Most B2B companies post some news releases on their web site. Others go a step further, posting resources like corporate backgrounders and bios that are useful for trade journalists.  That’s great, but do they realize how much more opportunity there is to gain a competitive advantage? 

In my line of work I see dozens of B2B sites each day and I am amazed that only a select few have newsrooms that offer thought leadership, engaging content and multimedia information that truly gives back to the industry. I’m guessing this is because the other companies don’t recognize the value their newsroom can have for customers, prospects and other industry influencers. 

My associate Brian Courtney recently gave a presentation at NYU on improving the online newsroom. Click here to listen to a podcast excerpt of that presenation. One of the things he highlighted is that the audience for an online newsroom has expanded dramatically. Newsrooms used to be for journalists and analysts, but now more than 50% of newsroom traffic is from buyers. It turns out that the type of information housed in newsrooms is just the sort that is most helpful for making purchases and sourcing vendors.

People don’t want blatent sales materials anymore, so they look for useful, unbiased information in the company’s newsroom.  Information like news releases, technical articles, white papers, testimonial videos and photos all tell a pretty compelling story.  They contain information from the company’s subject matter experts that actually educates and helps people do their jobs better.

We counsel our clients to take full advantage of this attitude by automatically publishing all of their resources to their newsroom. We do that as a value added service of our PR program. But some clients were not able to take advantage of this service because of web site limitations. They either did not have the authority to make web site edits or the web site was not set up to handle multimedia content. To get around this, we built a multimedia newsroom template, and now give our PR clients complementary access to it. Instantly, they can post photos, podcasts, videos. They can allow visitors to subscribe via RSS feed and share content on social networks.  They now have the tools to make their online newsroom a true industry destination instead of a just a list of press releases.

I hope that more B2B companies will follow suit to give their online newsroom a content makeover. The business community would benefit greatly by being to tap into B2B companies’ subject matter expertise.

Related posts:

1. Creating an Online Newsroom
2. Online Press Releases: What’s Old is New Again
3. Big 80s marketing will not return big online conversions
4. Interactive PR. It’s new. It’s fast. But is it better?
5. Content, Content Everywhere

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About the author:

Chris Henneghan is one of Schubert’s longest-standing employees, starting with the agency in 1987. She now serves as the Social Media & Public Relations and Client Services Director. Chris is a Notre Dame grad and enjoys tennis, golf, hiking, and reading.

Follow Chris on Twitter: @chrishenneghan