Maximizing the World Wide Web as a key place to establish a rapport and relationship with the media can be a tricky thing: On the Internet, you can keep journalists abreast ofwhat your organization or company is doing, but generally you can't massage the information you give them or control how quickly they find out.
Bell Atlantic, however, has found a way to meet those challenges. The telecommunications giant, in the midst of working out regulatory issues surrounding its proposed merger with Nynex, is one of the first major corporations to test the Web as a public affairs medium.
Bell Atlantic made its way onto the Web about two years ago with http://ba.com/, and now has a full-service site, http://www.bell-atl.com, with consumer and business features.
The site has set a PR precedent not only because it's chock full of facts and easy to use, but because it continues to be enhanced. Since putting up the site, in which the company has invested several hundred thousand dollars, Bell Atlantic hasn't been content with resting on its laurels.
The company has received comments from journalists at trade publications, such as Communications Daily and Telecommunications Reports, as well as other media outlets such as The Washington Post and Wired magazine, who have used the site to help them pen articles.
In the next two weeks, for example, the company will announce another upgrade to its Web site to reach more journalists and customers.
The overhaul will position the site as more than a URL offering news made to order. It will position it as a kind of cyber storagehouse for public documents about the company. (Bell Atlantic is in the throes of planning the PR which will surround that move.)
But the stage for that soon-to-arrive upgrade was set by two major revamps which took place around May and the end of November in 1996. The first was the corporation's decision to integrate technology that allows Web pages to be sent by e-mail. That move means reporters and editors no longer have to log onto the site to get news.
The second was its "News Made to Order" enhancement, allowing journalists to customize the kind of news they receive according to topic and regional preferences. So far, a total of about 1,600 users have registered for either service - the e-mail delivery system or the customized news component, which also allows for news to be prioritized.
But although those two overhauls are among the most recent changes Bell Atlantic has made, they are only part of the way the company has capitalized on the real-time and interactivity components the Net provides.
Even before people began to rely on the technology of graphical Web browsers such as Mosaic, Bell Atlantic used the gopher protocol to make sure they had a stake in the future.
"In 1993 we were poking around the Internet and talking about what we were going to do online," said Eric Rabe, assistant VP of corporate relations. "We saw the Internet as a way to give us an image change as a high-tech company and this was the kind of PR that would allow us to put a unique spin on that message."
Bell Atlantic is of the school of thought that the Web is among the most promising places to foster press and customer relationships. More than 15,000 users access company releases on a weekly basis. Here's a sample of the topics of some of the releases which were on the site earlier this month:
- Bell Atlantic sponsors a child abuse prevention program;
- Bell Atlantic Nynex expands its system across the Carolinas and Georgia;
- Bell Atlantic expands its digital network in the greater Philadelphia area; and
- Bell Atlantic announces its business pricing for Cellscape, its service for wireless Internet/intranet access.
But these releases weren't just providing news. What they hint of - if you analyze the range of the issues they deal with - is a workable formula or successful Web PR.
They touch on a variety of corporate branding strategies, which include: Being part of a community (the child abuse program); promoting a product or service (the Cellscape news blurb); and having a progressive, aim-for-the-future image (the digital network release which is loaded down with technical jargon).
But the site isn't just for those in the press. For instance, even before the Web site went up, Bell Atlantic relied on its listserv (the first plain-text listserv went up in January 1994), a list of e-mail addresses to reach those who have a keen interest in the telecommunications field.
"When we wanted people to migrate from the listserv and we were posting messages encouraging them to register at the site, they thought their information link to us was being wiped out," recalled Ken Deutsch, director of Washington, D.C.-based Issue Dynamics, Bell Atlantic's Web site manager and consultant.
"We had panic-stricken journalists who thought they were going to be cut off," echoed Rabe. "They thought they were going to lose this electronic delivery, but what we were doing was enhancing the way we presented the news."
In fact, according to Rabe and Deutsch, that's what Bell Atlantic cyber PR experiments have all been about.
"When we were researching the World Wide Web in 1993, it was a time when a lot of corporate types thought the Internet was about pizza-eating geeks at universities," Rabe remembered.
"When we put up the site in March of 1994, I brought Ray Smith [chairman of Bell Atlantic] into my office to see the site. He went berserk and started giving me high fives. Ever since them we have had a commitment to this site and a drive to keep it fresh."
Deutsch said news on the site is updated several times a day and that highers-up at both companies are always thinking about ways of keeping the site on the cutting edge. But it also conveys a feeling of permanence because every release is archived, providing a sense of history.
"We're very user friendly and reporters and editors have found a kind of comfort in this site," Rabe added. "I believe it has helped us foster relationships we otherwise wouldn't have had."
(Bell Atlantic, Eric Rabe, 215/963-6531; Issue Dynamics, Ken Deutsch, 202/408-1400)