As creators of content from blog posts to infographics to curated pinboards, many of the world’s top brands now consider themselves publishers. But that doesn’t mean the days of news releases and traditional press coverage are gone.
In fact, since journalists, bloggers and influencers often look to a company’s website to find the resources they need for media-rich posts, the newsroom is more important than ever. Studies show that multimedia press materials drive more coverage — but to yield these positive results, newsrooms must be truly “blogger friendly,” containing resources like high res images, logos, video assets and infographics.
But according to Mynewsdesk’s 2013 Newsroom Report, many of the world’s top 100 brands are lacking in terms of multimedia content.
The report shows that 40% of the brands surveyed failed to provide basic image libraries. Another 51% lacked “images of sufficient quality for use.” Journalists and bloggers know that high quality images add aesthetic, social and search value to their content — don’t make them scour the internet to find these assets for your brand. Providing a well-maintained image library makes their job easier, and it gives you a bit of control over the images selected.
Infographics are visually appealing, easy to share and packed with information that is useful to writers. But while many brands are beginning to produce infographics, just 9% include these assets in their online newsrooms.
Just over half of the top 100 brands provided video content in their online newsrooms, but 12% of video libraries were closed off to anyone that hadn’t registered as a member of the press. Again, it’s important to make the journalist’s job as easy as possible rather than frustrating them with unnecessary roadblocks.
Visual assets in your online newsroom increases your chances of getting coverage from the big names, as well as the lesser-known bloggers of the world — it’s simply a matter of making these materials accessible.
