Social Media News Releases Gain Momentum
Next time a skeptical PR traditionalist asks ya, “What’s all the hullabaloo about these Social Media News Releases? Has anyone ever done one?” please direct ‘em to this post.
Below I’ve recapped the handful that I’ve happened to save; I know there are more out there. UPDATE: I’ve added several since posting this blog entry this morning, including one from Gatorade!)
(Send me yours and I’ll add a link!)
- Coca-Cola
- Nortel
- Belkin
- Cisco
- Ford Motor Co.
- Gatorade
- Verizon
- Las Vegas Township Justice Court
- BEA
- SAP AG
- Novell
- Hubspot
- Eurekster
- ITV (Britain’s biggest digital cable channel)
- Symantec
- WebEx
- Nutrisystem
- Plant-It 2020 (Second Life Reforestation Project)
- The first & second GeoCommons SMNRs
- SinglePipe Communications
- A list of PRX Releases
- Pretty much every release in General Motors-Europe’s Social Media Newsroom (which is a model for any brand looking to embrace this approach).
- A list of some U.K. SMNRs distributed by webitpr can be found here.
I get enthused about the momentum indicated by the Big Names above. I also offer kudos to each of these early adopters for merely trying out the approach.
But I also readily admit that some of these SMNRs are better than others.
Where most of these SMNR efforts fall down is in regard to “SOCIABILITY.” There are typically many ways to save/share the links to these releases (e.g., “save to del.icio.us”), but, due to the limits of a) most wire services and b) most online corporate newsrooms, there’s a dearth of examples where the NEWS is treated as a BLOG POST, i.e., with moderated Comments & Trackbacks.
This is a key aspect: the SMNR is not just about adding multimedia & links, it’s not just about enabling readers to save & share the content – the SMNR is also about conversation. It’s about two-way participation between the newsmaker and their audiences.
My prediction for 2008 with regard to the SMNR is that our successes with regard to saveable, shareable, embeddable content will also extend to sociability. We’ll get there. Ya heard it here first.
Subscribe by Email
Dear Todd:
Great post. I publish about 100 press releae per year for a software company — and am working on moving us (dragging/screaming) toward the SMNR format when appropriate.
I worked with the PRXbuilder to test it out the format with one for my personal blog
http://writingriffs.blogspot.com/2007/11/christmas-mountain-story-of-cowboy.html
Of course the story behind it was a little funnier — I titled it the World’s First SMNR by an Octogenarian – http://writingriffs.blogspot.com/2007/11/worlds-first-multimedia-press-release.html
There are two troublesome core issues with the SMNR. One is writing. One is cost.
Writing
Too many words. Way too long. And some of the KEY FACT bullet points examples in the SMNR’s above are just the same old corporate gobbledygook sentences broken out by bullet points. They aren’t bullet-pointed facts at all
COSTS: The average news wire costs around $400-500 for the first 400 words. Then $100 for the next 100 words. Then you have additional fees for video and images. Some of these SMNR’s can cost thousands of dollars. I saw one that cost $15,000! For ONE release. It quickly becomes financially irresponsible to go this route. Unless there is at least some semblance of return. Or at least some kind of metric that might justify it. But it has to be more cost-effective for the average SMB. I’m sure Coke and Cisco can pull this off with their budgets — but I’m think even they will back away unless it becomes more cost-effective.
Anyway – thanks for these resources.
Best
Steve Kayser
As Digital PR we issued the 3nd Italian SMNR for promoting a Mediaset initiative (Mediaset is the Italian private TV Network, owned by Mr. Berlusconi) called MoltoMedia.
MoltoMedia is a Lab for financing innovative cross/multimedia projects.
Here it is: http://www.digital-pr.net/moltomedia/news.htm
Here my post: http://www.vincos.it/2007/12/05/moltomedia-laboratorio-per-progetti-crossmediali/