Online Public Relations Thoughts

From the beginning of this blog, I've ranted (sadly) that content is the most important element of the web -- not flashy design. This study affirms that point of view. People go to the web to find information. Hence, a key task of the public relations practitioner is to make sure that web information is updated and easy to access. In the normal course of operations, web sites should be updated at least monthly. Most aren't. Hence, one can find instances even with major corporations, as I did the other day, in which a key statistic was given as two different numbers on two pages of its site. I had no idea -- and still don't -- what was the correct figure, but I needed the data for a document I was writing. It's frustrating when that happens, and it damages the credibility of an organization. One has to ask what else is wrong on the site and whether any of its information can be trusted.