There’s been a lot of buzz around the social media release (SMR) lately and since it’s an upheaval and departure from a 100-year old tradition, I thought I’d share my experience with utilizing an SMR (or a variation of one) sprinkled with a few opinions for good measure.
The SMR made its debut back in May 2006 and yet, almost two and half years later, there still isn’t a wide adoption of it from public relations or marketer’s alike. Some larger companies are using the SMR, but that’s about it.
If you take a look at the original design of the SMR, it really is a complete departure from what public relations & marketing professionals have had drilled into their heads for decades. And, if you aren’t involved in social media, a lot of the sections might make absolutely no sense. What’s more, if the reporters/journalists/editors you are targeting aren’t involved in social media, they might not get it either.
Here’s why:
Yep, the contact information, headline and subhead might all be the same and comfortable–but that’s where the comfort ends.
The additional sections include:
- Core News Facts (akin to the who, why, what, when, where, how, but in a bulleted format)
- Link & RSS Feed to Purpose-built del.icio.us page
- Multimedia
- More multimedia available by request (i.e. download white paper)
- Pre-approved quotes (okay, this is familiar, but the quotes are not within context of the release)
- Links to relative coverage to date
- Boilerplate Statements
- RSS Feed to Client’s News Release
- “Add to del.icio.us”
- “Technorati Tags/Diff this
If the above sounds like an alien language to you, you’re not going to embrace it, right? And breaking that 100-year old tradition is scary. Agreed. As well, with an SMR, the reporter/journalist/editor might need to piece the story together themselves. With all the cutbacks in the magazine and newspaper industries, that’s a lot to ask of someone who might already be overworked. Some times, they just like to publish the release as received. Of course, there are lots of times they don’t–but let’s stick to simplicity for now.
So, how can you make your news releases a little more social with a bit of a safety net (I mean, PR and marketing professionals are still held accountable for results last time I checked). Try utilizing PRWeb, Business Wire’s EON, or a similar service that offers a version of a “social” release. You can use your traditional release style, but optimize it for search, keywords, media (i.e. a video, podcast, website, brochure, etc.), and sharing (the social part). That’s a departure that’s not so drastic, right?
Recently, testing the waters of the “social” release pool, we tested two releases, one major news release in a traditional format over the business wire and one minor news release in an optimized “social” format over PRWeb.
The results?
The minor release provided 1,330 Google hits and 258 media downloads while the major traditional news release received 243 Google hits and no media downloads (because there wasn’t the option to use any). Again, no web analytics here for simplicity’s sake.
Are these two releases apples & oranges? Of course. But when budgets are tight and you are looking for the biggest bang for the least marketing buck, my bet goes to the “social” release because it provides:
- Search engine optimization (you can optimize the release on the backend with keywords)
- Hyperlinks within the release (inbound links to your site do wonders for natural search)
- Tags (again, think searchable)
- Media (a way to virally spread your work)
- Sharing (a way for people to bookmark and share your news)
Is this a scientific approach? No. But, using a “social” release seems to provide more hits, traffic and shared media than a traditional, standard release.
Why is any of this important?
One, utilizing keywords might allow someone to find you that might otherwise not know you. Two, there is the potential that your news will be shared by people who do know you with people who don’t. Three, you can make the most of the money you spent on media (videos, podcasts, collateral, etc.).
What do you think? Would you try a “social” release? If you have, what experiences can you share?
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- The Power of Social Media meets the Press Release
- Social Media Press Release Hell and Advice
- Do press releases belong on social media sites?
- Historical Perspective on Blog and Social Media Ethical Standards Debate
Tags: Marketing, search engine optimization, Social Media, social media release
“Try utilizing PRWeb, Business Wire’s EON, or a similar service that offers a version of a “social” release.” I have been using such tools for two years and my clients get great results.
Nice pose Beth and great to see you here.
Thanks for sharing your results and opinion. Have you tried using PitchEngine? If so, what are your thoughts?
Great post Beth. I love getting practical about the SMPR.
Personally, I really like PitchEngine lately. Super easy to use.
To your point about people not understanding the SMPR, I agree. I’ve been creating 2 releases and 2 distribution lists. A traditional version for old school media, and an SMPR version for bloggers and tech/marketing writers.
It’s double the work (and double the $$$ via the wires) but I think that’s the situation we’re in for now.
j
Great advice Beth, I’m going to pass this along to a few people I work with to help them “get it” and heave past the 100-year tradition!
Beth, welcome and congratulations on a wonderful post.
I believe you’ve taken a valuable first step here towards helping to clarify just what constitutes a “social media release” …as opposed to, well, an “SEO release” or “PR 2.0 release,” or any number of other substantive but ambiguous terms currently in vogue.
On my blog, I touch briefly on the benefits of media releases that are at least composed and optimized on a basic level for social media dissemination, and will be posting more on this topic. I’m hopeful that this info will be of value to Marketing Profs readers.
http://planetrussell.net/blog/2008/08/07/14/
Beth, insightful post. Very clever way to leverage something you’re going to do anyway, right? I never thought of this. Thanks for your creative mind. We need it.
Wonderful post, Beth. I’ve been riding the rollercoaster of this discussion for the past two years. While it has been a long road, I fully expect stories like yours to become the norm.
PRX Builder is a tool that may help people who want to try the new format without spending any money. The PRX Builder wizard takes care of the techy stuff so you can remain focused on your content.
