A wake up call for PR professionals

Today, the entire attention of tech savvy public relations professionals is on social media. The reason is not hard to understand: the numbers are on social media; the conversations are happening on social media; products are being promoted on social media; damage control is being done on social media. It therefore makes sense to be present on social media. Even the traditional media is hanging out on social media, lapping up every word, image and video.

The company websites, as a source of information, seem to have been forgotten. You don’t see the same energy that you once saw. You often wonder if anyone is monitoring the content on these sites.

There are very few fresh postings. Even lesser number of status updates. An important avenue to communicate with media is withering away. At this rate, journalists will soon stop visiting company websites to gather information.

This is a wake up call for all PR professionals. They need to save the company websites from becoming stagnant pools of information.

The PR professionals must remember that there are five important reasons why journalists visit company websites. These are:

1. Locate a PR contact
Journalists need to speak to company officials before writing a news report. The first contact point is the public relations official. How often do you find the name of this official mentioned prominently? Or his phone number or e-mail address listed on the site? There is a contact us page that gives the physical address and the phone/fax numbers of the company. The contact details of the PR department are mostly missing. This needs to be corrected immediately.

2. Find company details
A second reason is to research company details, especially the product line and the company activities. Most often, journalists run into old information – information that was posted when the site was set up. Another common experience is sketchy content. There is no effort to provide detailed information. The result is that the journalist ignores the website the next time he is doing a story on the company. A great PR opportunity to communicate is lost.

3. Obtain images for use in stories
This is yet another opportunity lost. You rarely find good photographs of company products and officials on the website. All PR professionals must understand the value of images. There is no better way to get company images published in newspapers than posting them on the website. The PR professionals can post the images on Pinterest too. But don’t ignore the website – that is the primary notice board in the virtual space.

4. Check financial information
The business journalist is always in need of credible, financial information. Of course, this information has to be current. Company sites that hide financial information are doing a great disservice to themselves. They are losing an opportunity to tell their success stories to the world.

5. Find the company’s point of view on events
The PR professionals must publish the point of view of the company on major issues such as tax breaks, duty hikes, government policies etc. The journalist needs this information to do informed stories. It makes sense to put out a crisp quote from your company CEO with his photograph on the Union Budget. The chances of this being picked up by media are very high.

Unfortunately, the obsession with social media is killing company websites. The trend need to be reversed.