Is Your Website
Journalist-Friendly?
How
to Make Sure Your Site Meets Journalists' Needs
When journalists visit your website
and look for information they would need in order to write about
you, can they find it? The answer -- whether yours is a million-dollar
site or one designed by your board president's 14-year-old nephew
-- is a resounding "Probably not." And as a result,
your organization may be missing out on valuable media opportunities.
As I surf the Web doing research for articles I'm writing, I'm
constantly amazed at how many sites bury necessary press information
or omit it entirely. PR contacts, basic facts about the organization,
press releases -- even phone numbers -- are sometimes impossible
to find. And particularly when I'm on a deadline, my decision
of whether to include an organization in a story is often influenced
by the information available on its website.
Lest you think I'm the only one who feels this way, studies
conducted in the past year by both Vocus
and the Nielsen Norman Group
confirm that I'm not alone. According to the Vocus survey, more
than 90 percent of print journalists feel they waste half their
time sifting through a website's contents trying to find what
they need. And 60 percent say that not finding it can cause them
to pass over a company they might otherwise write about.
With nine out of ten journalists now using the Internet to
gather material for stories they're writing or to do follow-up
research on pitches and releases they've received, it's imperative
that your website help, not hinder, your organization's PR efforts.
Lisa Bousquet, director of marketing and public relations
at Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, knows
this first-hand. The zoo recently revamped all the press information
on its website because, Lisa says, "I had many a journalist
complain that he/she couldn't find what they needed. The overhaul
has definitely paid off for us."
It's also lightened the load on the zoo's small PR staff.
Journalists can now choose photos online and flesh out leads
received in news releases. "The press room has also made
fact checking much easier," Lisa adds. "I've had reporters
tell me they've used the site after covering a story to double-check
admission prices, dates of events, animal facts, etc. -- something
they used to have to do with a phone call."
To make sure that your organization's website is meeting writers'
and editors' needs, follow these important tips:
Include a Press Section
Whether you call it Press, Press Room, Press Releases, Media,
Media Information, News or News Room, a clearly labeled section
of your site should be earmarked for journalists. Ideally, a
direct link to that section should be available from your home
page and from every other page of your site as well. If that's
not possible, then at least be sure to provide a link to it from
your Information or About Us page.
And yes, even small organizations should provide a press section
on their sites. With so many reporters and writers out there
in cyberspace writing on so many different topics, the chances
of one happening upon your website at some point are a lot better
than you might expect. And you need to be ready for them when
they do.
Put the Emphasis on Information and
Navigation
Journalists judge your press room by the quality of the information
it contains, not by how many bells and whistles it has. In fact,
state-of-the-art technology can actually work against you here.
Many writers are freelancers who, like me, use older computers
with older browsers and dial-up modems. Huge graphic files and
multimedia presentations are the bane of our Internet existence,
taking forever to load or crashing our computers in the process.
If you don't want to frustrate us, keep it simple.
The
Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, and the Norman
Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge are two examples of institutions
that "get it" in this regard. And once journalists
land in these press rooms, they're not left stranded there. (Believe
me, it happens!) Links are provided back to the home page and
to other parts of the site for further information.
What Your Online Press Room Should Contain:
Complete PR Contact Information
Include your PR contacts' names, phone and fax numbers, e-mail
addresses, pager numbers if available, and your organization's
street and mailing addresses.
This seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? But the number of
websites that neglect to include important contact information
is astounding. The Nielsen Norman Group study found that although
one of reporters' main reasons for visiting websites is to get
a PR contact's phone number, 45 percent of the time they can't
find one.
Many sites, in fact, include nothing but a generic PR e-mail
address such as media@xyzmuseum.org. To a journalist on a deadline,
that's shorthand for "Somebody here might get around
to checking this mailbox in the next week or two, and if you're
lucky we may get back to you." In other words, it's useless.
You must provide a phone number.
I recommend putting full PR contact information right at the
top of your press section's main page. Why make journalists hunt
for it? If you have a large PR department and need a separate
contact page in order to list everyone, then put a prominent
link to that page on the main page.
Including contact information for other organizations in your
area can also be helpful. Monterey Bay Aquarium's contact
page, for example, lists the local Convention and Visitors
Bureau and other marine science resources.
