In his latest newsletter, usability guru Jakob Nielsen studies corporate newsrooms and found that, generally, they aren't doing a good job to say the least.
"As 3 studies of journalists show, they use the Web as a major research tool, exhibit high search dominance, and are impatient with bloated sites that don't serve their needs or list a PR contact."
The most fascinating passage in Nielsen's report, though, is this one...
Another journalist described what he'd do if he couldn't find a press contact or the facts he needed for his story:
"Better not to write it than to get it wrong. I might avoid the subject altogether."
The press, much like consumers with customer care reps, want to be able to get a hold of corporate PR contacts quickly and easily, otherwise they won't bother doing business. That should be a wake up call for most. Bloggers, meanwhile, all expect us to be present in their spaces and I suspect don't even bother going to our immaculate corporate PR sites. So PR pros increasingly need to be present and available all around.
If you think it's just big companies that are at risk here of being forgotten, Nielsen debunks that myth. Startups, he says, pepper their sites with buzzword-filled, fatty text. Also, he makes it clear most newsrooms are built for push not pull.
In the near future all corporate media/PR sites will need to emulate the more progressive customer service sites. They will need to showcase how someone can get a hold of you in a hurry, either via IM or Twitter and not just email or phone.
I bet we'll see IM boxes like the one below from Google Talk making their way into corporate newsrooms. Access to humans begets trust and many companies are not prepared to engage 24/7. SImply put, that's the way we increasingly need to operate in a globalized world.
