Reading @TDefren – A Radical Suggestion for the Social Media Release [link to post]

– Posted using Chat Catcher

Reading “A Radical Suggestion for the Social Media Release” [link to post]

– Posted using Chat Catcher

Make no mistake. Even we newswires understand that social media isn’t about “distribution.” And what we also understand is that perhaps even our peers and colleagues in the social media sphere have yet to fully appreciate is this. Newswires have a significant role to play here given we aid, abet, facilitate and move millions of news items on behalf of tens of thousands of companies, organizations and individuals to hundreds of thousands of journalists and influencers (traditional and “new media” alike) ultimately to billions of people every year. Sorry to state the obvious here, but exactly where do you all think a great many of the “conversations” we talk about in social media originate from? Well, some come from the work that, guess what?…newswires do.

The truth is a lot of the fodder for blogs and bloggers, social networks and communities and citizen journalists comes from a fairly rich source pool that happens to include a reasonable amount of content from us. So, be nice. Ok? 

I think, given all the posts about “excluding” newswires as participants and facilitators in the social media space, it would appear that we all need a reminder about what social media is. Social media is meant to INCLUDE all comers. Or is it? While I love that we lob words like “engage,” and “converse” and “dialogue with others” like so many grenades in a poorly done B movie from the 50s, suggesting that folks circumvent their closest allies and partners — their newswires — is irresponsible. Why do I say this?

Remember, most ‘audiences’ (yes, I said it…’audiences’) for social media, are by and large NOT experts in the space. Recommending we just not ‘use the wire’ for helping them navigate their way through this maze when they’ve relied on us for a good 50+ years now to help them navigate countless other shifts in the communication landscape puts these folks at risk of doing many of the wrong things that we newswire types have already done in our quest to help our clients not stub their toes in this place where everything, and nothing are ‘defined’ all at once. Putting our clients at risk is something we’re simply not going to do…at least not on purpose.

Clients pay for expertise, right?

My guess? Most of the folks who have posted in this blog charge the very same people – newswire customers – various amounts for various services related to social media, among other things of course. Oddly, we’re not criticizing the costs to these folks for all the ‘consulting’ on social media some of us are doing. Yet, we continue to come back to “those darn newswires who just charge too much, and whose benefits just don’t seem to be ‘worth it’”. More than 300 Marketwire clients who have used the relatively cost effective SM 2.0 press release tools we’ve created for them over the past four months would argue differently, methinks.

Why would we continue to harp on an industry that is truly doing what it can to help move the collective ‘forward’ here? Especially when we’ve sought out — from the get-go – counsel from the very “experts” in this field (Todd, Chris, Brian, Shannon…you know this is true) and countless participants in social media? We’ve admitted our mistakes when we’ve made them, and have squarely fallen on appropriate swords when appropriate, and taken our lumps when deserved. That’s not the point though is it? The point is we’re creating tools that ‘help’, and solutions that ‘work’. For those who wish to make use of our help.

At the end of the day, here are the facts:

SMNRs are here to stay.

Newswires are here to stay.

We’re all in this brave new world together. Some of us disagree about ‘membership’ to the club, but…so far, we’re “in it together” for “better or worse.”

Disenfranchising the largest facilitator body (newswires) for getting these “conversations” started that all us SM types like to tout is… plainly put, a really bad idea.

Thanks for giving us a forum to express our thoughts on these matters.

What I was trying to do was “illustrate”, hence my use of the word, the fact that SEO is not as simple as a discussion around traffic and that it isnt automatically the case that companies with lower traffic sites can’t consider hosting conversations for this reason.

Of course a lot of the results are pickup, not surprising from a “respected service”, and I am not disputing that, as in fact are ours. As I said pickup is obviously hugely valuable and a key objective which we both share. This was about bringing some pertinent evidence to the table about Todd’s “radical” suggestion that SMNR’s have no place on a wire service, by showing that a different approach can work. After all not all companies have Disney’s marketing budget.

Touche on the review point!:) We do indeed provide a similar service on the review front as you and (unfortunately) frequently pick up errors in client’s releases, in fact we just have 10 minutes ago. But we have missed that one (corrected now you will see). Typical and I am now rubbing my foot very hard having shot myself in it There but for the grace of God?

Great discussion though I think and one that we need more of to advance the way that we all assist our clients to have valuable conversations in the online world.

Thanks
Adam

My search of both headlines without quotes resulted in the following (very different from yours):
541 results for the Sainsbury’s release.
16,600 for the Disney release.

The first result for Disney points to their newsroom, which is unusual but ideal. Many of the others point to the video we distributed to sharing sites like aol and revver. A lot of the other hits on the first few pages are {gasp} pickup. Some is automatic, most of it for this release is not. Second, many of these sites will begin purging this release after 30 days. Three of the versions we released will begin leapfrogging the aggregators. Often we are at the top of the first page … sometimes we’re not.

One very important piece of this comparison is also the service you get when you distribute any press release through us … I’d like to believe we would have caught the misspelling of Sainsbury’s in the first paragraph.

And to be clear, I’m not saying that search results will be better on a larger site.

However, if you create a rich, HTML version of your release on a newswire site, the benefits of the “reach” of the larger site (its readership, subscribers, and affiliates) offset the potential traffic loss to your own site.

Ultimately, I’d like to see the same SMR posted on my site and the newswire site.

Thanks
Adam