Reinventing the Online Newsroom

ABANow.org

Recently, our friends at the American Bar Association asked us to redesign their Media Relations and Communication Services website. There were many practical reasons for this: adding features, improving site navigation and usability, and making content easier to add and update.

But the primary reason for the redesign was in the social media realm. The Media Relations Division was evolving from communicating with the news media, to take on added responsibilities for communicating with members, the legal community and the public. In addition to timely web content, these readers like to get a well-rounded perspective on the news. They still look for traditional fact-based information, but also enjoy the perspectives offered by blogs and seek the reaction of others within their social networks.

Unfortunately, the ABA was missing an opportunity to cut out the middleman (the traditional news media) and connect directly with their audience. The news releases, videos and podcasts they were posting were not easy to share on other social media sites. By not catering to this influential form of communication, they risked not being part of the online conversation about issues vital to the group.

To overcome this challenge, we recommended a complete overhaul of the Media Relations and Communication Services site to include the following features:

• Newsroom items have their own URL so content can be embedded and shared in other social networks.
• The ability to comment on content in order to build a community
• An RSS feed to drive syndication and increase SEO
• Social links to make it easy for readers to bookmark and share newsroom content
• Twitter feed to provide another way to promote and distribute content
• Optimizing titles, categories and content to enhance searchability

The redesigned and rebranded ABANow.org site meets those needs. It serves as a hub for aggregating content from the Media Relations site. Using an open source blogging software, we created dynamic web pages that take content, format it, and automatically pulls in other related links or materials that might be of interest to the viewer.

We also wanted to give people the ability to customize the information they receive. So we provided a filter function to allow the viewer to select only the content they want to see and an RSS button that takes them to a page so they can select content based on a variety of filters — including subject and content type – to receive that information either via RSS or email.

If you look at any major news site, user participation is encouraged. Allowing users to comment and interact with each other to discuss news stories, videos, and blog posts is an attractive feature that builds a community and enhances search engine optimization. The ABANow.org site gives viewers the option of posting comments or sharing content from the site. We also built a tool that converted ABANow headlines into Twitter updates, allowing users of this social network to access ABA content and drive new people to the site.

We’d love to get your feedback on this site. Please let us know your thoughts and comments.

Read more about how social media PR is bypassing traditional news to go directly to decision makers:

New York Times Article : Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley