Note to corporates: Please take your website seriously

One of the barriers to a lot of people understanding the potential of online communications is a pervasive dissmissiveness of the web.
I think there are 3 major reasons for this:

1. People are always dismissive of change - always true, goes with the territory.
2. The whole net boom - net bomb process of the 90s, with inflated claims about the potential of the Internet (together with inflated share prices and loopy business cases) has left a lot of people with a continuing feeling of (now exaggerated and counterproductive) scepticism.
3. Most corporate, government and NGO websites are tragic, and therefore don't achieve anything like the potential of an online presence that costs them many thousands if not millions to setup and maintain.

Can't do much about the first two.
But here are 3 reasons why you should rethink the ROI of your web presence and ask some pretty demanding questions internally around the value of that web presence and how to maximise it.

1. Many bloggers, operating on the smell of an oily rag, have higher profiles, more traffic and bigger link banks then you do - why? Partly, its got to do with communication as listening as well as preaching, its also got to do with being committed to providing a rich stream of purpose designed fresh content (as opposed to providing an online repository for dull brochureware), its also got to do with the way search engines operate (wise up burying your content on some difficult to navigate mega site is costing you a bundle)
2. Bloggers have smashed the media controlled gateway between you and your audiences, but you still live in fear - why? Partly, its because corporate PR operations are just not setup to be publishers - again,  its about fresh, relevant content. The website should be our first publishing option, not a place to post the media release. That's a complete misunderstanding of the web and the media release. The web is a publishing environment (learn the skills of journalism and use them) and the media release has a sole purpose in life and that is to alert the media to a story - it is not the story - so publish your story on your website, not tyour release about it. Its also about scale. Releases are about big things or supposed to be but the news you have to offer your customers etc is much more than that. What might seem trivial to a space starved newspaper is still big for the audience interested in you and your activities.
3. People are using their blogs to talk about you and share their views about you and your products or service but you're not using your website to defend yourself and promote your case - why? Partly, this is because our PR rules are based on the media gateway. You have to understand - you can't starve the web of oxygen. You have to understand - the newscycle is gone. Newspapers might become fish and chip wrappers but blog posts don't have to. They can be there forever - to be found everytime someone does a search. Popping up into the consumer / investor / regulator's browser as fresh as a daisy, just as if it had landed on their doorstep in a shrinkwrap cover. It won't go away, it'll just lay dormant. You can't ignore anymore, you have to engage. At an appropriate level and tone of course but you do need to engage.

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Comments

[Grokodile]

Nice, I like the humor in your approach, though the topic is deadly serious as well.

Somehow it seems to turn into a "hold on loosely but don't let go" paradigm. You can't control it, but you certainly have to work on the relationship.

[Richard Bailey]

Great analysis. I've long been making the same distinction between 'news' and 'news releases' - illustrating it with this: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/default.mspx. It's hard to find the news/press releases on Microsoft's press site though there's plenty of news - and even some 'real' news from the media about the company/industry.

[David Phillips]

I like it... Thank you.

What is becomming obvious is that there is a need for 'joined up' thinking about company values and online presence.

Lots of practitioners still think of a press release in paper terms. Their realisation that its presence online means it is instantly, moved and morphed in cyberspce.

Adding value to it is easy and, for the most part cost effective.

This in not (just) about Google Juice. It is about the digital asset (I have a series about this at netPR.blogspot.com).

The release is already part of social media but all too often (mostly) its value has not been optimised.

Is this a waste of client fees?