states that you can integrate other social media into our site as well. For example, you can use the Notes option to upload press releases to your site from your RSS feed, use Flickr to upload photos, use YouTube for videos, and add a bookmarking service. He mentions that there are tons of people on Facebook that will partake in

Courtesy of buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com

conversing with your company through the use of a Facebook Page as an online newsroom.

So where do you begin to create a Facebook Page as your online newsroom?

Peters says you first need to set up a Facebook Fan Page by signing into Facebook and going to facebook.com/pages/create.php. When there you fill out all the information about your company, upload your company logo, add applications that you will be using, then publish your page. It is that simple.

I mentioned in the steps above, adding applications. What I mean’t by that is you can add several applications that allow you to pull news from already established sites that your company may have. Peters states that you can set your Fan Page to automatically pull information from your blog, Twitter account, or press release site. To display blog posts from your company blog you can use the Facebook Notes, which is an application built-in to your Fan Page. It allows you to access your companies RSS feed, which automatically places new news on your page. You can also use the application, Networked Blogs, which allows you to upload your company’s blog feed and blogroll. On top of importing your blog and posts, you can also control what other people are saying about your company through the application Delicious. Delicious is a bookmarking tool that gathers and displays any mentions of your company. In order for it to be compatible with your Facebook Fan Page you have to download Delicious Box, which places a box on your Page that will show your bookmarks.

Through the use of a Facebook Fan Page you can also upload videos and photos to your site using the built-in video application that the Page provides. You can also use the YouTube box applicationF, where you can share your company’s videos that are on YouTube.

After your Facebook Fan Page is established, you need to invite fans. According to Peters, once you have 25 fans you can create a username, which simplifies your URL. Therefore, your URL will just state facebook.com/yourcompany’sname., which will make it easier for people to find.

Setting up a Facebook Fan Page as your online newsroom seems so simple. Why wouldn’t a company want to take advantage of this option? After all it is free. However, there are some drawbacks to it, and my next post will discuss the negatives of using Facebook as your online newsroom.

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Now that I have discussed what should be included in online newsrooms for nonprofit organizations, let’s look at some examples.

Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that specializes in reproductive healthcare among other things, has an online newsroom that is up-to-date in some ways. According to her article 10 Ways to Make Your Online Press Room Perform for Your Nonprofit, Nancy E. Schwartz states that the online newsroom should have to most up-to-date information. Planned Parenthood achieves this in their newsroom by listing their press releases by date, with the most recent release at the top of the page. Planned Parenthood also provides up-to-date information on where they have been recently mentioned in the news, but they do not provide an up-to-date calendar of events. Schwartz states that it is important to have the most up-to-date calendars and events listed in the newsroom. Schwartz also states that the newsroom should have downloadable images, including your logo in many different sizes, and photos offered with resolution options. Again, Planned Parenthood did not include a media library of any sort. They did, however, post video clips at the bottom of the newsroom of where they have been mentioned on national television. Schwartz mentions that it is key to have video and audio clips in the online newsrooms so reporters can access them quickly when they are crunched for time.

Unlike Planned Parenthood, American Red Cross, another nonprofit organization, has an excellent media resource library. They

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include instructions on how to access their photo library and download photos that are in high resolution. They have a video library specifically geared to journalists where you can access the latest videos and download them in high resolution or low resolution. They again, provide instructions on how obtain the videos, and warn journalists that they have to fill out a fact sheet to obtain high resolution videos. In addition to the media libraries, the site also has an option for downloading the Red Cross logo, however, you do need to send requests to receive permission to use the logos. They provide the contact information to send out requests.

On top of having a media library, Scwartz, also mentions that nonprofit online newsrooms should include an RSS feed so anyone who is interested can receive updates on press releases and other information. American Red Cross has an RSS category in their newsroom. The RSS site includes a thorough explanation of what RSS is, then explains how to use it with Red Cross, and everything that RSS for Red Cross is not.

Now, back to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood, as I mentioned above, does not have a media library, or an RSS feed. However, they do have a list of their awards, which Schwartz says is another important aspect for nonprofits utilizing online newsrooms. According to Schwartz, as a nonprofit you should allow your awards to stand out. Planned Parenthood has categories in their newsroom dedicated to awards that they have given out to honorable people who have made contributions on their behalf.

I have been talking a lot about what should be included in an online newsroom for nonprofits, but what are some aspects that should be left out? According to Non Profit Marketing Guide.com, nonprofits should make their newsrooms as easy as possible for reporters, starting with the homepage. There should be a link on the homepage that clearly labels the newsroom as press room, media center, or newsroom. However, they state to not just label it as resources, news, or news and information, because reporters may not be able to find it. Therefore, all the up-to-date information goes to waste.

