Mynewsdesk survey reveals 35% of global brand newsrooms carry out of date information
A survey of 100 global brands has found that 35 per cent have out of date information including executive bios, annual reports, fact sheets and product listings, displayed in their online newsrooms.
Mynewsdesk looked at how the world’s top 100 brands are using online newsrooms and while many companies are delivering a positive experience many still fall short.
Coca-Cola and Siemens topped the poll with rankings of 79 per cent and 72 per cent respectively. The report revealed, despite 98 per cent of the brands having an online newsroom their online effectiveness scores averaged at around 38 per cent.
The content available via brands online newsrooms was mostly geared towards traditional media and journalists. On average brands posted 11 stories per month to their newsrooms but only 21 per cent of brands used their newsrooms to offer additional content such as blogs, related news, tips and advice.
One of the areas where brands fell down most was in providing contact details, with over a quarter (26 per cent) failing to do this altogether and 45 per cent leaving out contact details on press releases. The option to sign up for updates was also found to be lacking with just shy of three-quarters (70 per cent) of brands not offering any sort of email alerts. Search functionality was also lacking with 39 per cent not including a search option.
Multimedia content was often overlooked by brands in their online newsrooms with 40 per cent failing to provide a basic image library and only 51 per cent featuring video. Quality of image libraries on online newsrooms was also found to be poor, with images of employees and customers only featuring in 44 per cent of them. Nearly half (49 per cent) of all brands failed to meet the minimum image or video quality level needed for publication, and 71 per cent had not embedded any multimedia at all within news stories.
Mynewsdesk CEO, Peter Ingman, commented: “A newsroom is often the first port of call for influencers looking to find out information about your company. In the digitally connected world in which we now live, a newsroom needs to be much more than just a repository for press releases. Stocking a newsroom with value added content – from blog posts and opinion pieces to images and video – will help you tell your brand story in a more engaging and effective way.”