We have just released our latest industry report reviewing online newsrooms for the B2B electronics industry. For this report, we analysed 39 of the top international semiconductor companies to determine what functionality and content their newsrooms provide for visitors.
Modern newsrooms need to work harder than just merely push out company press releases. They have to satisfy the needs of various audiences, be optimised for search engines, enable content to be easily discoverable, encourage sharing, and provide a clear “next step” for visitors to take.
The full report, which can be downloaded here, aims to highlight and inform best practice for online newsrooms in the electronics industry. We hope that it is useful for those leading PR functions in the semiconductor industry to measure and improve their own newsrooms.
To inform our methodology, 39 company newsrooms were analysed for best practice in the following areas:
- Discovery
- Content
- Distribution and re-distribution
- Subscription options
- Contact information
Our findings showed that these were key areas that either facilitated best practice and made for a world class newsroom, or were areas that hindered the use and potential of an online newsroom.
A simplified newsroom process
Firstly, the ease of discoverability and visibility of online newsrooms for B2B electronics is key. If a newsroom can’t easily be found within a site, or once in the newsroom, a visitor finds it difficult to find relevant content, then this has a significant impact on best practice.
The quality, relevance, variety and regularity of content can make for a dynamic and well used newsroom. Online newsrooms work best when they are not just used for pushing out press releases, but they also enable users to download other content such as high-res images and videos.
To ensure that published content gets the greatest dispersion and visibility, then it needs to be distributed through multiple channels. A newsroom used to its full potential makes it easy for visitors to share, download and engage with the content. Our research showed that this was an area that many companies had the potential to improve.
Finally, two further elements of best practice online newsrooms, included providing a subscription option and the contact details for a real person within the PR team or agency. It may seem obvious, but no matter how fantastic a newsroom is, and how is easy it is to navigate, sometimes visitors just want to speak to someone directly.
