Here’s the director’s cut, “SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure, What This Means for Wires and Press Releases”

For several years, Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz has lobbied the SEC to allow disclosure of financial information through corporate blogs. In a landmark announcement, it seems that Mr. Schwartz may indeed get his wish, and with it, a historical decision that could break the age-old shackles that bound businesses to traditional media and distribution channels in order to satisfy full disclosure.

The SEC has announced that it will recognize corporate Web sites and blogs as channels for satisfying the full disclosure required by Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure).

According to the SEC announcement, “UNDER certain circumstances, companies can rely on their websites and blogs to meet the public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure), according to new guidance unanimously approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission today.”

Chairman Christopher Cox opened up the discussion by recognizing that the Web has matured providing a big step forward for investors, “Ongoing technological advances in electronic communications have increased both the market’s and investors’ demand for more timely company disclosure and the ability for companies to capture, process and disseminate this information to market participants.”

The SEC documents boundaries for sharing information as well as holding companies and their employees liable for the information that they post on blogs and discussion forums.

Disclosure is an Expensive Business

Naturally, this is at the very least, represents a potential harbinger for each of the popular wire services.

A significant percentage of their lifeblood is tied to market-relevant or earnings content that, until now, required wire services, and cost hundreds of dollars (in some cases over $1,000) per announcement in order to satisfy disclosure. For many companies, a fixed budget for disclosure absorbed the critical resources necessary to support the activity of sharing news and therefore relied upon wires to do their public and investor relations on their behalf.

But as many PR and IR professionals will concede, issuing releases on the wire is merely an expensive step in a process of creating and distributing news using traditional tools. If you represent a publicly traded company that is actively monitored by market influencers, it’s very likely that your press release will reach their systems via the wire.

These days, it’s almost certain that a reporter or analyst will, in the best case, see and file the release but most often, the very people we hope will find and in turn, report on the information discovered, will honestly never know that you released news at all unless they’re proactively contacted. Any good public relations or investor relations professional will ensure that their top financial and business contacts are alerted to upcoming news, with or without giving away the news, in advance – depending on their interpretation of Reg FD and the trust level of their relationships.

There is no substitute for the real world relationships we forge in order to bridge the right content specifically for the right people.

Do these new guidelines offer companies the ability to shift some or all of its wire budget back into the critical role of outbound support for corporate news?

Disclosure Versus IR/PR

Disclosure relates to the market – the people who trade or may act based on the information you publish. Reg FD protects the voice and pocketbook of the investor and guides companies on how to publish information so that it reaches a fair share of the market so that no one person has access to information before the other.

We can’t deny or ignore the value and benefits associated with strategic support for connecting corporate news to market influencers. Now, to the defense of wire services, and as I’ve written before, wire services can bypass those very influencers to reach people directly.

Not only does wire distribution meet disclosure, the art of search engine optimized press releases (SEO releases) have the unique ability to appear in search engines tied to the key words your market uses to search for related and relevant information. PR Newswire, MarketWire, Business Wire, and PRWeb offer businesses the ability to distribute news with added SEO functionality. When paired with a well-written, SEO optimized press release, wire distribution can more than satisfy disclosure, it can carry your story directly to the people looking for it.

In addition, wire services have invested over the years in the development of a secondary distribution channel that has, in my opinion, remained relevant even as the Web continues to rapidly change and evolve.

When a press release crosses a wire, many search engines and their financial properties (finance.yahoo.com or finance.google.com) and all market-powered hubs, portals and dashboards, receive wire feeds which automatically populate respective “Recent News” sections. Similar to how we subscribe to RSS feeds to seamlessly receive the news and information we prefer, investors, analysts, press, and decision makers can see, in one place, the trading status, coverage, related news, and crowd-powered discussions around the activity. This has been the case since the days of Web 1.0 and was our first taste of the finance and the Social Web as we know it today.

Without wire services, penetrating these valuable dashboards, that are still today, a primary source of financial information and activity, is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

This new guidance, however, presents an opportunity to connect corporate information from sites and blogs to these powerful financial online hubs so that important corporate news can still reach people, the way they’re used to receiving it.

Forcing them to change their habits isn’t a realistic expectation in the short-term.

Regulation FD and Social Media

The SEC is taking the right steps to embrace the new tools and services that reach people in addition to wire services. With the recognition of blogs as a viable form of disclosure, under certain circumstances of course, the SEC is officially recognizing Social Media and in a sense, socializing the rules associated with Reg FD.

Perhaps, the most significant change stemming from the new SEC guidance is that Web-based disclosure does not have to appear in a format comparable to paper-based information, unless the Commission’s rules explicitly require it.

This announcement finally opens the door for the Social Media Release aka a media-rich blog posts that package news with social objects in a shareable and conversational format. We’re not talking about about opening the door for using a new tool to pump out the same old hype or BS.

For a few years, Todd Defren, Chris Heuer, Shannon Whitley, Shel Holtz and I, along with the rest of the Social Media Release WorkGroup, not only defended and defined the opportunity for Social Media Releases (SMRs), but also fielded emotionally-charged questions from the financial and IR communities asking about whether or not an SMR would ever meet disclosure requirements for Reg FD, and without it, what good would it ever be…

While there have been many discussions and debates to whether a Social Media Release should cross the wire and if so, what format and design it should resemble, my belief is that SMRs should always reside on dedicated blog platforms (WordPress, MoveableType) as part of a Social Media Newsroom. And, Social Media Releases should only complement a traditional press release and disclosure activity and not replace it.

Originally introduced by Todd Defren in response to Tom Foremski’s call for the death of press releases, the SMR represents a new socially-rooted format that complements traditional and SEO press releases by combining news facts and social assets in one, easy to digest, and repurpose, tool.

Giving everyone what they need and how they need it, requires a different approach. Almost every press release issued today is done so without video or audio, and many still do not include links to additional information or supporting content.

While these multimedia pieces are underlying components of SMRs, there’s more to the presentation than multimedia content. The value of aggregating Social Media in one digital release connects information and content across social networks with the people looking for it, as well as the conversations that bind them together.

And not only do SMRs socialize content and link conversations across the Social Web, they also help bloggers and online journalists more effectively write a rich media post using one resource that provides them with everything they need.Now that we don’t need to adhere to a fixed form or design and presentation aesthetics, technically there’s holding us back from carrying the torch forward. It can only help present and share information in an alternative method that complements traditional releases, outbound contact, and market-related conference calls.

Coming back to my belief that Social Media Releases should be hosted on blogs (because they really are a combination of a blog post and a great press release) and not cross wires, with the new rules for Reg FD, an SMR by default, could now meet disclosure – assuming that the host site is recognized as meeting the disclosure standards.

Social Media Releases offer the ability to not only share relevant financial data, but also feature social content that reinforces that data and the overall company story.

We’ve discussed how information can reach the market, investors, peers, and customers through search as well through articles and blog posts and also via financial portals. Search engines are manipulated by SEO (search engine optimization). Social Media is powered by SMO (social media optimization) and the results are different in how, when, and where they appear. In most cases, SEO doesn’t affect the outcome of content within social networks. But, dedicated tagging, key words, and crowdsourced participation drive the “discoverability” of content in the Social Web.

Picture a blog post that announced corporate data (not unlike a standard financial press release) but now, along with a custom video hosted from YouTube, supporting graphs and exec images funneled from flickr, pre-recorded audio podcasts/conferences piped in from iTunes, packaged market data sourced from Docstoc, related company and landscape stories and public commentary linked from Delicious. Content can also push to micromedia services such as Twitter, Identi.ca and FriendFeed to contribute to the company’s brandstream. In a sense, the Social Media Release, hosted as an elegant and media rich blog post, acts as an aggregated hub for these disparate brand beacons, and at the same time, each piece is findable and sharable within each social network and they all point back to the Social Media Release.

