One Year Later: Social Media Releases, Part II
Every now and then, a friend or colleague says something that makes you want to slap your forehead – how could you not have figured THAT out on your own??
Such a moment struck me at the NewComm Forum event a few months back, where I was a co-panelist with Brian Solis, blogger at PR 2.0. In discussing the SMNR, Brian said something to the effect of:
“Done right, a Social Media Release is really nothing more than a blog post.”
He’s dead-on. Think about it:
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A blog post provides the forum for content (the news) …
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A blog post provides widgets for sharing this content (via social bookmarking, email, etc.) …
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A blog post provides a forum for interaction with interested stakeholders (people, prospects, partners, et al.), in a (moderated) Comments section …
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A blog post provides for trackbacks, etc., so that interested parties can get a sense for how the news is being received and discussed throughout the wider Web …
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A blog post aids the SEO of the blog’s host organization …
In essence, we put the cart before the horse. We should have released the Social Media Newsroom before the Social Media News Release template. The true value of the SMNR can only be best realized when it is hosted by the corporate issuer of the news.
Which leads me back to the challenge of the Wire Services. The wire services may well continue to be the best way to issue news, but they will likely never be integral to Social Media, because in this New Era, a press release posted on a wire service’s website is ultimately in the wrong place to have a lasting impact on the brand.
Take a look at the SMNR issued today by Hewlett-Packard …
Oh, wait – before you click the link, please do take 2 seconds to think to yourself, “WHOA! Freakin’ H-P put out a Social Media News Release?!!?”
OK, we’re back – think about this SMNR from H-P: it looks great (kudos, MarketWire); it contains the bells-and-whistles we’ve come to expect from a SMNR. BUT …
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You can’t comment on the release here … and if you could, would H-P’s execs have moderater rights?
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You wouldn’t be able to see trackbacks to this specific news here …
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You can’t think that this release would have a substantive impact on H-P’s Search Engine Optimization … In fact, unless I’m missing something, if a zillion bloggers & journalists were to link to this release, the SEO benefit would accrue more to MarketWire than to Hewlett-Packard.
Talking to Shel Holtz and Brian the other day in the New Media Release podcast, we talked about a hybrid approach: we theorized that the wire services could be the place to issue “straight-up” text-based news, and that corporations would use their own websites to post Social Media-friendly versions of the same news.
That’s not a bad approach. Just different from what we’d all originally envisioned. Viva La Evolución!
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Assuming this HP release is well accepted by the linkerati, Marketwire would receive SEO benefits from all of the links and would most likely outrank the same release hosted on HP’s site.
But that is not necessarily a bad thing, I’ll explain why.
If the linkerati embraces the release on the wire service, all of the pages linked to from within that release should rank better in the search results because they are now validated by a third party as being on topic and authoritative.
Also, HP could potentially have 2 top search listings for their product, the release hosted on the wire service and the one on their site.
In summary, hosted releases do receive primary SEO benefits and can pass juice to whatever the release links to.
Thanks for the informative reply, Merrick!
I did not mean to imply that the corporate newsmaker would get *no* SEO value from the hosted release, just not as much as they might hope.
In this particular release (from HP), the only outbound links are to either a) other companies or b) a podcast. Would HP have been smarter, I wonder, if they’d been more link-heavy with HP.com-related pages?
As our thinking evolves, I believe you and Brian are absolutely right. However, wire services can still play an important role in the content that we post on our own sites.
Have you seen the number of mistakes that wire services catch? PR Newswire already caught 96,022 errors this year. We could continue to take advantage of their expertise in news editing before posting content.
I’d like to see wire services develop a process to take in our releases, edit them, and spit back a version that we could post. Done right, it could be automated, efficient, and would include the same type of safety net that they provide to us now.
We could even post a little, “Edited by X Wire Service” as a stamp of authenticity. Obviously, there’s room for abuse there, but this is just one of the ways the wire services can play in the social media space.
