Main Mail

Last time, we took at look at the newly-nuclear game of putting out press releases on the Internet, and the impact that the SEC’s disclosure rule, as well as the lack of a media delay on PRNewswire, will have on the public relations process.

These changes are going to mess up many announcement strategies in the coming months as agencies and their clients get used to the fact that they can’t selectively predisclose information to the media and analysts in hopes of getting a top-of-the-fold placement, if not an exclusive, if not a one-line mention in the news-in-brief column. Since the playing field has changed, it’s time to go on offense. And the best place to start is with the press release section on the corporate home page.

There are four easy steps to making this part of a web site sing like Pavarotti...okay, maybe Madonna. First and foremost, make sure that there’s a search engine at the very top of the main page of this section. There is nothing more frustrating for a reporter than scrolling through press releases divided by months (as if anyone outside the company can remember when an announcement was made) looking for a headline with a tiny degree of relevance to the story he or she is writing.


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	Home Page
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	TIFF

However, this means someone has to make sure the search engine is updated BEFORE a new press release is added to the section. This has to happen mere minutes before the release is distributed to the planet on PRNewswire, so someone on the press team has to learn how to do it rather than waiting for the client’s IT staff to get around to it ("um, we’re kinda backlogged here...call us in six weeks or so").

Speaking of which, the release itself also has to be added to the company’s web site concurrently with PRNewswire distribution. If this is a perennial hassle due to IT reticence (read that intransigence, if not downright hostility), it might be time to move the administration of the press release section of the site to a hosting facility such as Mainsail that’s a bit more PR friendly (amazing what paying for service will do for service, right?).

Step two: pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Photographs of executives, multiple pictures of products, company logos, that stupid little mascot the CEO’s daughter drew in second grade...whatever’s clever, not to mention current. The media love to add images to their text, and nothing makes an art director happier than a selection of high-quality (TIFF, please) computer images they can grab with minimal hassle (see search engine above).

Third, the best thing about the Internet used to be hypertext, i.e. the ability to link words on a web page to other web pages for readers who wanted to find more information about the underlined topic. Unfortunately, linking text has become as archaic as Archie (an old file-transfer protocol named after everybody’s favorite comic-book redhead). A press release is the perfect opportunity to revive this long-lost artform and raise it to Matisse levels of breathtaking beauty, form and function.

If an executive is quoted in a press release, link it to the executive’s biography. If a product is mentioned, link it to the product’s splashy, Flashy corner of the web site. If another company is referenced, provide a direct link to that company’s home page. Adding a bunch of links to a press release takes all of five minutes, and can be done directly in Word as well as specialized web-design software. And don’t forget to provide a "mailto" email link to the PR contact (that would be you).

Finally, be brave and put the PR contact’s name, phone number (the main switchboard, not your direct line) and email address on every press release, as well as in an easily-found "contact" page of the press section of the site. Yes, you will get lots of irrelevant messages. Too bad. Because nothing...NOTHING...makes a reporter crazier than searching for the right contact information. And you don’t want them in a bad mood when they finally find you.

Keep in mind that when a press release hits the newswires, thousands of people are going to access the company’s web site simultaneously. What better way to make a good first impression on the media, not to mention shareholders, customers, suppliers, partners, the board of directors, that venture capital fund you met with yesterday, etc., than demonstrating the company’s cluefulness when it comes to delivering news about itself. Why, they may even think the company even has a clue about servicing its customers on the web, too.

If anyone has ever seen a decent, if not interstellar, press release section on a corporate web site, send the URL to mainmail@mainsail.com so we can share best practices with the rest of the tribe. Our personal favorite is Intel.

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