Mark Glaser has a post up at the PBS Media Shift blog about the “social media press release” and how it is still a work in progress. He has a good recap of how it started a couple of years ago, how some forward-thinking PR practitioners and agencies came up with the idea of an SMPR — and he also describes how some firms still either don’t use them or consider a single HTML link to be the equivalent of a social-media press release. And I thought the traditional media business was slow to change.
Let’s forget all the blather about “social media,” shall we? If you are in any way trying to reach an online audience of journalists and/or customers and your press release has no links in it, then you = FAIL. If you have a single link to your PR agency’s website, or a single link to the company’s website, then you = FAIL. Links are the lifeblood of the Web — if you do not have them, and lots of them, then your press release is dead on arrival. At best, you force the person reading it to cut and paste terms into search engines and wander around looking for things. If you want some more reasons why your press releases fail, there are some good ones here.
This is not rocket surgery. Put links to relevant information in there; add multimedia content if you have it, with either embedded images or links to them. Better still, create a blog post that has all of these things in it and is tagged properly, and people will find it. Whether you follow the structure here or not is up to you (some people believe starting with the facts and not the spin or “hook” is the wrong way to go, but that’s debatable). Just put some damn links in there, and quit hoping that a boatload of overused adjectives will somehow sell the thing for you.
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I've read lots of blog posts (and news stories, for that matter) that
just read like a rewritten press release -- I don't see why a
well-written press release shouldn't get just as much prominence.
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Engage, engage, engage. Pique interest, give people something thought provoking. Stop talking about how great you are and provide something of value. They'll naturally follow you.
Raza Imam
http://SoftwareSweatshop.com
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few people notice.
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I have a big opinion on this puppy - almost all social media fails because PR isn't funding in their companies to do it right. Links is the minimum starting point. To do is right is like building a rocket ;-) A marketing rocket
http://furrier.org/2008/04/11/social-media-rele...
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AMEN!
Thank you for your advocacy and blunt talk. ;)
p.s. - FWIW I track reactions to the SMPR at http://del.icio.us/SHIFT.Communications. Check out tags like SHIFTtemplate and SocialMediaRelease, if interested.
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-M
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tell you whether what you're writing about is of interest to anyone.
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Use your blog if you have a blog, use an SMPR if you've got the time/money, re-do your corporate online newsroom and include embed codes for pics and video, etc., or just do what you suggest and use links in an e-mail.
This isn't that hard. Learn news judgment, be a resource, don't waste journos time. After all, you can put lipstick on a pig...but it's still a pig.
BTW, I always thought I invented the witty mis-use of "rocket surgery."
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As for the rocket surgery thing, I promise not to file a claim against you for trademark infringement if you promise not to do likewise :-)
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http://www.rocketsurgery.com/
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http://www.unjournalism.com/2007/03/10/social-m...
My, how so little has changed.
Thanks for the post, Matt.
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before certain people get the message :-)
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As for spin vs. facts? I say - tell me why this is important and relevant then give me the facts and content types to run with. But you are the journalist. What makes sense to you?
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what the point of the release is, and then some facts. More or less
the same way someone would write a news story.