I hope others will be encouraged by your results and give the new format a try.
http://prxbuilder.com
In June 2007, International Paper (IP) demonstrated a best practice in blending traditional news releases and digital media features. It didn’t look like the SMR at all. But it did include:
* Strategic Consideration
* Multipurpose Communication
* Message Reinforcement
* Demonstrated Credibility
It was missed by social media because it didn’t come from social media.
All the best,
Rich
@LewisGreen, glad to hear that you’ve been successful with “social” media release tools. Hopefully your success will get others to take a chance. Thanks for the welcome!
@LeahDaniels, I haven’t used Pitch Engine just yet because I still need releases to go over the wire. Jason is doing an amazing job, but my media targets are quick up with pure ‘go out and get my own news’ just yet. But, I think that’s the way media relations will go and Pitch Engine will be the next step I take.
@JasonBaer, thanks Jason. Yep, you are in the boat a lot of PR folks are in these days. It’s hard to let go of that shot gun approach (the wire) because it typically shows immediate results via pickups on the web. That and there’s the inherent SEO value to all those links. It will be interesting to see how media relations and PR change over the next few years.
@JenniferMurray, thanks! A lot of times explaining the search and sharing aspect of this type of release is helpful. It’s still a traditional release, but with linky goodness. Good luck to you in convincing the powers that be.
@MichaelRussell, thanks Michael! There sure are a lot of terms floating about, aren’t there?! Thanks for sharing your link with us; it’s always good to have multiple resources for these things.
@DemianFarnworth, Absolutely! It’s just a matter of putting it together in one place.
Thanks for the kind words and welcome.
@ShannonWhitley, thank you sir! I have heard wonderful things about your tool, PRX Builder, and I think we should all check it out. Free is always good, especially in these economic times.
@RichBecker, that is very interesting. The areas of concentration and highlight make a lot of sense for quick digestion and comprehension. I went through all of IP’s June 2007 releases and this was the only one that I found that had a Web 2.0 feature (Skype link): http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=73062&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1018871&highlight=
Do you have a link that you could share with us? It would be great to see how IP handled the release and develop best practices. Thanks in advance!
PitchEngine is incredible…what it is offering is normally about 250-400 dollars a shot…and it is free for 30 days. You can’t beat that. Period.
Hi Beth,
Very interesting post, and I’m sorry that I’m a little late in spotting it. You bring up some interesting points, but also a few things that I think might warrant taking a little bit of a deeper look at.
For disclosure, I’m the Director of Emerging Media at PR Newswire. The first thing I want to point out is that PR Newswire started doing – Multimedia News Releases…or the first releases to go beyond just text back in May 2001 (http://www.prnewswire.com/touchstone/pearlharbor.html) and then helped with the distribution of the “SMR” template in May 2006 (http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/shift/24521/).
Now, in fairness to the folks at BusinessWire and PR Web, I think you really have to look at the reports that are being given back by both of the organizations and then go and do some searches online to see if those numbers in those reports are really correct. I did notice that there were two different messages that were being delivered which is also going to attract different audiences and might be behind some of the differing metrics as well. Also, what one service is going to consider a “media download” is going to be different from what another service is going to consider just a “download”. In fact, I wouldn’t really expect any true media to “download” a release, rather real media are going to view the release as and then download specific elements if they are there to download.
Also, I want to point to a recent release from the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR) that just did a survey of media (http://tinyurl.com/6nwu8o) that actually shows very little awareness of the SMR (62% of respondents claiming that they didn’t know what it was….and only 21% finding value in it).
Please don’t take this to think that I’m not in favor of the SMR or other advancements in how organizations release their news. I just think it is very early in the process for us to judge really well what works and what doesn’t. I think that we are still in the early stages of figuring this out – even though PR Newswire has been working on this issue for a long time now – and getting media (new and traditional) to adapt to these new methods. There’s everything from the SMR to the TwitPitch that so many in PR are experimenting with.
Today, it’s great to experiment with the new, but still important to mix the methods – as you wisely point out. However, when all is said and done at the end of the day, it all comes down to 3 things: what the message is, will that message resonate with the audience; and the use of personal relationships with key media.
Again, very interesting post and I look forward to following the conversation.
Michael Pranikoff
Director, Emerging Media
PR Newswire
Beth, Great post as usual!
I wanted to chime in and set the record straight about PitchEngine. First, I’ll let users discover the benefits of our service. As you can see from some of the comments above – PR people will decide which service is offering something truly unique.
This is not an experiment, it is a shift in direction for an entire industry. With all due respect to Michael and others here, the future of PR is not about traditional distribution. Look what’s happening to traditional news distribution. We’re beyond experiments here.
Why are we different. All of the major wire services are simply that – a wire service. The products they offer are designed to interact with their traditional distribution model. That simply is not our model.
Do I think you can use or service along side wires? Yes. Do we distribute your news? Yes, but not by blanketing a list. We share it with Google News and on our PitchFeed which is subscribed to by a growing number of media like USA Today, NBC News, ReadWriteWeb and more.
NEWSFALSH! Can public companies use SMRs? Yes. http://bit.ly/3I42fT Thousands already do via PitchEngine.
If you haven’t yet, sign up, build a release on http://pitchengine.com and share it with your media contacts, Google News and your social networks for FREE. The experience will speak for itself.
Can’t wait to get you going on PE Beth
Jason Kintzler
Founder and Passionate PR Guy, PitchEngine
My response, and the conversation continues: http://mediapitch.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pitchengine-vs-the-competitors