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: 

• A blog post provides the forum for content (the news) …
• A blog post provides widgets for sharing this content (via social bookmarking, email, etc.) …
• A blog post provides a forum for interaction with interested stakeholders (people, prospects, partners, et al.), in a (moderated) Comments section …
• 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 …
• 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 …

• You can’t comment on the release here … and if you could, would H-P’s execs have moderater rights?
• You wouldn’t be able to see trackbacks to this specific news here …
• 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!

Comments