A fair number of Social Media News Release "101" questions have cropped up lately. That’s a good sign! It seems every time I turn around, I hear about a new Social Media release. Thankfully, most of these are success stories. But there are many "basic" questions that still crop up, in the blogosphere and in my in-box. (And some not-so-basic questions, too.) Luckily I am not the only fella with answers, musings, and advice.

Christie Goodman of the San Antonio Byline Blog recently asked several good, basic questions about SMNRs. A few of the questions she’s asked are reflected by recent inquiries in my in-box, too, so I thought I’d use this forum to answer some of these questions. (Where I did not know an answer, I’m borrowing input from the smart folks who hang out at the Social Media Release Google Group.)

Once you figure out how to set up the DiggIt link, how can you test it?

Using the URL "http://www.digg.com/submit" is the safest, dummy-proof way to do this. Anyone who chooses to Digg your SMNR needs to be logged in to Digg, anyway. If they are already logged in, this link will ask the user to paste the hyperlink into the required field. Services like PRX Builder will do more sophisticated coding for you, as will the wire services (PRN, BW, MarketWire, et al.)

There is probably a better answer to this question. Any brainiacs wanna help out?

How do you set up a purpose-built Del.icio.us page or tags?

Go to del.icio.us. Set up an account. Keep in mind that the account name is based on your user name. So, if you are setting up a del.icio.us account for a client, use the client’s name as the account’s username. Then any tags you create are assigned to that account.

Alternately, you could create a del.icio.us account called "ChristieGoodman" and tag entries related to your client using their name as the tag. Thus, a "purpose-built" del.icio.us account is created, with the URL, del.icio.us/ChristieGoodman/CLIENTNAME. The "tagonomy" (vs. taxonomy) begets the customized URL.

What are the pros and cons of using a purpose-built Del.icio.us page or tags?

Please review this post. (It’s a PR-Squared "Best Of," so you know it’s gotta be good!) It should tell you what you need to know…

If you don’t have a blog but you do have a web site, do you still need to include a list of tags on the release?

This is a critical point that I need to blog about some more. The purpose of adding Technorati tags is NOT to "post" your press release to T’rati. T’rati does not even crawl the newswire sites! No, the purpose of adding T’rati tags is to put your SMNR into CONTEXT; to give the SMNR reader a sense of tangential conversations around your topic, even if those conversations have nothing at all to do with your news release!

If you distributing your release yourself rather than using a wire service, do you really e-mail the whole thing?

First, never email a release to a reporter who hasn’t asked for it in advance. To do so is mere PR spam. Rather than email a SMNR, why not post it to your website’s press section (it is so visual, and doing so helps SEO anyway!), and just provide the reporter with a link to the news release? Keep in mind that one of the core reasons for the development of the SMNR is to take advantage of the fact that 99.9% of reporters are familiar with the Web and use it as part of their daily work. A link should work just fine.

I hope this answers some of your questions, Christie (and everyone else)! Keep ‘em coming.

Tags: social+media+news+release, hrelease, smnr, chris+heuer, tom+foremski, brian+solis, dave+evans, christie+goodman, social+media, public+relations, pr+2.0

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