Google “PR Professionals and stress” and you will find article after article stating that PR Executives are listed as having one of the top 10 most stressful jobs in America. We know that there is a tremendous amount of pressure to hit deadlines, meet client expectations, and ensure that you are representing your organization effectively and accurately. Crafting Press Releases can take an enormous amount of time, effort, and energy. After all that work (and likely gray hairs grown), why not house all of your newsworthy content in one single place for journalists, consumers, and investors to find it?
That is where a newsroom comes into play. Just like it sounds, an online newsroom is a centralized gathering place, aka “room” where all of your organization’s news can be found by investors, journalists, customers, and anyone looking to learn more about your company. At the very core, a newsroom consists of a combination of press releases, outside news, awards, media assets, and contact lists.
Let’s take a look at why various individuals end up at your newsroom so we can better understand the importance of building a successful site…
Journalists
According to a recent survey, 97% of Journalists say that a newsroom is important and 96% visit them once a month. Most notably, 40% of them visit every single day. Journalists look to your newsrooms for a number of reasons ranging from product recalls, financial information, management changes, and breaking news. They turn to this rich content to help them share your stories most effectively. By affording them the ability to pull together quality imagery, targeted content specific to their needs, and access to thought leaders and industry experts, you give them an easy way to digest relevant information that they can share or incorporate into a story that they are already working on.
Consumers
Your online newsroom is not just a centralized hub to house your news, but it is a direct reflection of your brand, your values, your story, and your priorities. As the world has become digital first, consumers turn to newsrooms to learn more about the brands they are spending their dollars with and investing in. Your newsroom provides a huge opportunity to build brand awareness with new customers while developing a loyal customer base.
Employees
Have you ever spent an inordinate amount of time searching for your company’s most up to date logo? I know that I have. While newsrooms provide journalists with rich content and build awareness with consumers, it provides a centralized hub for internal employees to find the most recent and up to date news in their organization as well as find assets that help them in their day-to-day job functions. Building employee loyalty is just as important as building consumer loyalty. Your newsroom gives you the ability to provide visibility into management changes, company initiatives, awards received, product information, financials, breaking news and more. Ultimately this will lead to an increase in employee engagement.
Investors
This one is an absolute no brainer. If you’ve got your money invested in an organization, wouldn’t you want to know what’s going on there? Wouldn’t you want the most up to date news without having to search around for it? And of course, wouldn’t you want to go to a single place where you know 100% that the news is accurate? Enough said, investors want and NEED to know how their investments are doing.
The net, net of this all is, every organization should have a newsroom to support their initiatives, inform their stakeholders, and scream their brand name and voice. Don’t be left in the dark, start thinking about building one today!
