Learn how newsrooms post stories and content on their websites and what to expect when your story goes live with our host, Jason Mudd. Jason is the managing partner of Axia Public Relations.
Guest:
Jason Mudd, On Top of PR host, helps companies get on Undercover Boss. He is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002.
Topic:
The one with Jason Mudd on understanding a news outlet’s website.
Also available on
Five things you’ll learn from this episode:
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If a TV newsroom always posts an online article in addition to the aired news story
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How you can get a copy of an aired TV news story video
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Beware of copyright when posting TV news stories on your website
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If a news story will always include a link to your company’s website
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The value of SEO for newsrooms
Quotables:
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“Even though you appeared on a news channel, that doesn’t mean it’s your property. You are actually consenting for the news station to have the exclusive copyright of that video content.” -@jasonmudd9
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“Search engine optimization is as important to the news channel as it is to you.” -@jasonmudd9
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“Newsrooms are designed to remain objective and not simply endorse companies, products, and services.” -@jasonmudd9
If you enjoyed the episode, would you please leave us a review?
Contact Resources:
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Have a question for Jason? Email: podcast@ontopofpr.com
Presented by: ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.
Transcript:
- Hello, and welcome to another episode of On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd, and I'm excited you're here today. We received a viewer question, and those questions come from Chris. Chris has some questions about earned media coverage and specifically when he's been on a television show. So I'm excited to share his questions and answers with you in today's solo cast. Stay tuned.
- [Announcer] Welcome to On Top of PR, with Jason Mudd. Presented by ReviewMaxer.
- Hello and welcome to another episode of On Top of PRM I'm your host, Jason Mudd, and today we're doin' another solo cast. That means it's just you and me, and we're talking. I'm trying to share information, tips, insights, and trends about public relations with you. And today's topic we're talking about earned media, or news coverage. And someone from our audience, Chris, he wrote in and asked us a couple of questions about earned media, and TV interviews, and news interviews. And so I'm excited to talk through these with you today and answer the questions that Chris submitted. Hey, if you've got a topic you'd like to see us do, whether it's a solo cast or with a guest, please drop us an email podcast@axiapr.com, or podcast@ontopofpr.com. So Chris wrote in, and apparently he was doing a TV news interview, and very excited to see that TV news interview go live. And so he had a couple of questions that he submitted, and so I thought we'd just walk through those today during our solo cast. The first question Chris asked was "Will the TV news show post an online article "of the news story, or will it only appear on the TV?" During the time that the show airs, and maybe on any replays, or obviously on the DVR. So the answer is yes, they normally do that. And you know, Chris, you would find out soon enough after you actually did the interview whether it was recorded live, or just recorded for playback later. Almost always the TV station or the TV show is going to post videos, whether it's the entire interview segment, or segments, or parts of that interview. The TV news show search and optimization is as important to them as it is to you because they have advertisers, and those advertisers both online and even during their program, they want the program or the show to be as well known as possible to attract more viewers. And those viewers are also potential buyers of the advertiser services. And so you think about it, the TV news station, the TV news show, they are selling ads to advertisers both online on their website, maybe even on their social media, and other digital platforms, as well as the commercials that interrupt the content on the TV show. So, yeah, I mean, they're gonna want to bring in as many eyeballs as possible to your content on their website as possible. So they're really repurposing the content they have on the TV station or the show. And they're putting it online to reach an on demand audience or based on search engine results, somebody who's searching on the computer for that topic. They wanna come up ranked high because it's valuable to them to capture more