Nonprofits need to find a way to make their online newsrooms as efficient as possible, while integrating the most relevant social media that correlates with their organization. If not, they may be left in the dust with no media attention, potential donors, or charities to sponsor them.

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For the most part my previous posts have been referring to big businesses, such as Toyota and Pepsico, that have successfully integrated social media into their online newsrooms. So I began to wonder if it is necessary for nonprofit organizations to have online newsrooms that integrate social media as well.  The answer is yes; it is necessary, especially since it is harder for nonprofits to attract media attention, and reach target audiences. Therefore, by nonprofits adopting social media newsrooms they have the potential for not only attracting the attention of the media but also the attention of donors, charities, and supporters. However, according to Jessica Bennett of Suite101.com, it is not a question of whether social media is right for the nonprofits to use, but a question of which type of social media should be used. She gives tips on social media strategies that nonprofits can utilize that are inexpensive and user-friendly.

Bennett’s number one tip is creating a blog as a newsroom. Having the blog as a newsroom allows for usability, given the fact

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that any blog format manages posts for you, and places them in chronological order. Therefore, nonprofits can place their press releases into the blog format and automatically have them in the order of the release dates. Also, adopting a blog format for the newsroom that will be regularly updated for incoming press releases allows for search engine optimization. A nonprofit can also put other essential information beyond press releases into the static pages of the blog format as well.

Bennett also mentions that nonprofits should not only have social media releases but  make them available to everyone for free. Social media releases are press releases that include keywords, links, and media such as videos and images. They can be sent through services that make them available online and offline audiences but can charge a fee in the meantime. However, Bennett refers to services that can be used to get the social media releases out for free such as, Pressabout.com.

Joanne Fritz, who has held senior management positions for two national nonprofit organizations and two universities, also mentions in an article on about.com, that nonprofits need to make their online newsrooms easy. If they don’t make them easy they could turn away reporters and bloggers that could write an article about them. She gives tips on what should be included in a nonprofit online newsroom:

• Contact information- Fritz mentions that the online newsroom should not only have the contact information of board members and other staff members, but to also include the contact information of those who deal with the media directly. There should be no barriers to this, such as filling out a form with the reporters information before reaching the contact information. There should be a telephone number, and email address available for the media to contact. If your media person is contacted, they have to be timely with a response. Therefore, there should be a person that receives phone calls and emails 24/7.

• Fact sheets- Fritz states that fact sheets are important for reporters and should, therefore, be easy to read. They should include bullet points, and be printable so reporters can download them easily. Also, they should not be placed in HTML format so reporters can cut and paste important quotes and facts that they can use for articles.

• Include images, charts and video clips- Fritz stresses that online newsrooms should have an area where all media, such as videos and images, can be stored. The images should not require permission to use, and should download quickly and easily. Since reporters need images and logos in a timely fashion, nonprofits should make them available in a range of sizes.

My next post will continue on this topic, but will provide examples of nonprofit organizations that utilize online newsrooms effectively.

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Now that I have explored how an RSS feed can allow news to travel fast about your company, let’s explore how we can quell the bad news that travels fast about your company when it comes to a crisis situation.

Let’s paint a scenario. Your company is doing well in whatever industry it’s involved in. It has plenty of good PR and has substantial earnings. Suddenly, a crisis hits. Panic comes over your company, and the pressure sets in. How do you handle this situation in a way that won’t stir up your stakeholders, and anyone else that could be deeply affected by it. A more important question to ask is how to handle this situation in a world driven by social media, where news travels at the drop of a dime? Enter into the world of dark pages.

According to Online Newsroom Best Practices from PR Newswire, you need to be able to update information quickly and from anywhere if a crisis situation arises. Therefore, they suggest creating a dark page in your online newsroom. So, what is a dark page? According to Panaorama Public Relations, who refers to a dark page as a crisis microsite, it’s a site that is already prepared in your online newsroom in case of a crisis. It can be updated right away with all the information involving the crisis. They stress in their tips for what to provide reporters in your online newsroom, to make sure the crisis microsite is prepared ahead of time so reporters can reach information that is specific to the crisis that occurred. Preparing it ahead of time is a good idea because there won’t be enough time to implement one when a crisis hits. Also, they tell you to test the site before hand to make sure it works. Shelley Aylesworth-Spink’s, writer for Suite101.com, includes a list of how to manage an online newsroom in one of her articles. The list includes creating a dark page or silent page, as she also refers to it as, so you can post updated news on a crisis and include any important information said by your company.

What should be included in your dark page? In the same article as linked above, PR Newswire suggests a toll free number that people can dial for updates, media contact information, media backgrounders, and prepared statements. They also stress that you should make sure ahead of time that your online newsrooms can handle the increase flow of traffic, wherein loading can slow down to low speeds.