Also, the SMR can feature tags and outbound links to increase exposure in social networks and blog-specific search engines.

Social Media Releases not only feature social content to more visually and authentically tell stories and share information, they also provide the tools necessary for people to further socialize and interact with them.

For readers of an SMR, the options for interaction are virtually endless. They can respond through a “moderated” comment system, much in the same way they do today in online financial forums. They can grab pieces of the content, such as embeddable video, audio, documentation and images, to repurpose as blog posts and online stories, which can also send trackbacks to help pool collective coverage. Stakeholders can subscribe to RSS feeds for the entire news stream or just those related to financial/market information. Readers can send the story back out to the social web through bookmarking tools such as diigo or delicious, as well as crowdsourced news communities including Digg and Mixx. As the existing social tools evolve and new services are introduced, the potential for SMRs aka blog posts, are truly a blank canvas for PR, marketing, and the community to define how they’re read and shared.

This is a Chance to Reach More People, Their Way

Executives and marketing professionals must now weigh whether the company Web site or blog are indeed a recognized channel of distribution and more importantly, whether these online properties meet public disclosure requirements under the new rules Regulation FD.

I believe this new guidance only expands the ability to share information using a variety of approved channels – bound by the legalities of doing so ethically, honestly, and informatively. It may or may not reduce costs associated with meeting disclosure, but it will in fact, improve the infrastructure for investor and public relations by socializing the process to more effectively communicate with investors and the people who care.

No, it doesn’t kill wire services or press releases, it just changes how we create and distribute them.

The reality is that businesses can only benefit by not limiting itself to one form of communication. People seek, discover, and share information differently, and combining strategic wire, Web, and blog channels will only amplify reach and visibility.

Thanks to Jennifer Leggio and the IRWebReport for getting this story started.

Follow the SEC on Twitter.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Plurk or Facebook.

Related articles on PR 2.0:

- Comcast Cares and Why Your Business Should Too, The Socialization of Service
- The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
- The Social Media Manifesto
- New Communication Theory
- The Evolution of Press Releases
- The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases
- Wire Services Bypass Journalists and Bloggers

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There’s certainly no shortage of opinions on where we are and where we need to be in order to improve the working relationships between PR and bloggers, journalists, and analysts and the brands we ultimately represent – including our own.

There are just better ways to share information, and hopefully, this post helps you.

Press releases come in different flavors and serve different purposes. Well-written press releases are far from dead. In fact, when developed strategically, their opportunities, appeal and benefits are only expanding in conjunction with the groups of various influencers and consumers who rely on them for relevant information.

The disruption of the Web has splintered press releases into a variety of formats to serve different audiences and different purposes: Traditional releases for media, SEO (search engine optimized) releases for customers, and Social Media Releases for press, bloggers, and also customers.

Customer-Focused News Releases

Companies and marketers can use distribution services to complement releases written for journalists and bloggers to reach customers directly through traditional search engines as well as news aggregation services such as Techmeme.

Over the course of the last several months, BusinessWire and PRNewswire have consistently ranked in the top 100 sources for news in Techmeme’s Leaderboard.

And, according to a recent Outsell study, over 51% of IT professionals reported that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals.

It’s not just tech. When implemented with calls and links to action, and if they read in a way that’s compelling to people aka customers, you’ll find that they’re usually compelled to act.

The trick for this new breed of press releases is to write it as the article you want to read. Keep it clean, clear, pseudo impartial, but definitely focused on benefits for specific customers. Basically, humanize the story.

Here’s a rundown of the different formats of press releases:

Traditional Releases

Standard press releases are what many reporters and bloggers use to build their stories. Let’s help them help us in the process.

When expanding your news or story into a press release, it’s also important to recognize that a majority of the wording templates that we all use still suck. But, there’s room in our activity for a well-written release that conveys value, benefits and a story that’s relevant to each recipient. It’s easier said than done however. Most press releases are driven by product development, which begets an inward and narrowly focused view from life inside the company. The final release usually winds up riddled with adjectives, tech jargon, and hype with very little value stringing everything together.

The best releases are going to be outward-focused and reflective of the state of the market, how you fit in it, and what’s in it for the potential stakeholders (customers).

Oh, and please, can the “canned” quotes. We all know you’re excited and thrilled at whatever it is you’re announcing. But, if the quote isn’t genuinely from the person saying it and bears little or no value to the implications of the news, then it only takes away from it. It’s OK to leave it out.

I guess the best advice is to make the release read like the article that you would ultimately like to see, worrying less about structure and format and more about news, the story, and the supporting facts (and media elements) that help writers build the story more effectively. And, try to keep the release between 400 – 500 words or lower.

SEO Press Releases

Releasing press releases on wire services such as PRNewsire, BusinessWire, and MarketWire offer additional value in the form of SEM (search engine marketing). Integrating key words, phrases and embedded links optimize their “findability” and rank within traditional search engines such as Google or Yahoo. In this case, the greatest targets for SEO releases are actually customers, not journalists.

As noted previously, customers use search engines to find solutions and often, press releases provide them with the information they need to make decisions.

Many say that if you’re not on the first two pages of search results, then your company is losing the battle for online mindshare. SEO releases contribute to the authority of related search results, but keep in mind that other factors contribute as well, such as keyword buys, keywords on your Web site, affiliate strategies, as well as other tools and campaigns.

When drafting the release, ensure that your top keywords are included towards the front of the release, especially in the headline and subhead, as well as the boilerplate. Choose up to three words and repeat through the release – especially in the boilerplate. Search engines seem to pay more attention to the natural bolded words as well as the repeated words toward the top of press releases (first half).

It’s also extremely helpful to use those keywords as anchor text to link back to strategic landing pages on your Website, ensure that those pages are also keyword optimized as well. It’s important not to overuse each word or over link.

Keyword density, the number of times a keyword or phrase appears compared to the total number of words in a page, is optimized between 2-8% according to experts. I’ve erred in the middle of that ratio.

Include industry and product names and categories in place of generic descriptors such as, “the product,” “the solution,” and “the company,” throughout the release, without ruining the flow. We want to match our keywords to correlate with the real world patterns of how people search.

Also, be sure to link rich media so that your key words show up in content-specific search engines as well.

If you need help determining the best keywords for your business, here are some resources:

SEO Tools

- SEO Book (my favorite)
- WordTracker
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool (my other favorite)
- Google Trends
- BlogPulse Trends

The ideal length of this release is usually sub 400 words.

Social Media Releases

You may have heard about the latest new shiny object in PR…no not Twitter, I’m talking about the Social Media Release. Originally introduced by Todd Defren in response to Tom Foremski’s call for the death of press releases, the SMR represents a new socially-rooted format that complements traditional and SEO press releases by combining news facts and social assets in one, easy to digest, and repurpose, tool.

Giving everyone what they need and how they need it, requires a different approach. Almost every press release issued today is done so without video or audio, and many still do not include links to additional information or supporting content. While these multimedia pieces are underlying components of SMRs, it’s not just about multimedia content, it’s about connecting information across social networks, the people looking for it, as well as the conversations that bind them together. And, SMRs also help bloggers and online journalists more effectively write a rich media post using one resource that provides them with everything they need.

Picture an everyday blog post, with a headline, intro paragraph, news facts, genuine quotes, and supporting market data (with links) combined with embedded socializable content, such as video from Viddler, pictures from flickr, screencasts hosted at YouTube, supporting documents piped from Docstoc, the use of social tools to bookmark, relevant tags for indexing and discoverability, subscriptions via RSS, friending company contacts via LinkedIn or Facebook, and most importantly, the ability to take compartmentalized components of the SMR to use as building blocks for a new story (embed codes).