Todd,
You shouldn’t be so surprised about H-P creating and issuing this kind of news. They have some very smart people there and are doing some interesting things. (Note: What brought this to light for me is when they acquired one of my clients (now ex-) a few months ago – who was solidly in the Web 2.0/social media space).
I look forward to reading your thoughts on what the wires are doing. I have been talking to them for quite a while about what I want them to do and what they can do today. All do some things really well, but they all need to do more.
I look foward to talking to you about it, perhaps at PRSA Boston’s Thirsty Thursday this week?
Hey Todd,
But is a blog post a legal document of an organization like a news release is? I don’t think it is especially since blog posts are meant to be written in a personal tone.
Just wanted to show you this too. Remember the Belkin smnr you linked to some time ago?
Look at the pick up it’s had in Technorati:
http://technorati.com/search/http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/10_09_06SportCommand.html
145 links from bloggers. Pretty impressive in my opinion.
No problem Todd, I just wanted to make sure it’s understood that wire services do provide validation in the eyes of search engines as well.
I did see a link to a press kit on HP’s site so they get some link juice there.
I think the missed opportunity is that they have not released something on Youtube about this. There are a number of ways they could go with it, like showing someone buying the cartridges and then going home and printing away and then making a point of showing when the refilled cartridges die and how the originals keep going. That may even be digg worthy.
Wow, a lot to think about, folks.
Shannon – I think your comment is interesting, valid and thought-provoking. And, your concept re: a “stamp of authenticity” could ALSO address Stephen’s point (and Tom Foremski’s call for a “trustmark” approach):
The BLOG ENTRY (on a NEWS-specific blog, btw, not a general-purpose blog) could contain the Social Media-savvy news content, which has been vetted and given the “seal of authenticity” by the wire services (who might also issue it, echo-style, thru their own traditional channels.) Hmm…this might serve everyone’s purposes?!
Mark, I ain’t much of a drinker, so you won’t see me embarrassing myself at the Thirsty event – but I will definitely report back on my conversations with the wires’ reps.
Merrick – again, great content and damn good PR thoughts … thank you!
I hate to say I told you so, but I think my first reaction to the SMNR (I think via e-mail) was, “What about a social media newsroom.” Of course, you, and Shannon, went on to deliver that and more. But I do think that the company newsroom is where this all starts. We need to bring all of this home, and I am still trying to make sense of how that will work for some of my clients.
Todd,
Not here to pitch my project, but some of us have been listening. Check out a press release: http://usprchive.com/2007/05/30/carpenter-cammack-associates-inc-releases-podcast-on-employee-safety/
The release has a Social Media Newsroom link of the agency. All of our PRNN clients receive a free SMN with their account. When you came out with your SMN template, a light went off in my head. I knew this had to be a standard feature of any of our press releases. The PRNN network is being developed around a modified blog engine as comments are an option that we could include at any time. To identify with sheep(blogs) you must act like a sheep and eat the same grass. We have not activated the comment section because there is a potential for issues as discussed. We can accept SMPRs and hybrid releases. We are not complete with development, but think we are on the right track for a first stab at SM releases. I do like the idea of Shannon’s “Stamp of Authenticity”. This would eliminate confusion. I recommend we start a team that creates a universal PR mark other than ### that differentiates a press release from any other published information such as a blog.
Kevin, I am not sure that it would be appropriate to “turn on comments” at a 3rd party wire service’s site.
I am sure it is technically feasible, and I am sure you could also assign corporate newsmakers with Moderator Privileges, but, the “conversation” should (I think) happen at the newsmaker’s site.
Kami – I think that you must only “hate to say I told you so” because you are so often right-on-the-money that it would become painfully repetitious.
But, to the larger point of “how this might work for my clients” – I am surprised that everyone makes this so complicated. We are simply talking about adding multimedia, links, and community-friendly features to news content. Making the news release more web-friendly…