​Most tech brands fail to provide basic info for journalists

British tech PR lags behind world’s leading tech brands

The fastest growing British technology* companies are failing to keep up with the world’s leading tech brands and their use of online newsrooms for communicating with journalists and key stakeholders.

With a score of just 19 per cent, the fastest growing British tech brands were the lowest performing group in the latest study, What’s the tech story?, by Mynewsdesk - the world’s leading online newsroom technology specialists. 

They were a massive 42 percentage points behind the world’s richest technology companies, the highest performing group, and 71 per cent behind Panasonic who had the highest performing newsroom in the study with a score of 90 per cent.

The What's the tech story report analyses the use, content and structure of 70 of the world’s biggest technology brands of which 87% provided an online newsroom. It provides insight into how tech brands are adapting to trends in digital journalism and online content consumption.

53 per cent of leading tech brands fail to provide basic information for journalists

Only 16 per cent of tech brands display a personal email address for their relevant press contacts anywhere on their newsroom and less than half (47 per cent) provide contact information on their press releases, making it unnecessarily difficult for journalists to get in touch.

The former technology editor at The Guardian, Charles Arthur, said “What I need out of a company website is a clear link to the press office and to press releases they may have. Simply put, I need clear information about what a company does, who the team is, and ways to contact them.”

Multimedia content overlooked by majority of tech brands

Overall, just 29 per cent of leading tech brands provide a video library in their newsroom. Only 47 per cent offer an image library and even fewer (43 per cent) provide images of high enough quality to be used in print.

Laura McLean, Communications Executive at Mynewsdesk, said “The increasing ease and affordability of producing video content means it is a more viable form of storytelling for organisations of all sizes, and it's rare to find an online article which doesn't feature an image. Video is becoming an ever more valuable asset when pitching stories to journalists, not just as an effective storytelling format for owned content. Brands must make it as easy as possible for journalists, bloggers and key stakeholders to find, share and download it - therefore, there is no better place for presenting images and video than in your online newsroom.”

62 per cent of tech brands are failing to provide mobile optimised newsrooms

Despite 87% of the world’s leading tech brands investing in online newsroom technology, the majority (62 per cent) are failing to fully engage with the media, consumers and key stakeholders by not optimising their newsrooms, and therefore their content, for mobile browsing.

This comes at a time when 60% of all online traffic now comes from mobile devices and visits to retail websites via mobile devices have overtaken desktop traffic for the first time, according to studies by comScore and IMRG Capgemini.

Social media brands are the worst at using social media

The majority of social media companies tend to stick to their own platforms when communicating with key target audiences and often do not offer social links and share buttons to social media channels other than their own.

LinkedIn provides sharing options for Twitter, Google+ and Facebook as well as to LinkedIn, but Twitter and Facebook did not offer sharing functions to any social media sites other than their own.

Mutesa Sithole, Content Marketing Manager at Mynewsdesk, said “By not providing a variety of social links in their newsroom and on content pieces brands are reducing the likelihood of their stories reaching as many of their target audience as possible. It negatively affects the user experience when a reader has to cumbersomely copy/paste links and leave the newsroom to share the content they find interesting.”

Notes to Editor

The fastest growing British tech brands were taken from Deloitte's Fast 50.

If you would like to link to the whitepaper in your article, please use this link.

Video interview (Tips for tech PRs) with Charles Arthur, former technology editor at The Guardian. 

Video interview (Tips for tech PRs) with Max Tatton-Brown, tech PR specialist. 

For journalist use: the whitepaper without the need to download or enter email address

List of the tech brands and their score in the report: