Is
Your Web Site Media Friendly?
By Lynn Fenske
You've spent thousands of dollars
to launch your Web site. It's a major component of your current
communications strategy. But does it help or hinder one of your
most important audiences - the media?
Unless you are a media relations
specialist, it's easy to overlook what reporters, editors, researchers
and broadcast producers require to gather news and information.
Deadlines are brutal but the needs are pretty basic. Since they
must work efficiently and expediently and mostly by telephone,
what media people need first and foremost is a contact name and
a telephone number.
When tackling a new story, journalists
will start with its principal players and who they already know
relevant to the story. Masters at networking, they have learned
that people lead you to other people who can help tell the story.
When additional research is required or facts need checking, then
staff writers can turn to research assistants or librarians to
assist in the search. Freelancers are left to do their own research.
In each case the search begins in the same basic ways: checking
out the Sources directory (in print or at www.sources.com),
the phone book, the Internet.
Who in your organization is designated
and trained to handle media inquiries and where can they be reached?
While the Internet can be a very expensive medium for providing
such information, if it is not readily available from your Web
site chances are you'll risk missing the call. When the media
is seeking your comment or opinion relative to their story and
they can't reach you when they need to, they will call someone
else equally equipped to comment, likely your competitor.
To create a media friendly
Web site, here's what you need to consider:
1. I'll restate the obvious. Include
the names and telephone numbers of key personnel, particularly
those assigned to handle media inquiries. And don't be sending
anyone into voice-mail hell. If you depend upon voice mail to
manage incoming calls, be sure to check messages regularly and
return calls promptly, particularly those from the media. A journalist
on deadline always needs to speak to humans, so be available.
2. Publish E-mail addresses but only if you are willing to check
messages regularly and reply expediently. Remember, media people
need you urgently. They telephone first, resort to E-mail or the
Internet second.
3. If you provide a press room or media centre on your Web site,
be certain the information is timely and up-to-date. While archival
information about your organization can be helpful in some cases,
it has limited value to a news story. A journalist's job is to
find out what's happening today, not yesterday.
4. If you have information on your Web site accessible only by
accredited journalists then here's a really valuable piece of
advice. Let journalists choose their own password. Or if you must
assign them a password, then provide them the opportunity to change
it to something convenient for them. This way, you are making
it easier for journalists to use the same password(s) for access
to different databases rather than have to work with and remember
several different passwords, each of which works only with one
particular database.
Media relations must be an integral
part of any effective communications strategy. Don't try to hide
from the media. More reporters are doing more of their own research
as their story is being written. Be available. Be helpful. Return
their calls. Don't rely on your Web site to try and hide an inability
or unwillingness to handle media inquiries.
You really do want the media to
call you and consider your personnel important contacts and resource
people, particularly in times of crisis. With proper training
and experience, your personnel can work with the media to provide
clear images of what your organization is all about - in good
times and in bad. As Michael Levine so aptly points out in the
first paragraph of his book Guerilla P.R., "our civilization
is utterly dominated by the force of media. After our own families,
no influence holds greater sway in shaping the text of our being
than do the media that cloak us like an electronic membrane".
So stay media friendly, particularly on the Internet where more
and more influence is taking place.
Lynn Fenske is a freelance writer specializing
in communications and media relations. This article was originally
published in The
Sources HotLink.