SMRs can also include other social elements such as trackbacks, the ability to track and host comments, and also they’re findable within social media search engines such as Technorati, Google Blog Search, BlogPulse, Yacktrack, and Ask Blog Search.

Like SEO releases, SMRs also offer a new and perhaps unforeseen benefit. Much in the same way that SEO releases provide assistance to customers seeking solutions through search, SMRs offer similar benefits through social channels. The difference is, how people interact with it, discover it and also the tools they use to share and re-broadcast it.

Basically a Social Media Release should contain everything necessary to share, discover, and retell a story in a way that is complementary to your original intent and context.

Social Media Releases should not cross the wire though. They should, however, be hosted on a specific company blog channel dedicated to SMRs in order to complement traditional releases, SEO releases, company blog posts, and all other outward focused communications. Any customizable blogging platform will more than serve as an effective, and social, platform. Note, that a traditional web page isn’t necessarily social, so any published SMRs on a standard Web site will most likely not appear in social search.

My personal “secret” on SMRs is to create a fully dressed up social release under a private, non-indexed URL to share with key contacts in advance of the announcement. This gives bloggers and journalists everything they need to create an online story while minimizing the need to force additional research. Once the news is public, the SMR goes live with links to the traditional and SEO releases, company blog posts and in turn each also link back to the SMR. Also, wherever the social content is hosted, i.e. YouTube, Flickr, Scribd, Utterz, etc., should link to the SMR in order to create a seamless conversation bridge.

Click here for everything you ever wanted to know about SMRs and more.

In regards to all of the releases above, there is a note of caution however, the same tools that help you expand visibility, can also set up for failure. Wire services only edit for typos, not for content. This means that you can publish a release riddled with hyperbole, spin, buzzwords, and hype that will only serve to confuse and dissuade your customers from doing business with you. It will send them to your competition.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook.

news

There is certainly no shortage of discussions related to the Social Media Release. It’s like that old saying. For every one person who speaks up, you can bet that it represents a greater collective of sentiment within the public. So, for every post or article on the Social Media Release, you can bet that there are countless PR veterans, emerging professionals, and students are who are intrigued, confused, supportive, or against the notion of a new platform for sharing, distributing, and hosting news and ensuing conversations.

Vocus and The Society for New Communications Research will host a free webinar offering marketing and public relations professionals advice on adapting the press release to meet the evolving needs of traditional and online media.

Titled “The Evolving Social Media Release,” the webinar will be held on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 2:00 pm ET. To register for the webinar, click here.

According to the official press release, yes there’s a Social Media Release version as well, “The webinar will feature leading social media experts Brian Solis, a SNCR fellow and Chris Heuer as well as experts from top newswires for an open and objective discussion into the Social Media Release. The panelists will examine and debate which elements are most important in the Social Media Release and why, the potential evolution of the Social Media Release as well as the new editorial standards and distribution channels that support this new press release.”

Speakers:

Chris Heuer, Partner for The Conversation Group and Social Media Club Founder

Brian Solis, Principal at FutureWorks PR, Blogger at PR 2.0, Social Media Club Co-Founder

Monika Maeckle, VP, New Media for Business Wire

Thom Brodeur, SVP, Global Strategy and Development for Market Wire

Moderator:

- PRWeb’s Jiyan Wei

So, which format of the SMR will ultimately prevail?

I’m not sure there has to be one way to do any release, whether social or traditional. The discussion, as of right now, only helps improve the foundation for ALL forms of press releases.

Perhaps it’s simply suum cuique, to each his own.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the Social Media Release with Shel Holtz for IABC‘s official podcast, Cafe2Go.

As Shel asks, “Why are we talking about the Social Media Release on Cafe2Go?” The short answer is that the IABC is assuming a role in the development of SMR standards. An official announcement is slated for mid-week next week that will go into more detail.

I also was invited by Valerie Combs and Sandra Ponce De Leon of BuzzLogic to participate in company’s online video series, “The Vino Diaries.” In vino veritas…

Valerie’s summary of the discussion is here.

The episode of Vino Diaries is here.

For more on Social Media Releases (SMRs), please read, “The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases” and “Social Media Releases in Action.” Also, here’s the template that started it all, by Todd Defren.

I recently ran “The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases,” which has received some great feedback. Thank you everyone!

Even though it’s a blog post, it doesn’t mean that its shelf life is merely limited to the brief period of time in between new posts. I’d like it to live on and evolve over time as we learn more about SMRs. And, you’re a big part of that evolution.

I was planning on letting that post sit up there for the week, until I received an incredible comment yesterday from Steve Kayser. It’s worth spotlighting and sharing as its own post as he has done what many have been asking for, present a real world case study of the effectiveness of Social Media Releases across various wire services.

It’s nothing short of insightful, and most importantly, it will serve as a guide when considering how and where to distribute SMRs.

As you know, my favorite distribution method is creating, hosting, and channeling a new breed of SMRs through customized blog platform. While it sounds complicated, it really isn’t. And it perfectly complements a traditional wire release by providing comprehensive and consistent findability and visibility across traditional search and blog (social media) search engines and also social networks.

Please note, if you haven’t yet read the previous post, please do so prior to reading this.

Without further ado, here is Steve Kayser’s report on Social Media Releases in action…

—-

Hey Brian:

Nice post. A lot of great points.

As to the question you posed:

And, is this what reporters and bloggers really want and do we really need them?

Are SMRs created for journalists and bloggers and is it what they want?

I was asked this question last week by a marketing manager after having released three test SMR’s. Here’s my answer to the question you posed – and a point.

I care – but not too much.

If you deal in a “complex sale” environment (which we do), a high-dollar product or solution sale (usually over $150,000) requiring buyer evaluation committees, made up of 10-21 people of different functional business groups, it’s more important to make sure our news and content value is “Findable” for those people on the committees when they begin their due diligence. The ‘user”, the “IT person” the “business manager,” “Business decision-maker,” Legal, HR, etc., etc., all have their own unique and specific information needs, which by default includes specific language and terms they use to search for (keywords – key phrases etc.). Sure we want journalists and bloggers to have whatever they need to write their story. We want to be a trusted and valued source. But … no begging or buying is going to happen for them to write about us. No time for that. The hierarchy has changed. Now for us is – first the buyer’s information needs – then the bloggers, media, analysts, etc.

To stay competitive in the tech industry today you have to be

• Findable

• Believable

• Credible

• Prove Value

… just to get into consideration for the complex sale.

Once you’re findable, believable, credible, then you have to prove value – quickly. The SMR is a great tool to help promote those goals. Most buying committees have their researchers start due diligence on the web. Our internal research shows over 93% of our B2B buyers do it that way.

The SMNR helps us be more “findable.”

That’s good. But it also needs to be well-written because a well-written SMR can help us be “believable.” The opposite is also true. Poorly written corporate gobbledygook (to your point in this post) can make you look incredibly unbelievable. Which negates you ever getting into the due diligence buying process. However, good writing is not as easy to do anymore as a lot of folks out there think. (It’s complex to write simple these days.)

“Credible” follows after they do more research. Or not.

MARKETWIRE SMR

I tested Marketwire’s SMNR last week on a Smalltalk Application Development Language press release.

Now … it’s not great, not brilliant, not a literary piece in any stretch of the imagination, but it’s functional, having included some of the keywords/key phrases for this product group’s audience in the title/subtitle and first 100 words. It’s a highly niche and passionate community.

A U.S. SMR VIEW

Costs:

My view (from the U.S.) is that costs for SMR’s are relatively high. The ability to include the additional informational in the release via the related links section that ads value, ups the word count – which ups the cost because after the first 400 words almost all wire services typically charge you $1.00 a word (or somewhere close).