The take away message from this is to always be prepared when a crisis hits. Without a dark page you could be stuck in the Dark Age, with not a clue as to how to get your information out as fast as social media can.

So what does it do? According to Common Craft’s RSS in Plain English video, RSS brings updates straight from your favorite blog or website to you. All you need is a reader, which is a page that displays new updates and posts. You can sign up for one on Google Reader. Once you have a reader, you go to your favorite pages and click on the RSS symbol, which allows you to connect to that site, and updates will show up daily on your reader. Watch the video below to enhance this description:

Now, how does this apply to online newsrooms? The authors of PRESSfeed, software that helps create RSS feeds for your website, made a video that explains how RSS allows you reach your preferred audiences. According to them, when you have an RSS feed your content travels all over the web. Also, web publishers and other bloggers can see this content and if they like it, and use it for republishing. Search engines take well to them too because when you add new content to your feed, search engines pick them up and index them. Since search engines have audiences themselves, those audiences that may have never known about your site now know about it. If they happen to like what they see on your site they can subscribe to it or add it to their social networking sites, which then reaches even more audiences. Since the content of your website is what will be linked the entire time it’s traveling through different networks, it will drive traffic back to your site. Therefore, if you place an RSS feed in your online newsrooms journalists can subscribe to the feed and get updates on your company without the hassle of having to go and search your website for new content. The content is brought to them. Also, if you want news about your company in your online newsroom to travel fast an RSS feed is the way to go because, based on the example above, it can start at a search engine, reach their audiences, which spreads to more audiences, and ultimately goes back to your site through linking. It is like a loop.

PRESSfeed’s RSS Video:

Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, supports using RSS feeds for optimizing your online newsrooms. He lists many options that add to Search Engine Optimization and usability, and subscribing to an RSS feed was one of them. He also mentions that a way to already have an RSS feed for your site would be to build your online newsroom with blog software.

RSS feeds can make a journalists life simple. They get the content displayed on their reader from your feed by subscribing, and your content can be republished and news will be generated efficiently about your company. It is a win-win scenario.

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Usability.

Social media integration.

These two aspects can boost an online newsroom’s reputation or diminish it. Eric Schwartzman, founder and chairman of iPressroom, elaborates on these aspects in different posts in his blog, SPINFLUENCER. According to Scwartzman, ease of use in an online newsroom can be tied into brand perception. If your online newsroom is hard to navigate through, or videos are hard to upload, this can be discouraging to users. Therefore, the brand or the product you’re selling could be viewed negatively based on this poor user experience. Also, integrating social media into your online newsroom can be useful for getting your brand out there. However, if you put someone in charge of it that does not know how to use social media, it will, again, create a bad user experience, which can harm your reputation.

One company that understands these concepts? Toyota. Their online newsroom integrates social media effectively and is easy to use. When I went to their site I noticed they had their own YouTube channel, they were on Twitter, they promoted Lexus’ on Facebook, and they were on Flickr. On top of social media integration, they provide links to all the latest news and news releases, have an image gallery, display company bios, and provide typed up speeches that have been delivered.

Courtesy of On the Record

Scott Deyager, Toyota’s social media supervisor, is behind this interactive online newsroom. In an interview with Scwartzman, on On the Record Online, iPressrooms podcast, Deyager explains the behind the scenes of Toyota’s online newsroom. Deyager explains that Toyota’s online newsroom is completely open. He said that their old site had password protected parts, which does not work in today’s age. He states that Toyota recognizes the changes that occurred with media, and that bloggers can have more pull then professional journalists. They also recognize that customers know a lot more today then they used to. Therefore, if they password protect everything then there is little transparency, and their brand could remain in the dark. A big step they took was when they revealed their 2010 Prius at the Detroit Auto Show, and posted a live feed on their online newsroom. Usually car reveals are password protected. Not for Toyota. Deyager explains that Toyota decided to do this given the economy. He states that he wanted bloggers with no way of going to the show, and those who can’t afford travel to be able to view the reveal. He says he wanted people to go to the site and report on the introduction and take all the embedded videos and photos from the show use it. He says that having the reveal open was beneficial in two ways: one, it drove traffic to their site through clicks, and two, people could put the information on their own sites.

When I went to view this video on their website I was taken back because it would not load on my computer. My thoughts were along the lines of, ‘So much for user experience.’  Then I noticed a link underneath the video that said download the hi-res version. Sure enough it downloaded on my desktop and opened in QuickTime in a matter of seconds. My hope was restored. Schwatzman wasn’t lying brand perception really is effected by usability.