Press Releases
In the Vocus survey, respondents ranked press releases as the
most important resource to include in an online news room. When
you post yours to your site, here are some important things to
keep in mind:
- Post them in HTML, not as PDF files or Word documents that
have to be downloaded in order to be read. Journalists don't
care about fancy formatting. They do care about finding information
and finding it fast. And they'll often want to browse through
a number of releases, especially if they're gathering background
information or trying to get a feel for your organization. Don't
hinder that process by expecting them to take the time to download
each release they want to look at. They won't do it.
- Make the title of the release a link to the full text, which
should be located on a page of its own. And be sure to include
the original date of the release next to the title.
- The most recent releases should appear at the top of the
list.
- If you issue a lot of releases on different topics, consider
grouping them in categories. The Chicago
Botanic Garden and the National
Gallery of Art are two organizations that take this approach.
When determining which categories to use, keep in mind that reporters
cover different beats. Lifestyle editors and travel writers are
looking for different information than business reporters are.
And if you're planning a major new exhibition or a building expansion,
it makes sense to group all the related releases together.
- If you distribute a release through a wire service, be sure
you've posted it -- and any supporting information -- to your
own site before the release goes out. That ensures that
interested reporters won't read the release, go to your site
to do follow-up research and feel like they've walked into an
empty bakery.
- Don't remove your old releases. Press release archives are
a wonderful resource for anyone researching an organization's
growth and evolution. That's one of the reasons why every release
you post to your site needs to have a date on it.
Backgrounders and Fact Sheets
In order to write about you, journalists first need to understand
who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Backgrounders and
fact sheets are the best way to relay that information.
Provide basic facts about your institution such as number
of employees, members and volunteers; annual attendance figures;
number of objects in your collections; and total operating budget.
Also include a brief overview of your collections, programs,
facility and community, a short history of your organization,
and interesting bits of trivia about your operation. All of this
helps writers and editors put your organization into context
and identify the things that make you unique and newsworthy.
You need to present this information in quickly scannable
chunks, not as an essay. Subheads, bullet lists and liberal use
of white space are good solutions. Journalists just want the
facts, so keep flowery brochure-talk to a minimum. And since
they may not be fluent in museum-speak, use laymen's terms. Here
are a few good examples of different types of pages you might
want to include in your press room:
Sometimes, of course, using technical language and terms that
may be unfamiliar to reporters is unavoidable. The Canadian Museum
of Nature does a great job of addressing this with its palaeo-speak
page, Tips
for Science Journalists.
Image Availability
In the years 1995-1998, the annual Middleberg/Ross
Media in Cyberspace study found that fewer than 30 percent of
journalists used the Internet to find images. By 1999 that number
had climbed to 52 percent, and it's still rising. In fact, last
year's Nielsen Norman Group study found that downloading images
to use in stories is now one of the top five reasons journalists
visit company websites. So it's important that your online press
room contain information about image availability.
Lisa Bousquet's recent experience confirms this. "Perhaps
the most used feature of our press room so far is the photo
menagerie. Tis the season for summer travel guide requests
-- a time when many publications contact us asking for general
"zoo" photos. We've been referring them to the menagerie
-- they choose what they like from the low-res versions, then
I send along high-res versions."
The Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge handles the image
availablity issue in this same way -- providing photo sample
sheets in the press kit resources section of its press
room. Monterey Bay Aquarium's photo
library carries it a bit further. A sophisticated online
catalog of 60 images available in various resolutions and formats
is provided, with clear instructions for ordering by e-mail.
At The Tech Museum of Innovation's press
image library, the ordering step is omitted altogether. High-resolution
images are offered for immediate download, "freely available
for press, personal, or not-for-profit use." A liberal policy
like The Tech's is rare, however; Most museums offering print-quality
photos online require journalists to request a password in order
to download them.
What else should your press room contain?
See Part 2 >>
Copyright © 2002 Katherine Khalife, www.MuseumMarketingTips.com
All rights reserved.
For reprint permission, please e-mail info@museummarketingtips.com
Katherine Khalife is a writer and consultant specializing in
museum and Internet marketing, customer service and heritage
cultural tourism. See the Services
section for information about her workshops and other services
or e-mail her at kkhalife@museummarketingtips.com