Multi-media assets:

Being a tech SMB – with a couple hundred million in revenue and producing about 100 press releases or so a year in the US – having video/audio assets available for SMR’s from all the product groups becomes a constant challenge. The marketing and product managers almost have to be evangelists/zealots and do a lot of the video and photos themselves. Some are hip to it. Others resist it like the plague. And, the more video / images / multi-media you do use — the more the cost goes up.

But having said all that, Marketwire’s release delivered exceptional results for us. It got pulled into a lot of our target pubs. It was visually and graphically appealing. The live links in the webosphere section started slowly then gradually grew and continue to do so. I think over 10,000 links now. Google keeps on building, “Live” keeps on building, Yahoo actually started higher (79 links) then declined. It has now shrunk to 1 link. I think that’s because their news algorithm churns them into the archive – but I’m not sure about that.

One thing I really liked — the “comments” section. It was valuable and eye-opening. Comments on a press release valuable? Yes. Several had in-depth insights, past experience comments with the product and questions about the future direction. A lot of the questions were about the topic of the press release – but I had probably 20 emails questioning me about the format of the release itself, which was interesting. But it also caused me more work. I had to write an explanation about the new format for our internal employees, detailing the components and the value of the new format. Then I had to send it to marketing, product and pre/post sales managers that weren’t involved in the tests.

Many warmly received it.

Many didn’t.

One great comrade-in-arms, when describing the mindset that did not warmly receive the message and is leery of change, sent me a quote from a Mel Brooks movie – I can’t remember the movie, but do remember the quote.

“It looks dangerous Master … you go first.”

EUROPEAN VIEW

I also used Webitpr.com in the UK last week for a different SMR about a Healthcare Software Application.

First of all, Webitpr.com is a great company to work with. They’re on top of it – especially monitoring the blogosphere. I met them through, of all things, a blog posting on PR-Squared’s blog about the SMR. They saw the posting, responded to me about the content of the post in a courteous, non-obtrusive professional manner and now we’re setting up an overseas account with them. Actually released two English press releases and one German press release over the last several weeks. Adam Parker, Jonathan Dolby, Stephen Davies, — super service. They knock it out quick, — use the SHIFT template pretty much – have a different distribution reach, but very effective. I think they’re going to be a major player in this field. Hope so anyway. It’s nice to work with people who are passionate, positive and proactive. Cost is competitive, but the U.S. dollar decline might pinch them a bit.

TRACKING ISSUES

Marketwire SMR’s don’t show up on our reporting dashboard like a typical MW release does. This will cause me (and other PR folks who use Marketwire) some issues trying to reconcile cost/value metrics for upper management. The webosphere link tracking is excellent though. Might even have to create a couple new metrics. Something along the lines of “number of comments, actions or emails” on the PR. I’m not sure yet, but we need to be able to prove the value of our PR efforts. I know this is new ground being plowed – but once the seeds are planted eventually some crops better come up.

WEBITPR.com does have tracking that I can easily append to my other tracking efforts – I use VocusPR for tracking and Marketwire as our main distribution service. WEBITPR’s tracking is easy to view, understand, use and pretty cool to boot. The guys over the pond have done a nice job of building their offering. Pretty impressive actually. Hats off to them.

SMR CHALLENGES

One of the major challenges I see though is downstream distribution. The way these SMR’s are rendered and displayed. They are ripped up and displayed in a gazillion different ways. Almost every news site displays the SMR differently. The best you can hope for right now I guess is to get it right where you have control – like for example, Marketwire – or Webitpr – or whatever your distribution vendor happens to be.

However, though seemingly a small issue, “downstream display and rendering” I guarantee you this question will come up when cost-justifying the SMR to internal budget committees – “Why do it if doesn’t get rendered or displayed the correct way. Isn’t that a waste of money?” So, be prepared to cost justify with results.

Few examples:

Yahoo does okay – renders graphics – but no video.

MSNBC – images and video at bottom.

IMPORTANT NOTE

PRXBuilder.com was the best.

And there’s a reason for that.

I developed all my SMR’s on PRXBUILDER first and then uploaded them. Shannon Whitley at PRXBUILDER is superb to work with. Knowledgeable, helpful, courteous, goes the extra step. His PRXBuilder tool can really help people get their minds around the SMR concept easily and quickly. It’s simple, easy-to-use and you can be up and running in a few minutes with it. Plus, it gives me the ability to use the same press release content and deliver it in 4 different formats

• Traditional Release

• Social Media Release

• Multi-media Release

• New Media Release

This is helpful as we gradually ramp up use of the SMR format – I can still do it the old way if need be for some recipients who need it in different formats.It would be great if Marketwire accepted the PRX Format. I know PRNewswire accepts it – but they’re a little pricey right now for this type release.

Thanks for your post Brian.

Great work as always.

Best,

Steve Kayser

——

Steve, thank you very much for taking the time to document your experiences. I believe that it will only help guide marketing and PR professionals as they look to navigate the murky and unchartered waters of Social Media. I look forward to your future experiments.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook

2.0

The Social Media Release is back in the spotlight once again and its sparking conversations, inspiring experiments, and raising confusion along the way.

This time, intent and distribution take center stage.

Good friends Todd Defren and Christopher Lynn took the time to research how wire services are positioning their products for Social Media. Todd posted the results here. Great work guys!

Basically, when you call your local representative, you’re presented with the following capabilities.

Now, whether these stats are accurate, that’s up to what you discover through direct research. Ultimately, you have to hear directly from your rep and try these for yourself in order to draw exact conclusions. But, as Defren points out, his research is representative of what the wire services “know and sell” right now.

So, this brings up a couple of important points:

How do you distribute these things?

And, is this what reporters and bloggers really want and do we really need them?

OK, NEWS FLASH….

For Immediate Release:

Press Releases Are Only One Way To Tell Your Story; Social Media Releases Can Complement Traditional Releases

DATELINE: The Blogosphere — NOW – Brian Solis, a “leader” in what should be nothing more than the obvious, today announced that Social Media Releases can complement your outbound communications strategy based on what the people you’re trying to reach want to see and how. They do not replace Traditional Releases.

“I am so pleased and excited that the PR industry is interested in something new to help reach journalists, bloggers and their customers,” said Brian Solis, author of the PR 2.0 blog. “But, I’m sorry to say, that just because a new tool is available to you, you still have to make your story interesting, relevant, and newsworthy. The Social Media Release is not going to miraculously fix a hyperbole-ridden, over-stated, incomprehensible document riddled with BS. The people that matter to you are simply seeking context, relevance, what’s new, what you do, why it matters, how it’s different, and to whom. You still have to do your homework and write something compelling and clear.”

# # #

Why Do We Need the Social Media Release?

OK folks, it’s time to separate the hype from the hope.

I think we’re learning “how” to create Social Media Releases, aesthetically at least. But, I don’t see many discussions that effectively and clearly say “why” we need them.

There’s plenty of talk. And, there’s definitely no shortage of critics out there. And to some extent, I too am skeptical of any one tool that carries the hopes of an industry to magically change the popular perception of PR and press releases in general.

But, IMHO, the SMR is an important icebreaker for the bigger discussions of how and why we should write better press releases in general.

I use them in conjunction with traditional releases and they work extremely well. Personally, I prefer using a blog platform to create and distribute them.

Are they as effective when distributed through a a wire service?

For example, let’s use MarketWire’s recent launch of its new Social Media Release service, “Social Media 2.0” as a case study to see if we can answer why Social Media Releases are worth our time and if they really work. Disclosure, Thom, Kevin, I’m a big fan of MarketWire, so what follows is just an open discussion of a public launch related to a relevant topic.

