Back in October of 2007 at a MarketingProfs conference I remember listening to a panel on how someone used a blog as their online news room.
The panel was run by David Armano and featured Todd Andrilik the director of marketing and PR, for Leopardo Construction, who was using WordPress as a online news room.
It was one of those marketing ideas that I walked away from it thinking–Damn I wish I thought of that! (shout out to Andy Sernovitz who runs a blog by that name http://www.damniwish.com/).
Many services started to pop up after that to create and host a social media news room for companies. But recently after writing Facebook Marketing for Dummies (due out in September by Wiley) it occurred to me why would I ever pay for that if I can create the same thing on Facebook for FREE!
Think about it. You can set up a Facebook Page for your business, use the Notes feature to upload all your press releases from your site automatically from your RSS feed (see chapter 5 of Facebook Marketing for Dummies), add a bookmarking service like Del.icio.us as an application or widget, add photos or import photos using the Flickr application and add Videos or import them via the YouTube application. And BINGO you have the same thing just using your existing social media presences and wiring them together and it’s free!
But best of all you take your news room from being an island on your own website or worse hosted on someone else’s website like on WordPress and move it to a place like Facebook where millions of people can interact, comment and discuss the news if they chose to do so.
Tags: Facebook, Social Media
Cool idea, Paul. Do you recommend that this page embrace Facebook friends in the same way that a personal page would? I worry about posts from family and friends that have nothing to do with the company’s activities and may confuse those looking just for company news and info.
Interesting idea, but how is having it on Facebook any more secure than “..hosted on someone else’s website like on WordPress..”? I understand the appeal of having the information available to people where they normally spend time, rather than your own “island”, but I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to use it as your one and only news room. As a secondary newsroom, possibly. But do you really think it’s a good idea to entrust that much brand currency in a 3rd party service that can arbitrarily decide how and when people access your content? And where you have no control over what ads are served in the space? I’m not sure the benefits outweigh the warning bells, for me.
Paul, I’ve thought about using Facebook Pages in that very same way. Of course, my friend Jason Kintzler might not think to highly of it. After all, he created Pitch Engine to serve the same purpose.
Let’s make this part of the discussion on Friday’s User Friendly Thinking radio interview.
I think it’s a good idea conceptually. It’s really might be just about semantics.
Here’s the difference:
Our service (PitchEngine) enables you to share your social PR content to your social networks – like your brand’s Facebook Page – where you’re ultimately driving people to.
If you have a separate Facebook newsroom, it may confuse the situation, especially since it’s difficult enough to get followers/fans on your brand page. We opted to utilize the Social Media Release as the mobile component to your PR outreach with consumers, journalists and other influencers. This way, you can take your content where they are – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., to share!
Thanks for thinking outside the box Paul, it’s what PR 2.0 is all about!
Jason Kintzler
Founder of PitchEngine
@pitchengine
Thanks for the great pointers, Paul.
I agree with your post. Facebook has emerged as one of the best social media sites ever produced: it’s user-friendly, it’s fun to create profiles, as well as, of course, you can create fan pages that can bolster your business’s prominence.
@ Eliane – I was suggesting more of a Fan page approach which would not get trafficked as much by family and friends
@ Adele – you make a great point – since writing this many have challenged me on this exact issue and I think it would be good to use BOTH – facebook and your website
Sorry I’m just now seeing this post, but great idea, Paul. I think the key factor when weighing WordPress vs Faceback for online news rooms is hosting. With WordPress, you can host the newsroom on your own server while Facebook is third party and therefore comes with some risk. However, like you said, if you can’t do it yourself and you don’t want to pay to have WordPress integrated, Facebook sounds like a great solution.