Blog

Improve your website’s press section

16.11.2011 - Martin Smith

When it comes to press sections on websites, there are the good, the bad and the ugly.

Having an unhelpful media section on your website tells your prospects that you are small-fry, and reduces the media’s goodwill towards your company.  Fixing it is easy.

So, here is a quick guide to what we consider to be best practice in creating a clean, useful and attractive section.

1. Separate sections for press releases and articles

When perusing your website, it gets frustrating if it is not clear which links are for press releases and which are for third-party articles about you.  Put yourself in the shoes of a journalist.  They are looking for the news you have announced, the press releases.  Any time they have to wade through, trying to work out what are write-ups and what are press releases is a frustration, getting them closer and closer to contacting your competitors.

2. Do a good “In the media” section

The impression that you want to convey here is “wow, these guys get a lot of press”.  Load up this section with the articles featuring you and your spokespeople.

Make it neat.  If you are using the logos of the publications, make it look good or don’t bother at all.  You know what I’m talking about.  The stretched logo.  The so-low-res-that-it-looks-pixellated-logo.  Also, go for quality.  If you load up automated press release pick-ups from TMCnet, for example, you start to look desperate.  Real editorial articles only.

3. Include a real media contact

When media peruse your website, they want to quickly find information about you and they want a real person to contact if they need something extra.  Give the journalist what they need – a clearly defined contact, on its own page or clearly labelled on a sidebar.

Do not give them a pr@company.com or press@company.com email address.  It gives very little assurance that anyone will actually answer their email.  It has to be a real person.

If a journalist wants to find sources for an article, they are unlikely to send their time-critical (they are always time-critical) request in the vague hope of getting an answer in time.

And although there are good reasons for tracking inquiries using a contact form, give the media a break – do not use a contact form here.  Real person, please.  With email and phone number.

4. Separate section for events

Unclutter.  Keep your events section separate.  There’s not too much to say here.  The main thing you need to do is to ensure that you have highlighted some way that a prospect or journalist can use to meet you at the show.

5. Give them some logos at least

Make life easier for the media and for yourselves by laying out your logo(s), some lo-res for web and hi-res for print.  It’s not difficult.  Then if you are feeling kind, give them downloadable headshots of your spokespeople and any other imagery journalists could use to supplement a story about you.  And no, including your logos on your website does not mean that people are going to be using your logo for nefarious reasons as they can already do that now with a simple right-click and copy on your homepage…

Categories: Media Relations, Mobile PR, Public Relations, Telecom PR, Telecoms PR, Website