Facts:

MarketWire recently acquired Kevin Dill’s PRNN service, which was an effective solution for distributing releases online.

Now part of MarketWire, Kevin helped the company build a new Social Media solution dubbed, “Social Media 2.0, the Industry’s Most Authentic Social Media Product.”

They announced it via a Social Media Release format, a service which I also helped them manually code over the course of several announcements starting in 2006.

First, let’s examine the headline, “Marketwire Unveils Social Media 2.0: Industry’s Most Authentic Social Media Product.”

The only reason I’m calling this out, outside of the Social Media ingredients that define the release, is because any product related to Social Media Releases is important and especially relevant to the discussion. Whether Traditional or Social, this headline unfortunately contributes to PR’s usual tendency to hype, hype, and hype some more. It steals from the significance of Social Media and the SMR, demonstrating why PR has a hard time getting taken seriously. Thom, Kevin, consult with us first. It’s free and it’s only going to help the bigger cause that we’re all collaboratively working towards.

Wanna know what the industry’s most authentic Social Media product is?

Blogs.

Instead of being the most authentic social media product, it instead comes across as a disingenuous and an opportunistic attempt at capitalizing on something momentous and “open.”

The intro paragraph, aside from the hype, serves well for ensuring that the release gets indexed in traditional search engines. Their intro paragraph is packed with key words, which will help it show up in search.

Here are a few examples how well it did for searching “social media” and “Marketwire”

Reuters

Google News

Yahoo News

Could it have been a bit more effective across other key words?

Yes, absolutely.

That’s the art of a SEO-optimized press release, which are complementary to SMRs and traditional press releases.

Did it too reasonably well?

Sure it did.

Here’s where most Social Media Releases fall down…

The link to Digg isn’t generating community voting the way that it does in say, a blog post.

Is this fixable?

Yes.

Unfortunately, the link to search context and discussions within Technorati isn’t yielding all of the discussions we know are present in the blogosphere.

Is this fixable?

Yes.

In the Bookmarking category, the MarketWire SMR has everything needed to ensure that people can save and share this link publicly within social networks.

The trackbacks function only provides a trackback URL, when it could also display a list of all places that responded to the news.

Instead of providing a hub to all external and orbiting conversations, it provides a count to discussions through traditional search engines.

Google

Yahoo

The embedded video and stills ensure that the conversations take place outside and around the news. For example, at the time of this article, the YouTube video featuring Thom’s intro to the new release service was viewed 333 times and counting. However, it’s missing the link back to the release should someone stumble upon it directly within YouTube. But, it’s still bringing the conversation to people and also allowing them to discover it within their networks.

Overall, aside from the “over the top” positioning, MarketWire demonstrated how a Social Media Release can spark conversations across the Social Web. As their coding improves, they’ll be able to track and promote the dialog more effectively, thus extending the conversation.

Unfortunately, though, the release isn’t gaining visibility within Social Media channels, which is an important step in tying everything together, and also promoting the information within the very networks that people go to discover and share information.

Everything else, including RSS feeds, work really well and I’m sure the SMR service will only get better. The products from PRNewswire, PRWeb, and BusinessWire, share similar capabilities, and most likely, results within the Social Media Sphere.

How could all of them improve?

Service providers and businesses looking to amply SMRs should extend the platform beyond an HTML Web page. Building something on a social platform such as WordPress, with full customization capabilities, delivers an inherent social ecosystem which supports the social tools of today and tomorrow and also ensures visibility and search ability using Social Search engines. Offering combo pricing for an SMR plus traditional distribution would raise the bar and create an entirely new playing field for sharing news across Social and Traditional networks.

What Makes a Social Media Releases Social?

Obviously a Social Media Release needs to feature Social Media ingredients, which includes links to bookmarking networks, contextual tags, the ability to track and host conversations, and also discover them within social networks. The inclusion of new features to simply make a fancy, shiny, new whiz bang press release doesn’t necessarily cut it.

So, what socializes a release?

A Social Media Release should contain everything necessary to share and discover a story in a way that is complementary to your original intent; but, the difference is, how they find it and the tools they use to share and broadcast.

Social Media is one big extension to the Web, except it promotes voices, along with content, in a way that focuses on people and their social networks.

Giving everyone what they need and how they need it, requires a different approach. Almost 100% of press releases issued today are done so without video or audio, which are underlying component of SMRs. But it’s not about multimedia content, it’s about connecting content across social networks and the people looking for it.

Social Media lowers the barriers to entry for companies to record, share and embed video and audio, and most importantly, allow people to also easily share with their audiences. The same can be said for all multimedia content.

Everything within Social Media now is widgetized, meaning that if you upload various content across social networks, you can embed it all in one place and repackage it under one brand umbrella. Without getting all geeky, these networks give you the “embed code” that you need to plop it somewhere. It’s just cut and paste. What if the whole SMR was embeddable as well? That could be very cool!

So if we’re promoting conversations, shouldn’t we instill the ability to host or feature comments?

Absolutely.

Social Media is a two-way street and dialog sets the foundation for Social Media Releases.

The next step is discovery.

By placing content across social networks, properly tagging them (inserting relevant key words) within each, and linking back to your SMR (or blog post), you can effectively leverage visibility within each community, and also steer influence back to your intended impressions.

Obviously conversations should be ongoing, so part of socializing the release has a lot do with helping people staying connected and also find it again should they wish to see updates.

Make sure to check out co-comment, Tangler, and SezWho.

RSS for company news is one way to keep people tapped in to what you’re doing. Offering links to simply that process could only help. For example, include linked icons for Bloglines, Netvibes, PageFlakes, and Google Reader. In addition, companies should also think about creating individual RSS feeds for product lines and specific services, to keep people connected to specific channels.

And if you’re feeling particularly inspired, creating an aggregated dashboard of relevant content, using Alltop or POPURLs as an example, bloggers, journalists, and customers can stay up to date and connected. Try experimenting with Netvibes to create something like this as a way of experimenting by tracking your favorite voices and stories on the Web. All it takes is an RSS feed.

So again, we ask, what makes a Social Media Release Social?

Well, at the end of the day, if you’ve ever written a blog post, much of what I’m describing already exists. There’s nothing to say that you couldn’t do this right now simply by creating a customized blog that is an extension of your company’s online newsroom.

However, if resources are limited, there are companies, including my own, which help you get there. Or, you can simply use existing services to recreate this process for every news release you wish to publish.

So, at the end of all of this, a Social Media Release should look something like this:

—————–

Headline

Intro paragraph, rich with key words, relevance and context (summary)

Supporting facts

Quote

Embeddable Video (The new VNR)

Embeddable Audio

Embeddable Images

RSS for the company news

RSS for product info

Post in “insert social network of choice” (Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, or a relevant social network for sharing)

Blog this (links to blogging platforms)

Share on Twitter, Jaikue, Pownce or Tumblr

Bookmarks

Relevant links

Digg, Reddit, and other relevant news aggregators and communities.

Comments – Maybe also include a link to a hosted network on Ning or even a discussion forum on Tangler or Google Groups

Contact: hcard, vcard, LInkedIn, Facebook

—————–

The Value of Social Media Releases

Even after we define the SMR, the same questions still come up:

1. Should we include sentences or is it supposed to be bullets?

2. Are we designing SMRs for “the wire” or the “web?”

3. Are SMRs created for journalists and bloggers and is it what they want?

4. Do SMRs need to spark and host conversations?

5. Can they, and should they, bypass influencers to reach people directly?

1- In order for these releases to show up in search engines, the truth is that an intro paragraph or two are necessary to help them index properly. Simply relying on bullets won’t get you anywhere, even if they’re sent directly to your contacts.

