PR-Squared’s Social Media Tactics Series: Untangling Claims About Wire Services & Social Media
I sincerely like most of the folks I meet from the major wire services. But untangling their claims with regard to their Social Media capabilities has proven tough.
Each service has made huge strides since we first released the Social Media Release template back in 2006, but each service has also taken slightly different routes in terms of functions and pricing.
More than one client has asked for our opinion about, “Which service is best for SMRs?” – and we’ve never had a consistent answer. The market changes quickly, for one, and some wire services will work better than others, depending on the clients’ needs and budgets.
Still, it’s nice to have a checklist, eh? A quick way to compare the claims?
You can now download SHIFT Communications’ handy PDF: a one-slide Guide to Social Media Release Capabilities Across the Major Wire Services.
We contacted representatives of each service to make sure we properly represented their offerings, though admittedly we did add a tinge of subjectivity (e.g., in terms of pricing). You’ll note that we did not provide specifics on pricing, as “your mileage may vary” in terms of negotiating with the wires’ sales reps.
It’s also important to note that we’re not making any judgments here about the relative value of each service in terms of their distribution power. PRNewswire and BusinessWire, for example, are the grandaddies of wire services and have many strategic partnerships in place that might make their overall offering more powerful, even if they don’t always match MarketWire and PRWeb in all-things-social. These are issues that absolutely need to be considered and discussed amongst client, agency and wire service representatives.
Special thanks to our own Christopher Lynn, a stalwart SHIFT employee and star blogger at “SocialTNT.” Chris did most of the research for this grid. If you haven’t already, you should subscribe to his blog. You won’t be disappointed.
And if you find these “Social Media Tactics” helpful, be sure to check out the “Jedi Training” section of this blog. (Why not subscribe to PR-Squared while you’re at it?)
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Todd, I wanted to clarify a few things that seemed to have been missed in the research that was done for this project.
– PR Newswire does provide an RSS feed to a corporate newsroom or corporate news archive when a client has that service from PR Newswire. This is actually a service that PR Newswire has had for a few years now called MediaRoom. We have actually been offering this type of service in various forms for years.
–PR Newswire CAN provide the ability for our clients to add comments to Mutlimedia News Releases when our clients ask us to – http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/njtc/30238/ However, the fact is that very few clients have actually asked for this feature. Many clients (and I have to say that I agree with them) don’t want to allow comments on their news releases where it is not easy for them to monitor. Many clients – especially in the healthcare / pharmaceutical industry and especially with public companies have to be very wary about allowing this on the official word of the company. I’ve always thought – and call me a little old fashion – that the purpose of a news release is to enable conversation, but not necessarily be the vehicle for that conversation. The media (blogs and traditional press) are where those conversations should take place. Those conversations should take place on the client’s corporate website – if they want to allow it for better monitoring – but IMO those conversations shouldn’t take place on our site. Let me repeat though, we CAN host comments for further conversation.
–In regards to “Updated News Ticker”, I’m going to be honest that I’m not sure what you mean here. I’m not sure if you are talking about additional information in regards to a public company with a ticker symbol or a link to additional releases by that company – both of these PR Newswire can provide (ticker symbol – when included in the release – will link to additional information providing a company snapshot; additional news releases from the company being an additional service which is similar to both BusinessWire and MarketWire).
Again, I wanted to clarify the above since I was not contacted by the person who researched this story.
Thanks,
Michael Pranikoff
Director, Emerging Media
PR Newswire
Hi Michael:
Thanks for your comments. We love healthy discussion.
First off: sorry if you feel slighted. It wasn’t our intention. When researching for this grid, we decided to provide the PR Squared readers with information from exactly the same sources they would contact when setting up their own releases: the local sales reps. To double-check the accuracy of our information, local reps were contacted twice before publishing. In the case of PRNewswire, we were advised to contact representatives from your multimedia group, Multi-Vu.
The ability to create RSS feeds to corporate newswires managed by PRNewswire was not an option given by the reps Multi-Vu Reps, and we couldn’t find it in any literature on the Multi-Vu MNR website. RSS feeds to a corporate newsroom are a big must, IMHO, so I really did a lot of probing to verify. Had we know, we would have gladly denoted that in the spreadsheet.
In regards to the ability to include comments, I mostly agree with you. I think comments should be housed on the corporate website, but with the ability to input them directly from the release. Marketwire does a great job of this. When asked about comments, one Multi-Vu rep stated that PRNewswire felt that comments should be kept on the company’s blog or website, and suggested we repost the release on our blog to facilitate that conversation.
Finally, an updated news ticker was our way of describing what Social Media Group calls “Digital Snippets.” It’s basically an update to the SMR of company news, photos, etc. Since Maggie thought this was important, we decided to include it in our grid.
Blogs are great because the comments can be a great realm for discussion, while adding insight that might not be found in the original post. I’m excited that you commented, and, once again, sorry if you feel slighted for not being contacted. We really wanted to present a post reflecting a typical end-user experience.
Best,
Chris