View the 2010 Prius Reveal here; (Type in the search box 2010 Prius Reveal)

Courtesy of iPressroom

In 2001, iPressroom, a company that provides hosted online newsroom software to companies, was first beginning. On August 23, 2001, they announced they were a company that leases online press rooms to companies, and will help them share news releases, video new releases, pictures etc. over the internet. There was no mention of new social media, like Twitter or Facebook, because, obviously, they did not exist.

In 2002 jaycollier.net released Ten Essential Elements of Online Newsrooms. Some of the important elements listed were: contact information, updated coverage, and downloadable images. What struck me as humorous was the fact that for contact information they mention to provide a phone number linked to a real person. In today’s online newsrooms, we have blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. that allows you to connect to many real people. Also, downloadable images is funny because that is not really a concern today, unless you have a slow connection. Images are expected to just be on the sights. Now we have embedded videos, and even live shows that are streamed in online newsrooms.

Courtesy of Twitter

Now jump to 2007, where davefleet.com posted 5 Keys To Creating A Cutting-Edge Online Newsroom. We start to see that a key element to online newsrooms is integrating social media. Some of Dave’s key elements were: build your newsroom on a blogging platform in order to allow feedback, and allow users to share content through Flickr and Youtube.

Back to iPressroom, their description of online newsrooms now includes that they provide the latest in social media tools such as blogs, podcasts, and RSS, and helps with social media integration. iPressroom even has a its own Twitter feed, where it communicates to 1,023 followers.

Now that we have looked back at how online newsrooms have developed and have started to integrate social media, my next post will examine Toyota’s online newsroom and how advanced it is.

Image from indigogo.com

This past summer Pepsico proved their keen awareness of new social media, and dived right into it. The company decided to take a huge part in Internet Week 2009, a week dedicated to celebrating online communities in New York City, and created an “open newsroom” to cover its participation in the event. According to Adweek.com, Pepsico set out to hire nine unemployed journalists, bloggers, and social media gurus to utilize various social media such as Twitter, blogs and video to cover the events that surrounded Pepsico during Internet Week. The hired help were to create media packages that contained photos, videos, blog posts etc. and post them on Pepsico’s Internet Week site. Sound familiar? It is exactly like a regular online newsroom, but was just created for news coverage on Pepsico events during Internet Week.

The site itself contains blog posts, youtube videos, a meet the press section (the nine hired people who covered the events), and an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. The meet the press section really sticks out because it gives a headshot and biography for each hired press person.  According to Andrea Aker of Suite101.com, having a section for biographical information with headshot’s allows journalists to attain credible sources.

Even though the week-long event took place from June 1 to the 8 the site is still up and running, allowing you to look back on the efforts made by Pepsico during Internet Week.

Given the fact that many companies participated in Internet Week, Pepsico had the right idea in creating an “open newsroom” just for their own participation throughout the week. Also, according to PRweek, all the stories on the site were, and still are, “liftable”, meaning that anyone could and can use them. Based on my visitation to the site, I was able to see exactly what Pepsico participated in each day. It is organized and interactive.

Courtesy of communitelligence

Journalists are consumed by the 24/7 news cycle. They are constantly under pressure to make a deadline. While their jobs may never be easy in the sense of deadlines and pressure, online newsrooms have provided a way to take some of the pressure off. Online newsrooms are a part of a corporations website where all its information is displayed. According to TEKgroup, one of the top online newsroom software company’s, some of the most important information in online newsrooms includes, press releases, public relations contacts, photographs, and searchable archives. By displaying this information, journalists can quickly go to a corporation’s site, and access updated, accurate information with just one click.

However, with the explosion of new social media in today’s world, online newsrooms may not be enough. Journalists want online newsrooms to show how they are integrated in new social media, so they can access even more corporate news and information. According to a TEKgroup online newsroom survey directed to journalists, 70 percent of journalists stated that they wanted corporations to place a page in their newsrooms that directs them to all the social media the company is immersed in. Some of these social media may include CEO blogs, Facebook, Youtbube, and Twitter. However, less then 15 percent stated that they visit Youtube and Facebook to gather news from a corporation. The big one though? Twitter. Apparently, 38 percent of journalists expressed a desire to receive updated information from company Tweets.  My advice? Companies, start a Twitter page; journalists want them!

Journalists also expressed a want for corporations to list questions that other journalists have asked with answers included, in their online newsrooms.

Although social media integrated in online newsrooms is key, press releases are still a main part of newsrooms. Hilary Topper, of HJMT Communications, expresses how press releases went from being sent in an envelop through mail, to faxing them, to email, and now they are posted on online newsrooms. She says that placing press releases and microblogging parts of them to journalists is ideal.

If your still not sold on the fact that online newsrooms are a necessity, maybe the fact that there has been an eight percent increase in how often journalists visit online newsrooms, according to the survey, will change your mind.