My colleague Sean Silverthorne over at BNET’s Harvard Business School blog tips me off to the temporary news web site created for the announcement of the proposed Delta-Northwest merger. His post is entitled “The Press Release of the Future” and indeed, this is a very creative, smart and modern way to use the Internet to handle the dissemination of news and background information on the merger.
Sean’s title got me thinking though: is it enough to post a site for a major news announcement, or do you have to do some proactive dissemination as well?
The answer, I think, is that this site is terrific as a portal for sharing news and putting your own spin on it, but you’ve still got to have a proactive strategy to push the news out to your key media and non-media audiences. You can’t just assume that people will find your web site via search.
And if that’s the case, what form should your proactive release take? I’m not totally sold on the so-called “Social Media Release” — I like the idea but I find it unwieldy and lacking in one critical aspect: storytelling. On the other hand, I’m appalled that most press releases are still written as long-winded pseudo news stories that are boring and fail to provide users with information chunks and links to more information on the web.
So my ideal proactive release to go with a temporary news site would have the following:
- Two or three paragraphs of hard news and one key quote
- High-level facts and figures
- Links to lots more background on the web
As for the Delta-Northwest site, it has all the info you would want: a comprehensive news center as well as information for other constituencies such as investors, employees and local communities. I give it an A+ overall and an A- for the news center.
Why the ding on the news center: strangely, the news contacts page is a bit sparse, with only the names of two agency people listed. I’m guessing they were trying to tamp down on non-media calls and inquiries but the page just looks half-baked.
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