Is Your Website Ready for the Media?

By Joan Stewart
The Publicity Hound

Right now, while you’re reading this article, or listening to the audio version, a reporter might be at your website without you knowing it, snooping around to see if your company or organization is interesting enough to warrant a story.

If the reporter doesn’t like what she sees, she’ll bail out, never to be heard from again.

Here are some of the more common website problems I’ve noticed that confuse, offend and generally turn off visitors, including the media:

• A homepage that offers no clue about what you, your company or organization does or, more importantly, how you help people solve their problems. I created a short positioning statement that’s at the top of my homepage at my website, next to my photo. It says “Publicity expert Joan Stewart shows you how to use free publicity to establish your credibility, enhance your reputation, position yourself as an expert, sell more products and services, promote a favorite cause or issue, and position your company as an employer of choice.” Notice the phrase “Publicity expert Joan Stewart…” at the beginning of the sentence. I worded it this way so that reporters who are looking for a “publicity expert” and type that phrase into a search engine will see my name near the top of the list.

• Home pages with big, clunky photos that cause sites to load too slowly. Remember, not everybody has a high-speed connection. So it’s important to know exactly how long it takes your site to load on slow dial-up connections. Anything more than about 8 seconds, and you might have lost the visitor. Keep photos and graphics on the home page to a minimum.
  
  
• Anything that flashes, makes noise, moves back and forth and generally distracts the reader. This technique, known as flash, was all the rage when introduced about 10 years ago. But so many companies abuse it that their home pages look like carnival midways. And it’s annoying. But the worst thing about flash is that it lowers your website’s ranking in the search engines. That’s because flash requires complicated HTML code. And the search engine spiders have a hard time making their way through all that complicated code.
  
  
• “Wallpaper” backgrounds usually made up of a company logo, repeated in row after row. Then type is slapped on top of it. It’s like reading print on top of wallpaper, and often it’s illegible. A plain white background with dark type is best.
  
  
• The absence of an address, telephone number or email address at the site. I once found a website for a public relations company that had the phone number buried three layers into the site. Don’t hide this information under a “Contact Us” key either. Post it right out there on the home page for everyone to see. People usually look for it at the top or bottom of the page. I place mine at the bottom, and you can see it by clicking here.

• Information that makes the site look outdated. For example, if you sell products, the phrase “We can deliver in time for Christmas!” shouldn’t appear at the site in March.
  
  
• Poor-quality electronic photos. You can post images to the web in other than the 72 dots-per-inch format that most web-based image files are set at. However, because of the compression incorporated with the various formats for web-based images, they aren't ideal files for print media. If you want to make print-ready images available at your site, you should link to a high-resolution version of the image, such as 300 dots per inch, that will only download to the visitor’s system once they've clicked the link. But remember, it's more than just 300 dpi. It's 300 dpi at the size the media wants to use it. Good photos that are only 2 inches across at 300 dpi can't run any bigger than 2 inches across. If you have a photo that would make an ideal 8-by-10 feature photo in a magazine, you need to make it available at 300 dots per inch at 8-by-10.
  
  
• Audio that blasts from a visitor’s speakers as soon as they enter your website, with no way for them to turn it off. This is annoying and inconsiderate. Audio programs such as AudioAcrobat are terrific for placing audio greetings at your website, but that program gives the visitor the option of turning it off.
  
  
• Poor search engine optimization because of a failure to understand the importance of keywords—the words that people, including reporters, type into a search engine such as Google when they’re looking for information. Search engines rely on two critical things to find pages. The first is by keywords, and the second is metawords or META tags. The importance of understanding and keywords can take time, but the results will pay off. A great explanation can be found in Tom Antion’s ebook “Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Speakers.” I think the book is terrific for anybody who wants to make money from electronic marketing. You can learn more about it by clicking here.

• Avoid a website that is built in frames. To explain a site built in frames, imagine buttons down the left side of the page that always stay there, while the text on the right side of the page moves up and down. That’s a frame. The frame is the fixed part while the rest is variable. Frames are bad because search engines have a tough time with them. So let’s say you’re a nonprofit that provides counseling for single mothers. If a reporter does a Google search and types in “support for single mothers,” your website might not get good ranking in Google if it’s built in frames. Don’t let your designer talk you into having frames. All the top marketers in the world who are making money and getting top search engine ranking don’t use frames. You shouldn’t either.
  
  

Once you or your web designers have solved all those problems, it’s time to make sure that your attractive, easy-to-navigate site also includes the kind of meat that reporters are after.

Just as you create a paper media kit, create an electronic media kit right at your website. Put it under a button called “Media Room.” This is the place reporters can stop if they need background or story ideas. I addressed this topic in an earlier column but it’s so important that it’s worth reviewing. The kit should include the following:

· A history of your organization

· Bios and photos of key executives

· Facts about the organization

· The latest news releases

· A list of your products and services

· A catalog if you have one

· A Q&A sheet

Those are the basics. If you really want to help and impress reporters, offer them story ideas with names and phone numbers of people at your company who they can call. Mention trends you are seeing in your industry. Post articles at your website written by and about you.

Go to your web site right now and review it with a critical eye. Then whip the site into shape so every reporter gets a grand welcome and ends up wanting to stay.

More tips on how to generate thousands of dollars in free publicity can be found at my website by clicking here.

I’ll check in with you next month, with more tips from The Publicity Hound.