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In this space I’ve talked about the Social Media Release (SMR) a fair bit.  I’ve talked (half-jokingly) about the “TwitRelease.”  I’ve talked (very seriously) about the need to atomize content.  I’ve made dramatic turnarounds in my thinking re: SMR distribution.

Now I wanna talk about the issue marketers care most about: results.

In my opinion there are two major benefits to the SMR approach.  The first is related to Conversation.  If your SMR is powered by a blogging engine, you can enable Comments and Trackbacks and thus allow for a.) direct dialog and, b.) aggregation of external, in-context conversations, respectively.  

The second major benefit is related to the propagation of content.  By atomizing the content elements (graphics, video, podcasts, etc.), you empower people to appropriate and re-use that content as they see fit.  Ideally this leads people to see your content in their own online hang-outs, “socialized” by the fact that their friends and/or favorite sites are making the introductions. 

But, they’re not always going to do that, folks: so it is entirely conceivable that you’ll spend a boatload of time and $$$ creating content that stalls out in your online newsroom.  (Which would suck.)

That means it’s up to the Marketers to spread the word by spreading the content.

Some principles and ideas to consider:

Make sure the “Summary” section of your SMR is 140–characters or less. 

That way, you can get the full news out in a Twitter-friendly mode.  Since you are hoping for “re-tweets” of the news, keeping that summary to well-under 140–characters is advisable.  Including a link to the SMR is also a must-have. 

When you tweet: “XYZ Corp announced that it was acquiring ABC Inc. for $10 million. This makes XZY Corp the largest swizzle-stick maker. http://is.gd/bzi.” (137–characters) you leave no room for re-tweeters, whose aid invariably takes the form of, “RT XYZ_Corp:” – they’ll “waste” several character spaces in order to delineate their tweet as a re-tweet of your news… and with so few characters to spare, the essence could get lost.

Keeping the Summary this tight is also an exquisitely painful editing exercise.  The process of forcing press release writers to distill “what’s important” in roughly 125 characters (leaving room for the RT & @sender) compels them to re-evaluate the original package of news!  The “twitpitch” produces clarity through brevity.

<Make sure your content is not solely posted in your Newsroom. 

• If you are including photos or short videos in your SMR, why not post them to Flickr, as well, with tags that may make the content readily discoverable? 
• If the videos are longer-form, how about posting them to your corporate YouTube channel? 
• Might some of the photos also be worthy of sharing with your Twitter followers? – Twitpic ‘em! 
• Is your podcast series syndicated via iTunes? 
• Have you saved the SMR itself – along with each of the content elements shared across other social networks – to del.icio.us?
• Did you “stumble” and digg the SMR, and describe why it’s of interest to these communities’ members? 
• Don’t forget the Creative Commons licensing: you don’t want to inadvertently block someone from sharing the content on their own blog (and likewise it’s nice to be able to guarantee a li’l credit for the source material).
• If the news relayed in the SMR is super important, maybe consider using NewsAds to drive relevant traffic?  A little SEM never hurts.

Your content may be lively, but it’s not alive.  Help it along.  Evangelize.

Unless your company/client already possesses a base of rabid, highly-networked and vociferous fans, then simply publishing the SMR to the website and/or via the newswires is just not enough to get any attention, just as issuing a traditional press release over the wire doesn’t cinch press coverage. Your fabulous content will lie fallow.  A corporate RSS feed with paltry subscriber numbers ain’t gonna bring the fame. 

As in anything, actively sharing content through the cultivation of relationships is instrumental for SMRs and social objects, through very different and unique processes of dialog.  Despite the misplaced howls of protest from tech bloggers, PR can help ensure that the news – including the carefully crafted content that attends the news – is seen and shared.  Outreach through the PR pro’s network of relationships can (at least) spur just-enough discussion and sharing of the content to allow the news to gain traction. 

Produce. Propagate. Promote. (Party.)

Special thanks to Doug Haslam and Brian Solis for their help on this post.