In 2012 Annual Conference, 2012 Conference - Monday

By: Tina Banner, APR

More than 75 percent of people learn of their news through social media and visit a corporate website or online newsroom for more information.  About 90 percent of people on social media channels use Twitter or Facebook as a primary source of news and information.  Steve Momorella’s presentation is a step-by-step guide on transforming the online newsroom into a social newsroom, including how to create and share compelling content and provide journalists and news consumers with the tools they need to find your latest stories. Participants will learn techniques they can implement immediately AND with results.

Steve Momorella, our speaker, admits that he is really addicted to social media. He starts his presentation with a photo of a printing press to illustrate how our jobs as communicators have really evolved.  Once the Internet started in the 90s, we all know that communication changed and it continues to change.  Social media really allows us to go right to the consumer.  We have become publishers.  We have a different audience and the ability to spread content has multiplied.

So who is socializing their online newsroom?  Many companies are using their newsrooms to connect with multiple audiences.  It’s more than just connecting with the media anymore.

Steve’s goal in this presentation is for you is to learn at least 10 tips and techniques that you can use immediately and apply to help you socialize your existing online newsroom.

We are talking about things like Content, Tools, Distribution and the Analytics.

There is a list of items that need to be in your online newsroom from searchable archives, PR contacts, news releases, background information, product info/press kits, etc., but what is more important is that you make it more social.

71% say they make use of social media tools between 1 and 4 hours per day, more from home (82%) than from work (68%)

28 Steps of taking your press release to an online newsroom

  1. News stories and press releases = social media press releases.  It needs to include multimedia options and include options for sharing.  It should be more than text.  Include hyperlinks, video links, etc.  Make sure you add components to make it useful for sharing.
  2. PR Contacts=Organizations wide social contacts— If you are the official contact for the organization then you need to include all your contact information, personal cell, personal Twitter handle, LinkedIn information, etc, not just your work information.
  3. Audio=Shareable Podcasts—Make it available and sharable.
  4. Video= Shareable Video and YouTube— With YouTube now, it is so easy to share that with your audiences.
  5. Images= Shareable Images & Flickr—Ensure that your images are sharable, allowing people to quickly post them on their Facebook Page or exchange them with friends and colleagues.  Use Flickr as a way to do that and interact with your audience.
  6. Blogging—Have “featured” bloggers, include your staff in blogging for your organization.
  7. Chat=Tweetcast w/Live Q&A—It is any easy way to get feedback quickly from multiple audiences.
  8. Events=Facebook Live– Let people check in with your events on Facebook.  Tweet about it.  Use Foursquare, create a Google hang out.  It’s not just for the media, but for all audiences who are interested in what you are doing.
  9. Press Kits= Interactive Flipbooks—Use IMovie and turn your press kit into something more interactive.
  10. Executive Bios=Subject Matter Experts—It’s more than just your CEO, include more of your top management and others on staff that have that expertise.  Make others available in your organization who are experts on a particular subject.
  11. Crisis Center=Micro Site—Create a “dark site” to be used in times of crisis.  Typically these consist of a handful of pages that can be updated behind the scenes and then made live when needed.
  12. Investor Relations=Web Disclosure and Social Media Disclosure—This includes earning announcements, financial documents and links to press releases and SEC filings concerning sales and other investor information.  A lot of companies are disclosing this information on the web instead of through the wire.
  13. Search=Social Search and Shared Results—A significant amount of visitors that come to your site are based on your SEO, so the more social channels you are engaging with, the better your SEO results will be.
  14. Secure Areas=Community Ideas—Password protect an area where only certain people can access.  So instead of a whole separate website, just include a secure area on your current website for certain consumers.  You should use this option for surveys to gather feedback not just for secure documents.
  15. Information Requests= iCHAT & Twitter CRM—Someone might request a printed press kit, or a CD/DVD or video.  A lot of these requests can be done using social media instead of traditional email requests.
  16. SEO=SMO—Make sure that your SEO strategy needs to be reviewed and make sure that all those items will push your page to the top when searches are done.
  17. Features=Recommendations—With a social newsroom you can ask people what they want to see based on what else viewers are seeing and are interested in, like industry news, etc.
  18. Email Alerts=Social Media Distribution—Using email is a sure way to increase traffic back to your online newsroom and also helps you create relationships with journalists and news consumers who are interested in what you are saying. Consider creating a Twitter newsroom account just to push out news.
  19. Contact Lists=Friends/Followers/Networks– It is so much easier now because your contacts can “unsubscribe” instead of dealing with bad emails and having to remove them from your contacts.  They can remove themselves now.
  20. RSS Feeds=Categorized/Shareable RSS– If you create multiple RSS feeds for multiple products people can subscribe to what they care about.
  21. Sharing/Bookmarking=Memes/Badges—By integrating the memes and badges you can see how many times people are viewing things on your site.
  22. Twitter Integration=Multi-Account Publishing– Using multiple accounts for different products.
  23. Facebook Integration=Group/Fan Page Publishing– Everyone wants more likes but isn’t it more important for people to share your content and republish it versus getting people to like your page.
  24. Wire=Social News Wire– If you start creating more online social wires then you don’t need to pay someone else to publish your news.  Be your own publisher, publish your own news.
  25. Site Metrics=Google Analytics—If you are not using Google Analytics you need too.
  26. Content Reports= Shares/Likes/RTs/Diggs—Include more than just clippings in your reports.  You need to include your social media engagement through a dashboard showing shares, story likes, re-tweets and Diggs.
  27. Clip Monitoring=Social Media Monitoring—You want to know about all the things that people are saying about you good and bad.
  28. User Registration Stats=User Behavior Reports—What kinds of things are people doing on your site.  What is going good with your website and what is going bad.

Steve Momorella, owner and founder, TEKGROUP International in Pompano Beach, Fla., has more than 17 years of direct Internet experience ranging from programming to high-level design and consulting for numerous large corporations including IBM, AOL and Ford Motor Company. Currently, he is responsible for the sales and marketing of TEKGROUP’s Online Newsroom Solution, used by well-known brands including Toyota, Starbucks, Prudential, Walgreens, Sprint and many Fortune 500 companies. Momorella is co-authoring his first book, “The Incredible Online Newsroom,” with Pete Codella to be published this year.

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