Public Relations: A Practitioner's Guide (part 15 - The Conclusion)

Public Relations and the Internet

 by

 Charles Lamson

 In the 21st century, the world is wired. From Berlin to Brooklyn, Baghdad to Boise, the Internet has become the world's dominant mode of communication. 

Developing a Winning Website

In many ways, the organization's website is its most important interface with the public. Today, journalists and others turn to the website first for an introduction to the organization.

The aim of any website is to provide information that visitors are looking for. The more you achieve that objective, the more "sticky" your site becomes. Stickiness is often measured by the amount of time visitors spend at a site and how many pages they view. For example, if visitors spend ten minutes at the website and view five or more pages, you've achieved stickiness.

How should you create a winning website? By first asking and answering several strategic questions.

1. What is our goal? To extend the business? Sell more products? Make more money,? Win support for our position? Turn around public opinion? Introduce our company? Without the answers to these fundamental questions, the what and how of a website are inconsequential. Just as in any other pursuit in public relations, the overriding goal must be established first.
2. What content will we include? The reason some websites are tedious and boring is because little forethought has gone into determining the content of a site. Simply cramming chronological news releases on to a website will not advance an organization standing with its publics. Rather, content must be carefully considered, in substance and organization, before proceeding with a site.
3. How often will we edit? Often the answer to this question is, Not often enough. Stale news and the lack of updating are common website problems. Sites must regularly be updated. Another problem is overwriting. People seem to feel that because the web is free, they can write endlessly. Of course, they can. But no one will read it. So an editorial process to cull information down to its most essential parts is a necessity for a good website.
4. How will we enhance design? Like it or not, the style of the site is most important. If an organization's homepage isn't attractive, it will not get any hits. Good design makes complicated things understandable, and this is essential in a website. The web is a largely visual medium, so great care should be taken to professionally design a site.
5. How a interactive will it be? Traditional communication is unidirectional, one way. You read or view it, and that's where the process stops. The great attraction of the Web, on the other hand, is that it can be bi-directional. Communication can be translated into an interactive vehicle, a game, an application, or an email chat vehicle. This is what distinguishes good sites from mediocre ones.
6. How will we track use? As in any other communications project, the use of a website must be measured. The most basic form of cyberspace measurement is the rough yardstick of hits to the site. But like measuring press clippings, this does not tell you whether your information is being appreciated, acted on, or even read. Measuring site performance, therefore, should be a multifaceted exercise that includes such analysis as volume during specific times of day, kind of access, specific locations on the site to which visitors are clicking first, and the sequencing through the site that visitors are following.
7. Who will be responsible? Managing a website, if it is done correctly, must be someone's full-time job. The Web site must be treated as a first line of communication to the public which requires full-time attention. 

Blogs the Latest Phenomenon

Blogs are everywhere.

To date, there are over 1.6 billion websites in the world and more than 500 million are recognized as blogs. Their authors account for over 2 million blog posts daily (https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/how-many-blogs/).

As a consequence, blogs are starting to feel their oats, in terms of communications power. 

There are two categories of blogs. One is the traditional Weblog in which a Web Surfer shares his online discoveries. The second is the Web diary in which a person shares his or her thoughts of the day. Often, blogs of one style have elements of the other. A diarist might discuss a link, while traditional web loggers commonly ramble on about something that happened to them that day.

In terms of public relations use of blogs, organizations can use them to deliver information---product uses, sales data, consumer tips, and so on---in a more personal way. Organization blogs, like direct mail, might also serve to interest potential customers in a firm's expertise. Readership can be expanded through registering on the growing number of blog search engines.

Public relations people should also monitor any blogs in a company or industry that are deemed influential. Often these are negative blogs. In the case of Walmart, for example, public relations professionals need to regularly monitor anti-company blogs, such as alwayslowprices.net and laborblog, to find out the latest hot issues among the company's critics. 

Blogs also can be useful as an internal communications vehicle. Among possibilities for internal blogs are the following:

• Projects: Project leaders can maintain blogs to announce project status and development.
•  Departments: Departments can maintain blogs to inform the rest of the organization about offerings and achievements.
•  Brainstorming: Employees in a department or on a team can brainstorm about strategy, process, and ideas on their own blog.
•  Customers: Employees can share with others internally the substance of customer visits or phone calls.