2 – I guess that parlays into the next point, SMRs should be designed for the Web, while a traditional release (say a compatriot release) is designed for the wire. Social Media Releases play to the strengths of the Web and also Social Media, a feature that wire services have yet to conquer.

3 – Personally, I’ve created SMRs with a private URL and shared with reporters and bloggers before the news was official (basically under embargo). They loved it and the ratio for pitching and publishing was almost 100%. But, all I’m doing is creating, positioning and packaging information in a way that’s relevant to them. The SMR in this case, becomes a wrapper for presenting information in a palatable and digestible way.

4 – Yes

5 – SMRs are more than just reporters and bloggers; they’re about people. When created properly, they can get discovered by the very people you want to reach and thus bypassing traditional influencers. I’m not saying that you should bank on this as a strategy, only think about it when you’re creating your press release strategy. You can write for both influencers and customers using a variety of Traditional, SEO, and Social press releases.

Yes, press releases show up in search engines.

Traditional Search Engines

Let’s start with the basics.

Traditional press releases distributed over wire services, for better or worse, ARE already showing up in search engines (especially Google and Yahoo News) as a natural part of the wire distribution process. Bottom line, press releases are already reaching people directly.

According to an Outsell study, over 51% of IT professionals report that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals.

It’s a fact that is changing the game for PR, and it’s not only being driven by journalists, but customers too.

What it really represents is an opportunity to do things better. It all starts with making news relevant and writing it in a way that help people “get it.” An awful press release will still be awful, regardless of multimedia or social bling.

So, if traditional press releases already reach people, then why do we need a Social Media Release?

Search and Discovery in Social Media

Social Media Releases may look similar to today’s multimedia releases in format, structure and design, but depending on a series of factors, they have the ability to open up dialog in a way not possible with traditional or multimedia releases.

An important distinction between the two, discovered after spending the last two years experimenting with formats and distribution channels, is this: the content and structure of the SMR is only part of the equation.

What if the people you’re trying to reach are searching and sharing content outside of traditional online communities and instead, or in addition, actively participating in Social Media?

Helping SMRs appear within this realm is the true promise…otherwise they’re nothing more than a fancy wrapper for packaging news for their intended recipients. And, as any good PR person will tell you, providing a summary, images, video, and other supporting facts in one package, specific to their intended recipient, is something they’ve been doing for years.

SMRs are much more than bulleted text and links to multimedia content in social networks. It’s much more than simply sharing information. And, it’s definitely much more than providing building blocks for people to piece together.

SMRs are the hub for relevant content and also the catalyst for the socialization of news.

But, if nobody sees it, what good are they?

A big part of this socialization starts with “findability,” i.e. is the SMR discoverable inside or outside the world of Social Media?

Contrary to popular belief, search engines are not all created equal – especially in the world of Social Media.

The same tools that you use to find bloggers who cover the topics that are important to you, are also the same tools that someone can use to find your SMR (when done right).

- Technorati
- Blogpulse
- Google Blog Search
- Google Alerts

You probably didn’t know this, but most SMRs released to-date not readily discoverable by “social” search engines, even if you embed Technorati tags.

Yep, it’s true. The tags included in most SMRs will lead the reader to contextual links, but, the release itself will remain invisible in the social search engine. For example, click any Technorati Tag in any SMR out there and it will simply force a search for that keyword and produce all related blog posts on the subject, but the release itself won’t be part of the results unfortunately.

Please keep in mind that this is different that the “suggested” tags that you’re seeing in the hybrid examples out there today. If anything, they just help increase findability in traditional search.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

To be “seen” by these blog-specific engines requires a separate social media optimization (SMO) aka blog search engine optimization (BSEO) process and an entirely different distribution mechanism. If the SMR is not published via a social platform (note: blogs are inherently social) like WordPress or Blogger, it’s going to be ignored by Technorati, BlogPulse, Google Blog Search, et al.

Most often though, just to get things in perspective, if you place it on the Web or distribute via a traditional wire service, your release will in traditional search.

To apply SMO to your press release, again, think about blogging it in addition to your other release distribution.

Create a virtual fireside chat. Make sure to link each release to each other. And, if you upload content to social networks for embedding into your release, also ensure that there are links back to the releases.

The most important thing you can do to escalate visibility is to tag your content direclty within each social network with the relevant key words that someone might search when they’re looking for information. I can’t emphasize this enough.

Summary

Social Media Releases are only one way to tell your story and they can work extremely well when paired with a traditional release and an effective outbound media/blogger/influencer campaign.

Nothing beats knowing what you want to say, why it matters, and to whom. You still have to do your homework and you still have to write something compelling (meaning well written.)

Conversations are ultimately the tool that will help you spread the word and ignite additional word of mouth and also trigger customer responses.

Writing the news in a way that’s helpful, informative, and relative is a critical starting point for any release, whether social, traditional, or SEO.

What this all means is that the future of the Social Media Release is up to you. Raise the bar. Experiment. Provide value. Remember, that releases, regardless of format, are only the tools that can help facilitate discussions, relationships, and also visibility. The ability to tell your story, your way, to the people that define your markets, is where we should all focus our time and effort…the rest, is simply a function of outreach.

For additional insight, please read, “The Future of the Social Media Release is in Your Hands.”

Other voices on the subject:

Dave Fleet

Jiyan Wei

Robert Geller

PRBlogger

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook

public+relations

Todd Defren and Brian Solis.

The Social Media Release (SMR) is gaining traction and visibility and is now looked to by many as the savior of the traditional press release – which may honestly be too great a task for any one tool. But, at the very least, the discussions around the SMR are fueling the evolution and improvement of the press release overall.

Each day new examples are emerging and will only continue to be showcased as Social Media purveyors blaze the trail for the future of the news release, whether it’s traditional, multimedia, social or a combination of all the above.

As Social Media evolves, so does the process of discovery, sharing, and influence.
Traditional press releases distributed over wire services, for better or worse, ARE already showing up in search engines as a natural part of the wire distribution process.

According to Outsell, Inc. over 51% of IT professionals are reporting that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals.

It’s a fact that is changing the game for PR, and it’s not only being driven by journalists, but customers too.

What it really represents is an opportunity, dictated by necessity, to do things better. And, in order to do that, we need to understand the dynamics of traditional, multimedia, and social media.

As a quick refresher, the Social Media Release template from SHIFT Communications was created in response to Tom Foremski’s public call for the death of press releases. The template provided, for the first time, a one-stop resource for bloggers, journalists, and people, to find relevant information for constructing stories without the B.S., or as Foremski called it, the “spintastic” messaging prevalent in traditional press releases.

The evolution of the Social Media Release in the 18 months since the SHIFT template’s debut is simply unbelievable and testament to the cumulative desire to carry the PR profession forward, in entirely new and exciting directions.

After working together along with Chris Heuer, Shel Holtz, Shannon Whitley, among many others, it’s clear that there is a hunger to evolve the 100-year old press release format, and in the process, maybe also improve the game for PR overall. Now it’s up to all of us to define. And since the world is watching, it’s important for us to occasionally take a step back in order to to carry SMRs forward.

In the last year, we have worked diligently to defend, explain, and showcase SMRs, but there are still many questions as word of a new format spreads. (For example: “What’s the difference between a SMR and a Multimedia Release? Should we put out a SMR in tandem with a traditional release? Can I rely on these releases to do my job for me?”)

So far the examples that we’ve highlighted over the past year – whether they’ve been distributed on a wire or hosted on a Web page – have all been a step in the right direction, but at the end of the day, with few exceptions, they are not quite fully “socialized” yet. They are representative of a hybrid multimedia and social media release, which can be distributed as traditional releases as well as simply hosted on traditional web pages. (Here’s an example of a release that looks social, but isn’t quite there yet.)

