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April 19, 2019

For any business, having a professional newsroom that is easy to use and easy to find on your website is essential, no matter how big or small your business is.

Although a larger, established business may already be familiar with what a newsroom is and its purpose, for those that do not a newsroom may be looked at as a depository for select key pieces of information that is of interest to the media. Key components of a newsroom may include corporate or product press kit information, access to images, video, spec sheets like PDF's, and media contact information along with some information pertaining to the business.

The newsroom functionality and behavior is exclusive to most businesses, not a standard piece of software you would 'buy off the shelf', like shopping cart software. This means that to have a newsroom put together by a programmer specialist could easily cost into the thousands of dollars because the programming is specific. Because of these costs, many small and medium-sized businesses (typically with annual revenues under $1 million) may easily be dissuaded. Looking at an article posted at Truthful Politics, this would be equivalent to about 75 percent of businesses with small businesses making up 99.9% of the 26.8 million businesses in the US. The article may be found here.

Although a very small number of online newsroom tools exist, the ones that exist are not only very expensive, however can also be complicated and cumbersome to use. Some of these newsroom tools range from $69/month up to as much as $1,000/month. A lot of what they include most companies will find to overwhelming and do not include press release distribution.

Preparing a newsroom is not difficult and 24-7 Press Release Newswire is looking to have an easy to use 'build your newsroom' solution available the 2nd half of 2019. Our design phase is completed and programming has begun.

A few items to look for in a newsroom:

1. A newsroom provider should have the ability to send your press release to the media and update your newsroom with your press release at the same time.

2. A newsroom should be able to be followed, similar to that of a blog post so that when your press release is distributed and your newsroom is updated, so are your followers.

3. A newsroom should provide easy access to your social media channels and their associated posts. Having the ability to sort the social media channels is also a nice bonus.

4. Featured content is more likely to be shared; it needs to be in a prime newsroom location that is highly visible, such as the homepage of a newsroom. Having a tool like a rotating carousel of your news and images provides a satisfying variety that will draw the attention of the viewer.

5. Another key point is to ensure your media contact information are all available in one central location.

A fundamental consideration to keep in mind is that your newsroom will also become a source for many individuals including more than just journalists, like researchers and bloggers, not to mention your customers and industry partners.

By providing a professionally designed newsroom that allows journalists, bloggers and researchers easy, organized access to your content eliminates the need for them to contact you or your people to send them information they are looking for.

Having a newsroom that directly distributes your news to journalists, gets it directly to the news-desk at the Associated Press, making it accessible to their 30,000 members (of course those that cover your industry) is a massive bonus. Better yet, making all your content easily accessible makes your company more attractive to cover.

When a television station, newspaper or trade publication cover you, this is significant. Having an organized place for that information within your newsroom is very important as it lends credibility to your business and creates interest and gets more people to pay attention to your business.

From a design point of view, your newsroom should be designed with a mobile responsive design set making it accessible by phones and tablets. A significant number of journalists are out on the road, away from a PC and are looking online on their phones or tablets.

When a journalist or researcher visits your website, they don't want to spend time looking for your newsroom. It should be easily accessible from a main meu heading off your homepage. Don't forget to also add a link to your footer.

Many of the above features and functionality will be available through our new newsroom product offering later this year. If you would like to be kept up to date on our newsroom product, including introductory pricing of $19.95/month, (pricing will be grandfathered for the length of time you keep your newsroom), please contact us with your name, phone number and email via our contact us form here.