Ragan Communications partners with PressPage to offer digital publishing platform

CHICAGO, May 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- A brand journalism pioneer today announced a new partnership that brings an easy-to-use publishing platform to the U.S., giving communicators new control over their digital newsrooms.

Ragan Communications, publisher of PR Daily and Ragan.com, has joined with the Dutch tech firm PressPage to offer a platform that frees Web publishing from the stranglehold of IT and places it in the hands of public relations and corporate communications.

Ragan CEO Mark Ragan and PressPage co-founder and CEO Bart Verhulst have been exploring a partnership since they met at a conference in Amsterdam in 2012. PressPage makes brand journalism easy, something Ragan has been advocating for years.

The platform enables communicators and marketers to create rich media sites and easily update them with stories, photos, and video. It turns "press release graveyards"—forgotten caches of old announcements—into powerful tools for search engine optimization.

"Communicators need something that allows them to be up and running as publishers in a matter of weeks," Ragan said. "PressPage has created the platform for them. Everything is there, and it's easy to use. And it conforms with everything I teach in my workshops."

The partnership makes sense for Verhulst as well. He calls Ragan "one of the forefathers in brand journalism," helping PressPage to reach a target audience of communicators.

"Mark Ragan's vision of brand journalism is perfectly aligned with the mission of PressPage," Verhulst says.

PR pros and other communicators say they love the idea of taking a big-media approach to publishing: ditching the corporate-speak, telling stories, producing video and photos, Ragan adds. But they complain that they must bug overworked IT people every time they want to tweak an article or add an infographic online.

PressPage makes it easy to push out content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media. Tick the relevant boxes, and it automatically posts to those channels. Users can edit the text to adapt their voice for each platform.

Organizations using PressPage include Samsung, Nokia, T-Mobile, UNICEF, MasterCard, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Heineken, and many others.

Ragan and PressPage are offering a $15 Amazon gift card to qualifying communicators who take a 15-minute demo.

ABOUT RAGAN COMMUNICATIONS

Ragan Communications operates two of the top news and information sites for the PR and corporate communications industry: Ragan.com and PRDaily.com. The company is the leading provider of conferences and online training to PR, media relations, and corporate communications professionals.

ABOUT PRESSPAGE

PressPage (www.presspage.com) is the top content-sharing-platform technology provider for social newsrooms, virtual press centers, and online media hubs, enabling today's most engaging brands to become tomorrow's best publishers. The technology is uniquely designed to add workflow efficiency and distribution effectiveness, allowing brands to tell an engaging and optimized online story that is published straight into the search and social worlds.

Video - http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/90710-Ragan-Communications-PressPage.mp4

SOURCE Ragan Communications