Social Media Releases may look similar to today’s multimedia releases in format, structure and design, but depending on a series of factors, they have the ability to open up dialog in a way not possible with traditional or multimedia releases.

An important distinction between the two, discovered after spending the last year experimenting with formats and distribution channels, is this: the content and structure of the SMR is only part of the equation.

It all starts with thinking about what you want to say and figure out why it’s important to those you want to reach.

A crappy press release is still a crappy press release regardless of multimedia or social bling.

Writing the news in a way that’s helpful, informative, and relative is a critical starting point for any release.

SMRs are much more than bulleted text and links to multimedia content in social networks. It’s much more than simply sharing information. And, it’s definitely much more than providing building blocks in a “B.S.” free format. SMRs are a starting point for the socialization of news. We’ve got the multimedia part down: now we need to focus on the social aspects.

A big part of this socialization starts with “findability,” i.e. is the SMR discoverable outside in the world of Social Media?

Did you know that the major wire services used to be subscription-only?

Their 3,000+ daily releases were not open to the general public until recently. But the wires’ newfound openness means that traditional news releases can be discovered via Google and Yahoo. And search engines are an incredible catalyst for news distribution: people are finding news through Google and Yahoo and as a result have become more accepting of press releases as legitimate information resources, on a par with trusted trade journals (this has been documented by several analysts tracking the media space). After finding information through traditional search engines, people can still “socialize the content” by taking the initiative to manually bring it into the conversation, embedding links and content into their own blogs, del.icio.us accounts, etc.

This means that press releases, regardless of format, are now equally important to bloggers, journalists, analysts, and now, customers too!

Contrary to popular belief, however, search engines are not all created equal – especially in the world of Social Media.

For example, you probably didn’t know this: traditional & multimedia releases – which would include most of the SMRs released to-date – are not readily discoverable by “social” search engines likeTechnorati, not even if you use Technorati tags. The T’rati tags included in most SMRs will lead the reader to contextual links (if they exist), but, the release itself will remain invisible to the social search engine. Please keep in mind that this is different that the “suggested” tags that you’re seeing in the hybrid examples out there today. If anything, they just help increase findability in traditional search.

To be “seen” by these blog-specific engines requires a separate social media optimization (SMO) aka blog search engine optimization (BSEO) process and an entirely different distribution mechanism: if the SMR is not published via a social platform (note: blogs are inherently social) like WordPress or Blogger, it’s going to be ignored by Technorati, BlogPulse, Google Blog Search, et al. So the SMRs we’ve seen so far have rarely been part of the broader, contextual conversation.

Shannon Whitley, current chair of the Social Media Release Working Group, which is dedicated to creating technology standards for creating and distributing SMRs, offered this insight:

“The best place to publish a Social Media News Release is on your company blog or social media newsroom (which is hosted on a blogging engine). However, it’s important to recognize that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) alone will not necessarily draw attention to your news. It’s still important to actively promote and distribute your releases via newswires and social media tools, and – wherever you promote your news – to provide a link back to your Social Media News Release.”

This is an important point because if you’re relying on one release to reach everyone, the truth is that Social Media and multimedia releases can look exactly alike, but, they will show up in two different places.

So how do we get more “social” with our Social Media Releases?

Social can be defined as:

Hosting conversations – via moderated comments – directly at the hub of the SMR (ideally in the corporate social media newsroom) or providing a link to comments.

Providing a trackback function – and displaying the results. This is not only a good metric for marketers evaluating industry response, but also helpful to those looking for additional perspectives on the news.

Enabling links to social bookmarking sites (like del.icio.us) is good. So is the creation of purpose-built links that highlight other voices and provide context for the news.

Using links and tags that drive all of the images, video, and audio posted to social networks back to the SMR. These links and tags act as beacons for the conversation. It shouldn’t matter whether users come across a traditional, multimedia or social media release; it shouldn’t even matter if they find a “chunk” of the release’s content somewhere else on the web… by including relevant tags and by consistently associating the SMR’s dispersed content elements (on YouTube, Flickr, etc.) with the SMR’s permalink in the Social Media Newsroom, you can leave breadcrumbs that ultimately aggregate the resulting conversations in one convenient spot.

At the end of the day, the SMR was never intended to replace the traditional press release nor is it supposed to relieve you of good ol’ media and blogger relations. In fact, experience thus far shows that SMRs are much stronger when paired with both a traditional counterpart and strategic outreach.

An SMR written in either bulleted or narrative format, partnered with a “static” release – each containing reciprocal links – can not only distribute meaningful news, but also offer building blocks (shareable content); facilitate and encourage conversations and sharing (via social media tags); and ensure a presence in both blog and traditional Web search engines (via SEO and SMO).

Multiple releases can specifically appeal to different groups using the channels the reach them (customers, bloggers, journalists, etc.). It will, for the first time, combine mainstream PR while creating new arms and legs to reach important groups that comprise The LongTail.

The key to the SMR’s long-term success will be the ability to truly be social; to not only deliver the news in a snazzy new format, but also to facilitate discovery through Social Media channels, encourage sharing and spark conversations, all in a way that brings customers, journalists, bloggers, and analysts together around your story and your community.

The reason for this post is to remind people that tricking out press releases for the sake of tapping into a trend doesn’t do anyone any good. Writing the news in a way that’s helpful, informative, and relative is a critical starting point for any release to be successful now and in the future.

Garbage in, garbage out.

The SMR template is a starting point to incite creativity and innovation. How you develop and issue SMRs is ultimately up to you, and given that these are the early days, the interest level is high in making sure we get this right. We’re all in this together.

This is a call to action for PR people to stop and think about the entire process and take the challenge for improvement, whether multimedia or social.

We have a responsibility to journalists, bloggers, analysts and to our customers that we need to finally take seriously. And, in order to build/continue relationships, we have to provide information in way that works for the different groups of people that want info, without the usual b.s. or spintastic hype.

For additional background, please read Everything You Wanted to Know About Social Media Releases.

Connect with Brian Solis: Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, or Facebook
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Chris Heuer, Shel Holtz, and I recorded number 16 in an ongoing series that discusses the New Media Release aka Social Media Release aka hrelease.

In this episode, we were joined by Shannon Whitley, who is now heading up the Working Group for defining the hrelease standard. We discussed the state of the SMR, current examples of SMRs in action, as well as the plans for the Working Group moving forward.

Whitley has been very passionate about the social media release, creating PRX Builder, a DIY (Do It Yourself) service for automatically creating and distributing them.

We reviewed recent examples of SMRs, and were both surprised and elated, to include one from a major industry player, HP, for its latest study on ink jet performance metrics. WebITPR also issued a release announcing that Stephen Davies of PRBlogger.com joined the team.

The NMRCast was initially started to document the evolution of the press release in today’s social landscape. It reviews the strategies and experiments driving the social media release aka new media release so that PR professionals can learn from each other in order to improve how we share news and information with the public, and in turn, how they share it with each other.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Relevant Links:

The new Social Media Release site, home of the social media release requirements

Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion

Also, for a refresher on SMRs, please read, “Everything You Wanted to Know (or Should Know) About Social Media Releases.”

Subscribe to the NMRCast feed here.

It’s been a while since we last recorded the NMRCast, but with the growing discussions around the new media release, we felt it was time to reignite the conversations.

The NMRCast was initially started to document the evolution of the press release in today’s social landscape. It reviews the strategies and experiments driving the social media release aka new media release so that PR professionals can learn from each other in order to improve how we share news and information with the public, and in turn, how they share it with each other.

Todd Defren, from SHIFT Communications joined Shel Holtz and me to talk about the one-year anniversary of SHIFT’s social media press release template. We also discussed SHIFT’s template for a social media newsroom, my “how to write” an SMR guide, the lack of social features when using wire services to distribute SMRs, and the status of the social media release working group.

