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Sunday morning – already reason enough to feel comfortable: The working week is mastered successfully and hopefully a bit of relaxation is on the agenda on this day. I know that work can be time consuming even at the weekends but let’s forget it for a bit. What’s the perfect pastime at the weekend for you? It’s hard to say, isn’t it? A thousand nice things come to my mind when thinking about it. Spending my time with my family and friends is only one of them. But apart from the perfect pastime at the weekend, which is hard to determine because of the variety of opportunities, I can tell you easily what the perfect start into the weekend is for me: A cup of freshly ground coffee! Of course, I drink my morning coffee every day within the week, too. But it’s a different as chalk and cheese to drink your coffee hastily before work or to enjoy it to the full, isn’t it? Do you know what completes a delicious cup of coffee? The smell of freshly ground coffee beans which emerges when you open a bag of coffee! I often asked myself: Why does coffee smell so good?

The chemical riddle behind coffee aroma

I found a very well developed answer to this question in the online media room of the international chemical company BASF (it’s portfolio comprises chemicals, plastics, performance products, functional solutions, agricultural solutions, and oil & gas). In the section ‘podcasts’Jeff, the company’s Chemical Reporter, answers questions of BASF’s Podcast listeners on Chemistry in our everyday life: Why is sugar sticky? What makes lipstick kiss-proof? How does a plasma monitor work? – as just to name a few of them.

Listen to the answer of my question about the coffee aroma yourself. Click here.

It’s interesting that until today, no one has been able to produce coffee aroma artificially, isn’t it? Do you think a perfume with coffee aroma would sell? Kidding aside: In the end, it was not the answer that aroused my enthusiasm but the well thought-out online media room of the company.  

The open secret of the beneficial effects of an online media room

According to David Meerman Scott* a company’s online media room is a great terrific opportunity for PR people to get content out into the marketplace. Just think about all the people who might visit it: I’m convinced that not only journalists take a closer look at the corporate online media room but also people like you and me; students, suppliers, customers, investors, employees etc.. In other words: all kinds of people visit a company’s online media room. It would be an utter disgrace to miss this chance to communicate effectively, wouldn’t it?

Let’s take a closer look at the online media room of BASF because for me it’s a very good example to demonstrate how a well developed online media room could attract people’s attention. First of all, the online press room’s space is well-arranged, navigation is easy and corporate colors underline the corporate design. The navigational design is clear. Moreover, BASF’s online media room is not simply a list with contact information for the organization’s PR person which I’ve unfortunately seen on other online media rooms. Information is available in German and English and in many different formats, e.g. news releases, publications, videos, podcasts and press photos.

As the advantages and reasons for this particular construction of a content-rich online media room are quite the same as of the content-rich website, I suggest you to read my recent blog post about this topic if you want to know more about the benefits of a good design or information in different formats.

A room not only for the media

I’d like to take up the good idea of BASF’s podcast ‘The Chemical Reporter’, which revalues the company’s online media room to me. This idea relates to David Meerman’s suggestion to design an online media room for the company’s buyers which will make it at the same time a better media site for journalists. I personally got useful information from the Chemical Reporter podcast. Moreover, BASF offers interesting background information as a support of the different topics. Concerning the riddle behind the coffee aroma the online media room provides additional material like The story’ September 29^th is coffee day’, The animation ‘See how the brewing unit puts the temperament of Italian espresso into the coffee’, prospects, an info box and downloads. To my mind this kills to birds with one stone: Not only the customer, who wants to learn something new but also the journalist, who searches for  interesting material for his article are offered interesting information on the BASF online media room.

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What remains to say? Did you know that a well organized online media room often has higher search results and drives more traffic than other parts of an organization’s website? Why? Because of the way the search engines work: “A news release dynamically builds out a new set of content in your online media room, with each news release generating its own indexable page, which the search engines all capture.” (Dee Rambeau, founder and managing partner of The Fuel Team quoted in David Meerman Scott’s book* )

*Book: The New Rules of Marketing & PR – How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly’