Today we’ve helped release a piece of research from Mynewsdesk which looks at how the world’s leading 100 brands are sharing content and information on their online newsrooms.

You can read the full report here, but I wanted to pull out what I think are some of the most interesting findings:

• 35% of global newsrooms contain out of date information – this one is unforgivable. Information that is not accurate could be catastrophic, resulting in articles being published based on information that is out of date. The possible implications – especially for listed companies – are huge.
• 26% failed to provide contact details and 45% left out contact details on press releases – with the growth of digital PR, the temptation is to try and do everything via digital communication channels – email, Twitter etc. The reality, though, is that people like talking to people. If a journalist or blogger would prefer to discuss something in person, don’t make it difficult for them to do so.
• 70% of newsrooms failed to include any sort of email alerts – in slight contradiction to the last point, sometimes an influencer might visit your site and, while not specifically looking to write about your brand immediately, feels compelled to stay in touch and receive future content. If this is the case, make sure you have the mechanisms in place (email or RSS are a good place to start) to provide the opportunity to do this.
• 40% failed to provide image libraries, only 51% featured video and 71% failed to embed multimedia within news stories – multimedia has been proven time and time again to have a huge impact on engagement rates. The trend toward a visual web (just think of Instagram and Vine) is nothing new. Make the most of it and help anyone wanting to write about your brand by giving them high quality resources.