audience, and it's valuable to their advertisers to have more eyeballs and visibility for their paid media purchase on the news site. Chris then also asked basically "The TV news show posted our story on the website." Which he was hoping they would, "But there's no video yet." He said, "And can you help me get a copy of the video? "How would that get done? "How would we get a copy of the video?" So couple things. First of all, I would say standby for the video. If it's a television or broadcast platform, and they've put the story online in text, they're probably just wrapping up the final post-production, or maybe what they're doing which I've seen a lot of TV news stations and news shows do is they wait until right before the show airs, or the episode airs, or the segment airs, to either post the online story in text only. And then immediately before or soon after it airs, that's when they put the video of that story on the website too. If you think about it, they don't wanna give away the video. They don't want the video to be seen on demand on their website before the actual air time of their broadcast. Because if they do that then people would just tune in to the website and not tune in to the traditional platform of the live program. And so they'll likely insert the video either later, or right after it airs, or maybe just a little bit before, because they still need and want viewers to watch the live segment versus just seeing all of their stories online first, and be able to skim through them on their own timeline. Now, how do you get a copy of the video? There's obviously ways to download the video once it's playing embedded on the website. There's also media monitoring services. We use several at Axia Public Relations where we have a subscription and we can go in in real time and set the station, or the network, or the channel, or the market where it aired and the exact time and date where it aired, or search by keywords. We can find the clip, we can edit the clip and then download the clip ourselves. Or you can just pull it right from the station's website. But one caveat that I think is so important, we need to think about copyright. And so when we're thinking about copyright, this is content owned by that TV station, or that TV news show. It is not owned by you, and even though you appeared on that news channel, Chris, and our audience, that doesn't mean it's your property. You are actually consenting for them to have the exclusive copyright of that content even though it might be you, your image, your likeness, your intelligence, your tips, your thought leadership, your point of view, it still belongs to them. You've appeared as a guest giving consent for it to be owned by them. So you can ask for permission for that video use on your own website, or YouTube, or in an email, or on your other own media channels, or your website, and your web channels. But there's no guarantee that they're going to give that to you. And so what a lot of people do is they go ahead and use the video first, and then ask for forgiveness later if it comes up to be an issue. The only times I've heard of it being an issue is they're typically just given like a cease and desist letter where they're just basically saying hey, that's our content, you're not allowed to use it, we haven't given you permission, you haven't purchased rights, please remove it from your website. And then of course you do it. And you're disappointed, but you follow that compliance. You can of course fight back. I don't recommend that. You could probably agree to a fee, or pay some sort of licensing fee to do that as well. So that's a risk you'll have to take if you decide to do that on your own, but that's just kinda how it works and certainly consult with your corporate attorney before you make any move like that. Certainly don't take legal advice from a podcast or a PR agency about this, but that's what I see a lot of people doing. And so kind of a buyer beware, or proceed at your own risk, of course. 'Cause I'm not an attorney in any way like that. But that's how you can get it. So there are services out there that you call 'em up, and you tell 'em what you're looking for, and they find it or there's other services where you have control to go in and find it, and download it off of their portal, or their platform. That's typically called media monitoring. And like I said, we offer that to our clients, so if there's a clip that you need let us know and for a reasonable fee we can pull that for you and provide that to you. So that was Chris' second question. And we'll answer his third question right after this quick break.
- [Announcer] You're listening to On Top of PR with your host, Jason Mudd. Jason is a trusted advisor to some of America's most admired and fastest growing brands. He is the managing partner at Axia Public Relations, a PR agency that guides news, social, and web strategies for national companies. And now back to the show.
