Comments on: Success with Social Media Releases

By: Hemchandra Shetty

Hemchandra Shetty — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:20:32 +0000

Dear Todd,

Excellent updates, SMR will be an effective tool for all the PR professionals across the world, In India we too have started using it….great goings leads to great happenings…

I could be reached on hemushetty@gmail.com

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:26:14 +0000

The case study value seems suspect here. Specifically of note: “minor news SMR generated 1,330 hits/inbound links, while the big traditional news release netted just 243″… There is surely a hit to link ratio of value that is far less than 1:1; why combine them unless you’re trying to pad an argument?

By: Jamie Giller

Jamie Giller — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:26:21 +0000

Todd,

Wanted to share that your SMR is on CNN Money!
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0451204.htm

Congratulations!

By: Christina Carlson

Christina Carlson — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:47:48 +0000

Great to know about Ms. Harte’s success with PRWEb. What I really want to see though, is data about the results of one press release distributed through multiple channels. Does such a thing exist?

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:44:13 +0000

Seeing as how there are a ton of “social media” destinations or properties, how does one go about managing a good press release into these networks? I think the good old fashioned grunt work still has to be done by a good PR professional who can figure out which network has the right audience demographics and characteristics receptive to the specific message. Social media releases into social networks probably take a life of their own as well. I can only imagine the challenges of tracking what audience’s reactions will be.

By: April Dunford

April Dunford — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:14:42 +0000

@Todd Thanks so much for the post and the link. I don’t blog on behalf of Nortel so I didn’t post the links to the actual releases. If you are interested I can talk to our folks on this end and see if anyone has any objections to sharing those.

@Mike I’ve worked at startups as well as larger companies and I agree that it is easier to get the attention of folks like BusinessWeek and Forbes than it is at a smaller company. A fairer comparison would be to look at the performance of those releases to other more conventional releases we did around the same time. The fact is we saw much better uptake on those releases. For example, we have a great relationship with CTV but the TV spots we did related to those releases were the only ones we did with them last summer. Would we have gotten the same response if we had taken the same topics and done a traditional press release? Who knows? All I know is that the response we did get makes me a social media release convert.

By: Mike Volpe - HubSpot

Mike Volpe - HubSpot — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:29:22 +0000

@Beth (and others) -

I don’t want to get into a micro-point/counterpoint.

I guess what I am mostly saying is that one test is not at all statistically accurate because there are way too many variables. The variables were: SMNR yes/no, Wire service A/B, content A/B, timing A/B, etc. There were so many differences in the two examples, I just don’t see how an anecdotal example “proves” anything. They are interesting case studies. But I think it is pretty rash to draw comprehensive conclusions from a couple case studies.

Is the SMNR something people should TRY? Sure. Do I like using the SMNR features on my own website? Of course! Have I taken aspects of the SMNR template (bullet points) and used them in all of our releases? Yes! I just still have not seen any actual reliable DATA that proves the SMNR on the wire is worth the extra investment.

By: Danny Brown

Danny Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:43:28 +0000

Great debate (as always!).

As anyone that knows me and my agency, I’m a huge fan of both search engine optimized press releases and SMR’s. I think that, used together as an overall PR strategy, they offer a powerful tool in getting your news across.

@ Beth – I will admit to being a little confused with your release example that Todd used (the PRWeb one). This looks like a standard release with added PDF file and URL en – you could get this with the $140 (PDF) or $200 (PDF & URL) distribution option. So I’m not sure whether I would class this as a social media release, or a search engine optimized release – I’d probably go for the latter? Great results either way, though.

I agree that unless you’re already having thousands of web user traffic coming to your site regularly, solely posting a SMR on your own site would lose any effectiveness. Having a separate sub-page as a newsroom, by all means, but still use other distribution methods.

Of course, interconnecting all versions of releases would be equally beneficial.

By: Todd Defren

Todd Defren — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:28:42 +0000

@Mike & @Beth – You’re both right. No – really. You make good points. I tend to agree more with Mike, believe it or not, because I like the SMR to primarily exist at the corporate site. I advise clients to use traditional wires to direct readers to the SMR versions at homepage. But again, you are both right in your own way.

@Chris and @Alison – Thank you. I am blushing.

By: Jason Kintzler

Jason Kintzler — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:27:02 +0000

@MikeVolpe Not a good argument about Nortel being the exception because they’re large.

While we do have releases on pitchengine from brands like Microsoft, Red Cross, Carl’s Jr., The Economist, etc., 90% of our 1000+ brands on pitchengine are small brands…social media offers more for them than big brands, IMO. They see the value of investing in content, not distribution. And I must reiterate, it doesn’t cost anything to build and send quality SMRs:)