The Online Media Room: Your front door for buyers (yes, buyers!)

The online media room (sometimes called a press room or press page) is the part of your organization's Web site that you create specifically for the media. In some organizations this page is simply a list of news releases with contact information for the organization's PR person. But many companies and nonprofits have elaborate online media rooms with a great deal of information available in many different formats: audio, video, photos, news releases, background information, financial data, and much more. A close cousin to the online media room is the online Investor Relations room that many public companies maintain.

I want you to consider something that is vitally important: all kinds of people visit your online media room, not just journalists.

Stop and really let that soak in for a moment.

Your buyers are snooping around your organization by visiting the media pages on your Web site. Your current customers, partners, investors, suppliers, and employees all visit those pages. Why is that? Based on casual research I've done (I often speak with people who are responsible for their organizations' online media rooms about visitor statistics), I'm convinced that when people want to know what’s current about an organization, they go to an online media room.

Visitors expect that the main pages of a Web site are basically static (i.e., they do not update often), but they also expect that the news releases and media-targeted pages on a site will reveal the very latest about a company. For many companies, the news release section is one of the most frequently visited parts of the Web site. Check out your own Web site statistics; you may be amazed at how many visitors are already reading your news releases and other media pages online.

So I want you to do something that many traditional PR people think is nuts. I want you to design your online media room for your buyers. By building a media room that targets buyers, you will not only enhance those pages as a powerful marketing tool, you will also make a better media site for journalists.

For instance, you can create different links to targeted releases for different buyer personas (maybe by vertical market or some other demographic factor appropriate to your organization). You might also organize releases by product, by geography, or by market served. Most organizations simply list news releases in reverse-chronological order (the newest release is at the top of the page, and ones from last year are hidden away somewhere). While this is fine for the main news release page, you need to have additional navigation links so people can browse the releases.

I've reviewed hundreds of online media rooms, and the best ones are built with buyers in mind. This approach may sound a bit radical, but believe me, it works.

Comments

[Chris Moritz]

Do you have any examples you could link to?

[David Meerman Scott]

Hey Chris, thanks for reading.

Two big company press rooms.

1) Take a look at the Intel press room (click browse by category)
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/

2) I also like the way IBM has feeds of news releases by category from the press room
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/rss.wss

[Dee Rambeau]

if you roll to www.mediaroom.com you can see two dozen great examples of our client MediaRooms.
Thanks for the post David.

[Kelly Monaghan]

I have no idea if you monitor comments on such ancient posts, but just in case . . .

Do you have any examples of media rooms from SMALL, perhaps mom and pop, companies that you could share?

BTW, I am DEVOURING your book and feel that there's a crying need for a series of Special Reports, tied to each section, that would expand on the topic, offering nitty-grotty how-to and resources.

Dan Poynter, who wrote the "Self-Publishing Manual" is brilliant at this type of brand extension marketing.

[David Meerman Scott]

Hi Kelly,

I do monitor all comments. Many smaler technology companies have decent media rooms. For example, Pragmatech (about 50 people in the company) is here http://www.pragmatech.com/NewsAndEvents/

But it is rare with other small companies. However, it is a great way to market so I hope companies begin doing it.

Thanks for reading.

David

[David Meerman Scott]

Kelly,

The Fuel Team provides an outsourced online media room service and their client list has many smaller comapnies and nonprofits http://www.thefuelteam.com/index.php?s=33

David