Cool press kits used to be expensive to design, and they required lots of effort to duplicate, assemble, and distribute. Today, all that’s changed. Your press materials, high resolution photos, and graphic images can be downloadable and available in an instant if you build a Media Room on your website and furnish it properly.
Here’s an excerpt from my book PR THERAPY.
So, what belongs in your website’s Media Room?
Your core communication tools. This is the place where you formally spell out who you are and what you do. Visitors to your website’s Media Room will include radio producers, TV producers, reporters, bloggers, and event coordinators.
Your website’s Media Room is the Internet home where you store your press kit and your portfolio—the digital versions in downloadable PDF files. You want to make it easy for visitors to download and print your information in a way that meets your vision of quality…that is, you’d rather package your bio in a gorgeous one-page format that’s easy to print, rather than direct people to cut and paste bits and pieces of info that’s listed across your website. Always offer up your foundational information in the most succinct and functional ways possible.
Here’s the checklist:
Personal Contact Info. List your contact information prominently. Make sure a visitor can visit your site and easily cut and paste needed contact details that should include your name, business mailing address, and business phone number.
PDF Reader. Consider making it easy for visitors to access your PDFs by adding a link to a free PDF reader in case they don’t have the software installed on their own computers. You can use the “Adobe PDF” icon and “Get Adobe Reader” logos on your website…the directional icons for your website and the actual software to read PDFs are free.
Bio/profile. List this communication tool prominently in a printer-ready PDF format.
Backgrounders, fact sheets. Be sure each separate sheet is clearly labeled and available in individual printer-ready PDF formats.
Publicity photos, product photos. You need to have high resolution and low resolution images available on your website for downloading. Be sure each image is clearly labeled. Provide multiple resolution versions of the same image. NOTE: 72 DPI is the lower resolution preferred by online publications and websites, and 300 DPI is a higher resolution usually required by commercial print publications. Typically, it helps if the image size is at least a 5 inch x 7inch image for either DPI resolution.
Press Releases. Place press releases in chronological order with the most recent at the top. Use individual printer-ready PDF formats.
Awards, reviews, endorsements, accolades. These details need to be embedded in your website content so that your credentials are highly visible. But, even though the info is available, don’t forget to compile a list of praise in an individual printer-ready PDF format. Remember, you want to make it easy for people to have the info they need about you…package it and make it easy for them.
Videos. If you have videos, make them accessible. Post clips of press conferences, product demonstrations, presentations, and more. Short clips are better. A reel of your clips, professionally edited? Fabulous. Tell them what they will see and make it interesting.
Media coverage. Keep your media coverage alive. Include links to TV appearances, radio appearances, as well as magazine or web articles.
Your Portfolio. A visual collection that highlights your work? Yes! Share the highlights of what you do so that others clearly understand the level at which you’re really working.
Once you have a Media Room, what else should you do?
Use it.
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