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Via an otherwise curmudgeonly post about Social Media Releases at Chris Edwards’s “Hacking Cough” blog, I learned that Palm had implemented a Social Media Newsroom and was issuing Social Media Releases.  Add another big company to the list of adopters!

But I want to use this post to address some of Chris’s beefs with the SMR.

Chris points out that:

“…(Both) GM and Palm have implemented … pretty much all the (SMR) recommendations … With all that social support, we should be seeing conversation erupt from the page. Surely, these sites are hotbeds of company-customer interaction that demonstrate the pent-up demand for people to talk back to press releases. But it's oh so quiet. The odd bit of poker or slots comment spam has drifted in on the wind, plus a comment or two on the company's adoption of this social stuff. Not all that much about the thing that was launched ... Similarly, backlinks to other near-social releases reveal a lot of PR chatter about release formats but very little about the content of the releases themselves.”

To which the short reply is, “Welcome to the bleeding edge.  It gets quiet out here sometimes.”

And now, cuz I think Chris’s musings are relevant & probably of interest to other marketers, here’s the longer response…

The traditional press release celebrated its centennial anniversary last year.  It’s an embedded part of the way corporations, the media and the people view official news announcements. 

The SMR is about 18 months old.  In that time, many noteworthy companies have adopted the SMR, but, it’s far too early to assess whether the SMR approach is better, more effective or even more engaging!  Ask me again in 5 years.  Taking the temperature at the 5–year mark vs. the 100–year record of Ye Olde Style Release seems more than fair. 

Meanwhile, the fact that we’re seeing a lot of online PR chatter about each new SMR is a good sign that the topic is of high interest to the very people who will motivate further changes in the future … The debates and analysis underway today will ensure that the SMR becomes a standard tomorrow.  (And if not, I’m convinced that these debates will have at least improved the current hidebound approach!)

But even if the SMR does become a standard, the amount of “conversation” that will occur around each release will be directly tied to its news value (lame news = lame response, as always).

The other thing to keep in mind is that consumers are not accustomed to talking about news with the newsmakers, yet.  There’s never before been a forum for it, until recent days.  Plus, few consumers go seeking out news releases (though broader RSS usage could have an impact).  Regular people stumble upon news releases via Google searches and/or by following a link from a news article or blog post.  The consumer who does elect to comment may choose to do so at the blog post or news article that led them to the release in the first place.  (That’s why the element of trackbacks is so important to the Social Media Newsroom & SMR: to aggregate these conversations in one “official” spot.)

Will consumers EVER comment on SMRs?  Certainly we can rest assured that consumers are vocal; when given a voice, they tend to use it (usually when they are pissed off).  For evidence we need only look at the popularity of online forums.  For example, the 159,000 people who frequent Valve Entertainment’s online forum are interacting with each other, and with the company’s representatives, in the “official” place that’s been set aside for them to do so. 

If Valve were to create a Social Media Newsroom, some percentage of those 159,000 customers would likely find their way there to discuss the gaming company’s latest announcements.  There, they’d be joined by journalists & bloggers — who may have no interest in the daily flame wars lighting up the online forums, but instead merely want to get data with which to cover Valve’s news announcements.  

In the end, it doesn’t matter where the conversation happens.  By providing easy access to accurate, contextual information about the day’s news, the SMR could be just one more way (among many) for companies to interact directly with their customers.