Social Media Press Release - What’s more important, the look or the data?
October 10, 2007
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When I think social media, words like knowledge - people - conversation - share - inform come to mind, not format - standardization - template - branded. The idea behind a Social Media Press Release (SMPR) template is flawed, why put yourself, your company, your product in the box right from the start?
The most well known one is Shift Communication’s SMPR template, there is also a SMPR Creation Tool based on Shift’s template. The template is 100% open, with no copyright and they do say “We hope it can serve as a helpful guide to kickstart thinking about how we can evolve the PR sector. Maybe it can serve as a talking points memo to show to clients, to convince them to give it a try?” When I take a look at it in action here and here - it makes my point which Brian Oberkirch states perfectly, “We should start by using established & emerging Web standards that impact the structure of our information and not the fake formatting of these templates.”
The importances of a press release is to be heard, shared and to start a conversation - this needs more than words, photos and links. Let’s look at semantic metadata, which provided rich, structured data and allows that data to be used in Web 2.0 applications (mash-ups, etc..) and Social Media integration and searches. The metadata makes the SMPR easier for a person to track, parse and reuse.
One of the upcoming semantic metadata formats for SMPR is hRelease. hRelease is an open, social media news release standard that encourages the electronic distribution of news across the Internet. hRelease will allow news authors to create a single copy of their online release and share it electronically with wire services, members of the press, and the public. The goal of the hRelease format is to enable a simple way to markup news, allowing authors to share news through blogs, personal and corporate websites, web feeds, and any other online repository.
Be different and creative, design the SMPR based on your company, product and/or service and use the current or emerging web standards, not a template. Utilize an open social media news service like hRelease to share and engage your audience with the release. These differences will bring ‘conversation’ and the semantic metadata will allow everyone to use it, reuse it, track it, share it - and that’s what Social Media is all about.
Comments
8 Responses to “Social Media Press Release - What’s more important, the look or the data?”
Got something to say?
You make some good, interesting points here, but, I hope you’re also continuing to read related posts at my blog (PR-Squared) and Brian Solis’s PR 2.0 blog, in which many of these issues have been discussed, and will continue to be on the menu.
Here’s a couple of example posts (which contain associated links):
http://www.pr-squared.com/2007/06/one_year_later_social_media_re_1.html
http://www.pr-squared.com/2006/09/top_5_principles_of_the_social.html
I basically agree with most all your points. The reality, though, is that we are trying to EVOLVE the format, knowing that the tools/technologies/metadata, etc. will likely not bear fruit, until/unless a critical mass of mainstream companies show keen interest in adopting the concept.
Todd,
This is a very interesting topic for us, so we’ll definitely keep watching. In our experience, a lot of the traditional distribution methods aren’t ready (yet) for the SMPR.
Plus, it seems that you need to have two versions (the traditional) and the bulleted. We’re working on an iteration that combines both into one. Perhaps I’ll send it to you for your feedback…
~Jim
Go for it! We’ve often said that offering a “template’ means, “Take what works, change or forget about what doesn’t.”
A lot of folks have gotten hung up on the bullets. I see no reason why folks can’t use a traditional narrative format, but also incorporate multimedia, links, social media elements, etc.
Nice post, Mike.
hRelease is a microformat (data standard) and so the focus is on semantic markup - which supports discoverability, accessibility and ease of syndication.
It doesn’t mean agencies or individuals can’t present the content in ways that appeal to them but, like the rest of the web, presentation can only be guaranteed at the point of delivery, not receipt.
So Todd is quite right to encourage people to get over the bullets. For our releases, we opt for the narrative form, semantically marked up.
this is a very interesting article. i’ve experimented with SMRs both with narrative and bullet points, and i agree, the SMR is meant to be flexible.
we’re communicators at the end of the day, and some people will like bullet points, and some will like narrative forms.. but essentially, the core message should clearly come through.
As any journalist who crosses over to PR knows how other journalists will pick up a story, so too do we as bloggers who turn PR, will have some knowledge as to what makes content interesting.
so in essence, when i write an SMR, my thinking is akin to just ‘blogging it’.
Mike does raise some great points. It just seems that some of the traditional news distribution points wouldn’t even know what he’s talking about yet.
And you’re right, Brian, there are lots of similarities to a blog post, but I want to find a way to serve both (all?) masters, so we can write the thing once and have it work across the audiences…
I think traditional news distribution points are realizing change is coming fast and they need to be on board.
For example, look at Business Wire - “Your news, sent to your target audience, precisely timed. Stylized with dynamic XHTML formatting. Optimized for maximum Internet visibility. With photos and multimedia for powerful integrated marketing.” and PR News Wire
hRelease is great step forward to enable a simple way to markup news, allowing authors to share news through blogs, personal and corporate websites, web feeds, and any other online repository.
[…] points. Embed your photos and videos on their site, etc. An interesting idea. I personally think there’s work to do to make it practical, but the idea that the traditional press release could be improved is no doubt […]