In telecommunications, the last mile refers to the
portion of the network that physically connects service from the utility pole
to the end users home or business. Historically, the last mile has been a speed
bottleneck that has prevented telecom and content providers from improving
service to customers.
I frequently see PR professionals ignoring the last mile in
their service delivery – specifically, the connection point with journalists
and other influencers. The most visible example of this is the press site on
their web page. After working long, hard hours preparing for their announcement,
many post their work to a web page that may be the least appealing on the
Internet – a long list of linked headlines.
These sites deliver little value. Journalists and bloggers
who are producing 4 to 6 pieces a day have little time to spend clicking through links, downloading press kits and
finding imagery. If you can’t provide it to them in a consumable way, then they
will go elsewhere to get it – either to competitors or to sources that you as a
PR professional can’t control.
Increasingly, PR pros need building (or rebuilding) their
press site to ensure the content is easy to digest and easy for influencers to
incorporate into their stories. That means there needs to be a blog post that
puts the news into context and can serve as a linked asset,
images that can be quickly repurposed into stories and slideshows, infographics
that are easy to digest,
video that can be added to an influencer’s post and a social media stream that allows them to quickly reshare the news.
There are other ways
to improve
your press site and they all boil down to reducing the friction for reporters
and influencers.
You’ve put in the hard work to attract the attention of a
journalist or influencer; if you can speed them through the last mile it
improves the chances that you will get future calls.
Some other favorite press sites:
Facebook: https://newsroom.fb.com/
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