Predictably, another outgrowth of the spread of blogs is the existence of spam blogs, or just plain "splogs," or phony blogs designed to promote everything from gambling websites to pornography. A typical splog contains gibberish and is full of links to other websites it is trying to promote. Because search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, base their rankings on how many other websites linked to a particular site, the splogs can help artificially inflate a site popularity.

Although only in their infancy, there is no question that blogs are being woven into the culture and fabric of public relations as a method of building consumer loyalty, as a target of pitches, and even as a sardonic watchdog for the public relations industry. With companies from Microsoft to General Electric to Cingular Wireless adopting blogs to promote products and services, the use of blogs as a communication vehicle will only increase.

Dealing with the Media Online

In the 21st century, the Internet has become the favorite tool of reporters for discovering organizational information. 

Research indicates that journalist now overwhelmingly rank corporate websites as their most important source of financial information, so reaching reporters online has become a front-line responsibility for public relations professionals.

The basics of online media relations include the following:

• Website newsroom: The best organizations create extranets, developed exclusively to serving the media, as derivatives of their websites. These corporate newsrooms include all the traditional press materials that the media require.
• News releases: Every website begins with news releases, most often organized chronologically. However, journalists complain that they don't know precisely when an organization raised its prices or announced its earnings or promoted its president. Therefore, the best Web newsrooms organize releases both chronologically and by subject, with a search engine capable of pointing readers towards specific subjects.
•  Executive speeches: All major speeches delivered by management should be included at the corporate newsroom site. The best sites offer an interactive speech feature through which speeches are automatically emailed to journalists or others who request it.
•  Annual/quarterly reports: Every public company is obligated to report earnings to shareholders four times a year and typically issue three quarterly reports and one annual report. Quarterlies and annuals should appear on the corporate newsroom site.
• Meetings: Companies in remote locations, in particular, have begun to Webcast their annual gathering of shareholders so that those unable to attend in person may do so electronically.
• FAQs: The most frequently asked questions posed by reporters ought to be part of the newsroom site. Also, FAQs ought to maintain the most basic corporate information, from number of offices and employees to headquarters location and stock symbol.
• Interviews: Online press conferences and Webcasts have also become standard fare, with a company notifying journalists of the time and password necessary to access a particular executive presiding as an online interviewee.
• Digital press kits: All the material included in a corporate press kit---releases, photos, backgrounders---are duplicated on the internet for downloading purposes to journalists.
• Photographs, profiles, ad copy, and so on: Online executive photographs and other relevant photographs are standard at corporate newsroom sites. So, too, are executive biographical profiles. Corporate newsrooms might even offer video versions of corporate advertising. Finally, reporters appreciate ease of access to locate the pressroom and its elements, after hours contact numbers clearly listed, and downloadable logos for ready use.
• News release via newswires: It has become is essential for public relations companies to issue news releases over Newswires. Why? Newswire copy gets picked up by online databases, such as AOL and Yahoo! if a company wants its shareholders and potential investors to know of its activities, in order to notify them online, it's releases must be included on newswires. Newswires are of three types:
1. General wires: the Associated Press (AP) is the granddaddy of all general wire services, reporting on general news of interest to the broad society. United Press International (UPI), that used to compete directly with AP, fell into financial ill-health starting with cutbacks in 1982 and the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to AP, has diminished as a news factory, but still survives by concentrating on smaller niche markets.
2.  Financial wires: Dow Jones, the Wire service of the Wall Street Journal, is perhaps the most well-known financial wire. Reuters is known as the International Financial wire. Bloomberg, the creation of a former Wall Street broker turned New York city mayor, has emerged as another powerful financial wire service force in both print and broadcast.
3. Fixed wires: As opposed to general and financial wires, other wire services---the most prominent being PR Newswire, Business Wire, and Market Wire---are paid services that reproduce organizational news announcements verbatim, for a fee.

All of these wire Services report Online, which beans that releases are automatically filed on online stock databases. This allows online users to track a specific company announcements and is one reason why most publicly held companies today release via wire.

• Online publicity. Online publications---e-zines---such as Salon and Slate, and online special interest sites, such as oxygen.com and ivillage.com designed for women, and seniornet.org for senior citizens, and so on, offer opportunities for publicity. Financial news services, such as fool.com, the street.com, and CBSMarketWatch.com, are also ready outlets for publicity.

*SOURCE: THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS, 10TH ED., 2007, FRASER P. SEITEL, PGS. 383-389*

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