Posts Tagged ‘Internet’

Today’s news atmosphere calls for up-to-the-second news, as soon as you can get it and as fast as you can post it. That includes social media such as Facebook and Twitter, but it also applies to websites. One essential way to keep your website as updated as possible is an online newsroom with fresh, new content that is constantly evolving.

David Henderson, author of “Making News in the Digital Era,” said, “Static newsrooms are the least-visited part of a website because most are just graveyards of old press releases. Your newsroom needs to present the spectrum of all the things that your company is doing within its industry, and hanging press releases there kills credibility.”

The core audience for an organization’s online newsroom is everyone from shareholders and business partners, to customers, donors, employees… and THEN the media. And because newsrooms are not only for the media, practitioners must use a writing style that draws interest in a way people can relate to.

“Nobody cares what your company does unless you tell them in a way that adds value,” Henderson said.

What are some elements to add value to your online newsroom?

• News articles (300-500 words)
• Short videos (HD for B-roll)
• Links to company facts and contacts
• Search capability

And if you use WordPress as your content management system, you’re not alone. Even The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal use it for their blog networks, said Ryan Zuk. There are over 22 million WordPress publishers as of February 2010: 10.6 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 11.4 million active installations of the WordPress.org software. According to Quantcast, around 250 million people visit one or more WordPress.com blogs every month, and they view over two billion pages on those blogs.

So get reading, writing and online newsroom–ing.

How many things are you doing right now… in addition to reading this blog entry, that is? Watching a YouTube video? Writing an e-mail? Sending a text message? Well, it seems that more media multitasking is on the rise — and I can’t say I’m surprised!

The amount of time viewers spent watching TV while at the same time cruising the Internet grew 34.5% last year to an average of 3.5 hours a month in 2009, up from 2.5 hours in 2008, according to a Nielsen Co. report released this week.

Nielsen says nearly 60% of TV viewers now use the Internet once a month while also watching TV — up 3% from a year before. The survey also notes that the number of people who are multitasking grew almost 5% from the year before to 134 million.

“The report seems to suggest that concerns by TV executives that the Internet was taking people away from their shows are unfounded. In fact, live TV viewing increased 1% in 2009. Add in time-shifted viewing a la TiVo, and the average number of hours jumped to a total of 163 hours a month watching TV in 2009, up from 160 hours in 2008.”

So what are people doing as they watch TV? A look the top 5 sites visited by these media multitaskers gives some clues:

Google
Yahoo
Facebook
MSN or Microsoft Bing
YouTube

But is multitasking really a good idea? … Sorry… just got a text… Right, CNN.com says heavy multitaskers are more easily distracted by irrelevant information than those who aren’t constantly in a multimedia frenzy, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Even when you think you’re doing several things at once, you’re more likely switching rapidly back and forth between them — actually compromising productivity. Plus, multitasking puts stress on your brain’s memory-retention center…

Wait, what was I doing?