The explosion of company websites and news sites is a welcome addition to a tired old media scene where newspapers are shutting down, radio stations are closing news desks and TV stations are using pre-packaged material.

It’s a new era where the companies are writing a lot of the news. (See Joe Pulizzi’s industry website Junta42 for some background on the trend.)

Internally, these news sites can be fascinating. We think TheFordWay.com is the wave of the future. Execs at Ford saw independent sites like Allpar.com (Chrysler news) and BlueOvalNews.com (Ford news) having lots of fun and drawing readership about car news. So they launched TheFordStory.com, which is a readable and fun site about everything Ford.

Mind you, Ford still has a PR website, at media.ford.com, but the Ford Story site is for fans, consumers, employees, dealers, contractors and anyone else wanting to know first hand about what is happening at Ford. Lots of other companies and organizations are doing it too; Kaiser Health News is a news service just about health-care innovation. While it serves the purposes of Kaiser, it uses a journalistic format to influence the debate.

Even smaller companies can launch these websites, many of which operate with off-the-shelf WordPress software. Here at Black Cow Press, we are helping companies launch them. Below are a few ideas and best practices; talk to us if you need some guidance on setting up an internal or external program.

1. Point of view. Thou shalt have many, not just one. Readers are bored with a “company line” and anything that smacks of that. If you have more than one person at a company, you can’t have just one perspective. But it does need to be enthusiastic. The people writing need to LIKE the company; it needs to be written with the enthusiasm (but not style) of a Tiger Beat magazine.
2. The sites are not P.R. Your p.r. staff needs to keep drafting press releases, and those press releases should appear on news sites, perhaps in improved and more readable formats. But the site cannot be P.R. A bold P.R. department will suggest that you build a company news site, but many PR staffers are ill equipped to do it. They just have a different mindset and are used to controlling information and controlling the message. Those days are over.
3. News standards: You need to use news standards. This is not some esoteric idea, just that you need to use plain language, a consistent style of writing and editing, and a sense of  concern about what the reader is interested in reading. That is not to say you want to investigate yourself; instead the journalism should be focused on telling all aspects of the company story. Also, have your news guidelines agreed upon beforehand. You want everyone to understand the rules before the site launches.
4. Hire reporters: Do hire journalists to do the sites (a little self promotion here, we admit.) Here’s why. Journalists are used to cranking out stories quickly and on deadline. Others move too slowly. But don’t be afraid of involving brand fans in your website; perhaps you could pay a small amount to customers who write an item for the site.
5. Self-criticism builds trust: Honesty is the key to making such a site work for the reader. While you won’t be bringing out negative things, you do want to deal with negatives. For instance, if your product was junk, and consumers rejected it, you need to admit it.
6. One senior approval: One person should be in charge of the news site, and report to a person who has some authority within the company. If senior management quashes all the fun stories, your site will be a bore and no one will read about it.
7. Guest essays: You need to encourage them from clients, staff and guest writers. This helps to build content, and build friends for your company.
8. Use analytic software: One of the forgotten benefits of company news sites is the analytic information you get. You can see if your competition is looking at your site.
9. Not just for big companies: Large multinational companies are naturals for these sites, as they have thousands of employees. But other smaller and mid-sized companies can launch smaller versions. Hotels can launch visitor guides. Office supply companies can launch sites relating to business and office needs. Restaurants can launch cooking, travel and recipe sites. Retailers can launch product-driven sites.
10. Use as a complement to your regular site. You don’t want to redesign your main site for this sort of information. Instead, you want this new site to complement what you are doing for you main site, and provide links back. So give it its own URL, or put it on a sub-domain.

Talk to us about your corporate news strategy. Call Black Cow editor Garland Pollard at 703-734-8602 for strategy and ideas.