- All right, and welcome back to the On Top of PR podcast. I'm your host, Jason Mudd. And we had a viewer, or audience member write in and ask us three questions. So we are answering those three questions today. And just previously we answered whether or not a TV news show will post an article online of their news story in addition to putting it, broadcasting it out there. That was the first question. The second question was, will a TV news show post the video from the story on their website, and when should I expect that to go online? And how can I get a copy of that video? Chris' third question is, "Will a news story always include a link "to our company's website and mention our website address?" Man that's a great question. Not always is the quick answer. But when it does, it's awesome because search engines know that news sites are highly credible, they get a lot of site traffic, they have a lot of domain authority, and a lot of credibility. And not only that obviously Chris, they also have a lot of website traffic, and that traffic will, if they're interested in what you're offering, they'll click on that link, they'll go to your website then they'll consider and hopefully make a purchase, or a decision to support your cause, or whatever it is that you might be offering. So that is awesome when that happens. And as I mentioned earlier, search and optimization is important to the news channel as it is to you. And it's also important to them and their advertisers. It's also important to me too as your PR advisor. I want you to have a link back, so that we have more attribution to that news story driving traffic, more attribution to that news story maybe leading to consideration, and decisions to support, buy, or other call to actions and activities that the visitor might do on your website. So link backs are good for them, and they're good for you. Now, the background you need to know here is that newsrooms are designed to remain objective, and not simply endorse companies, products, and services. Therefore they should stick with the facts and share that information. Only the information that's really relevant to their audience. And not infer any kind of endorsement, or promotional tie in. So news stories have their own, or excuse me, news outlets have their own policy on link backs. Some say we only provide links from our website, from ads and not from the content because we need to support our advertisers, and those that are paying to have paid media on our content. And other news sites don't mind it at all. So it's really interesting. Some have a firm policy they will not do it. Some have a policy that if you're not an advertiser they won't do it. And others just by default might not think to do it, or in some of the smarter news outlets they actually require there to be link backs from their content to other sites. And that's part of their smarter SEO strategy, and I would highly recommend it. But here's the thing, and so I'm gonna end with this tip that's not one of your questions, Chris. But I would say, just ask, right? Because the search engine optimization is good for them and good for you. And in our experience, most journalists will help you out there if they can, because some of them have been trained to understand the importance of external links. I would also make sure that the link that you're asking them to link is not one that's too promotional, or going to directly to a page on the site that's trying too hard to convert. I would ask for a link from a key word that resonates for your SEO strategy, but more importantly, that the news channel will see as being an objective use of a key word link. And also linking to a page, whatever page it's directing to, is a page that the audience will sense is a good destination for them to go to to learn more. So keep it educational and informative. Don't be overly promotional. Don't beg or harass for the link, just politely ask. And if they give you a no you could maybe push back once and just kinda say, okay, do you have a policy, or why is it that you won't do it? Maybe it would help your case to find an example where they've done other link backs. But I'm telling you, there are some places that they will not give you a link back from a news story. But really, just ask. And if you don't ask you won't know, and it never really hurts to ask. But it's certainly not unethical to ask. Just tread lightly because they're not, a TV news station, or a news channel at all, or news site, is not your PR agency. They're not your publicist. They're not your SEO provider. So don't make them feel like they have to do it, make it sound like it's valuable to their audience, and it's valuable to them. Educate them on why it would be valuable to their audience and why it's valuable to them. Give them a little search engine optimization overview, or better yet just hire an agency, a PR agency that knows what they're doing to handle that for you. And I think that'll make a lot more sense. So look, this episode again is a solo cast. This is where I received some questions from a viewer, and I wanted to share them back with all of you, and give you some guidance. Obviously we got back to Chris right away with these answers and before we even recorded this episode, but I wanted to make sure that you had some information and insight about how the newsroom works. How TV newsrooms, and other newsrooms are posting content on their website. Because as you know, even newspapers are producing content online, and even newspapers are posting videos on their online content. So really everything is more about multimedia journalism nowadays. And so these questions are relevant to really any earned media coverage you might have. And I hope it was helpful. If you have more questions about how newsrooms work, and how to do media relations, and how to earn media coverage this is our sweet spot at Axia, so I'm happy to answer those questions. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about news, social, and web. Specifically something like this that has to do with earned media coverage, and search engine optimization. Just leave a comment or write to us and we would be happy to answer those questions here through content on our podcast that we also record as a video. So we have a vodcast format as well for your convenience. So again, Jason Mudd, glad to be here. Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for tuning into today's solo cast, and be well, and look forward to staying in touch with you.
- [Announcer] This has been On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer.
Topics: owned media, news media, On Top of PR, solocast
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