We also covered recent examples of SMRs in action, including the Virtual Coke, SpiralFrog, Real Networks, and Geocommons campaigns.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Relevant Links:

The new Social Media Release site, home of the social media release requirements

Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion

Social Media Release discussion live from the NewComm Forum in Las Vegas

Shannon Whitley’s PRX Builder

Also, for a refersher on SMRs, please read, “Everything You Wanted to Know (or Should Know) About Social Media Releases.”

Subscribe to the NMRCast feed here.

With Social Media Releases (New Media Releases) in the spotlight again, I felt this was the ideal timing to introduce you to the Video News Release (VNR) redux. Ready or not, start brushing up on flash, screencasting, video production, online video networks, and Web marketing.

Online video is the next frontier for the communications industry adding a new layer of engagement to any existing PR, marketing and web initiative. In my opinion social media has reinvented the VNR, putting the power of creation and distribution in the hands of those with a camera, PC, and a broadband connection – well, and a little marketing savvy and an understanding of the pains and needs of the people they’re trying to reach…

What the social media press release is to traditional releases, amateur video, screencasts, and demos are to traditional video news releases (VNRs).

For those who may not have direct experience with VNRs, they are an age-old, somewhat effective tool for telling a story visually and are directly related to many of the stories that you see on traditional broadcast news networks. While effective, they are incredibly expensive – especially in the Web 2.0 genre. Production segments, b-roll, satellite transmission, and not to mention the legwork associated with calling attention to the distribution time of transmitting the feed, easily hits the $20k mark for one story.

I’ve long said that for the right marketers, Youtube, and the other video networks out there, represent what could be constituted as the new broadcast channel for social video news releases. And with the technology barriers of entry are so low (in terms of expertise required and cost of equipment), there’s never been a better time to experiment with video.

However, like all forms of social media, it requires a level of understanding, ethics, and transparency that can only be possible with hands-on experience – not as a marketer, but as a participant of all forms of social media.

While many readers of PR 2.0 are in the tech industry, the entire concept of social media VNRs can benefit any business.

At the very least, social video allows companies to demonstrate their product in a way that is consumable, shareable, and also much more interesting than reading collateral.

Let’s take a look at a few of the more popular videos online (keep in mind, it’s less about quality and more about participating and contributing):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u3ekzwnYxw]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHMpcfEIGBE]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFV_DGRpZnE]

Aside from video, screencasts are also viral and effective. Here are a couple of examples:

SiteKreator

Ning
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeArbJ8JxrI]

Robert Scoble encourages PR and corporate marketing to engage by saying that we should worry less about trying to have broadcast quality production and focus more on the uniqueness of a product when pursuing campaigns through online video. Even Michael Arrington of TechCrunch supports the use of corporate marketing through video and often runs the more creative shorts on his personal blog, CrunchNotes.

However, it’s not just about getting the attention of bloggers and traditional media. It’s also a way of reaching the markets, and more importantly, the people that can benefit from the product/service. That’s the beauty of a social network.

According to a past issue of PRWeek, Nuance scored 35,000 views on YouTube from a very targeted audience and MultiVu’s work for NVIDIA earned 65,000 viewers off Metacafe.

Here’s the Nuance video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L4Jk6GDud0]

There are several ingredients to consider when developing a video or screencast, and the choices you make for their implementation will determine the success or failure of the campaign.

1 – Be genuine. This isn’t yet another opportunity for PR to spam the world

2 – Know your targets, their pain points, and why your product will help them. And please don’t use the word audience. Viewers today are considered the people formally known as the audience. This ensures that we engage by conversing with, not marketing to, people. This is Jay Rosen’s philosophy, which many social media purists hold sacred when discussing how to participate through social media.

3 – Keep it focused on what’s unique, interesting, and compelling.

4 – Experiment. Don’t just stop at one…keep the line of communication open through video much in the same way you would with blogs, marketing collateral, newsletters, and press releases.

5 – Place the videos on the company site and offer RSS feeds for them.

6 – Ensure that the videos are placed in the social networks where the people you want to reach search for new and interesting content.

7 – Simply placing videos online isn’t enough. Just because you place in social networks doesn’t mean it will be viewed and shared. You have to do “PR” for it through the folksonomy of strategic tagging, linking, and having others point to it and republish it to spark the viral potential of your content.

8 – Be creative.

9 – Worry less about polish and more about content.

10 – Listen to feedback

While social video represents a new opportunity for marketing and PR, I can not emphasize enough the importance of maintaining traditional programs and fostering relationships with analysts, reporters, bloggers, and customers. Video can only enhance a proactive and all-encompassing marketing and PR campaign.

Social media is indeed breathing new life into Video News Releases and with that, it continues to reinvent PR for the new Web.

Lights. Camera. Action.

Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick documents how video and social media helped SplashCast rise above the noise.

Also, thank you to videographer Mikko Wilson for the artwork used in the original post.

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Some bloggers “get it,” others are forcing us to do a better job explaining what we’re actually doing, while some (and the people who read their blogs) completely miss the point.

If anything, this conversation demonstrates why the blogosphere (and most importantly, people) will chew-up and spit-out traditional PR and corporate marketing types – without thinking twice. But that’s the beauty of this. It forces evolution and improvement – so, either get on board or get out!

It also brings to light a much needed discussion of the need for PR and corporate marketing to evolve.

Truth is that “social” is what’s truly sparking the controversy here. PR had the ability to hide behind so many tools in the past, and now finally, social media is forcing them to step out into the light. PR must now engage with people and in order to do so, must act like “people” not just a faceless broadcasting machine.

It’s not just PR though, social media must be embraced by companies in order to have validity.

In Stowe’s latest post, he nails it with pinpoint accuracy, “Let’s get down to the real basics. We are people. We are already engaged in conversation among ourselves. If corporations want to jump in, fine, go ahead. The water’s fine. But you have to drop the old line model in its entirety, or you will have zero success.”

Chris Heuer adds, “Regardless, this is finally the beginning of the manifestation of the cluetrain principles in our society, with companies entering the conversation in a real and meaningful way. ”

All in all, the world just needs PR to pay more attention to whom their sending information and why it should matter, to them and the people, that read their writing (or watch their videos).

Once they have that knowledge, it will, by all means, change how they reach out – whether it’s in email, by phone, comments, or through blogs. As someone pointed out, the best way to engage socially is by phone. But until they can do so with acceptance and legitimacy, PR has no business engaging directly with individuals.

PR must step from behind its black cloak of anonymity and step into the conversation. But in order to do so, they can’t at all, come across as a traditional PR person – just people talking with people.

The only problem is that most offenders in PR probably won’t even read these blog posts. Hence why we’re trying to bring them into the conversation. Well, only the good ones, the rest can wait for the Ice Age.

Here’s a summary of the conversation…

Supporting

The idea that there is no audience any more—that we’re all equal parts producer and consumer of content—makes for a nice sound bite. It’s also complete bullshit. One percent create content. Ten percent interact with it. That leaves 89 percent who simply read it. They are not engaged in the conversation. They are passively absorbing content. – Shel Holtz

Social media press releases are far, FAR from perfect. But, as long as they’re used as a bridge to further conversations with clients about a blogging strategy that is honest and not filled with malarky … then you know what? I’m willing to stomach it. – Dr Tony Hung

My opinion on the matter is this. I think that anyone who takes the time to invent something, lobby for it and contribute to the community is doing the right thing. That’s the definition of social. – Chris Saad

Stowe makes some bullshit assumptions about the PR industry and the changes many of us are already working to incite. – Mike Manuel

Fact: Press releases continue to be an efficient way to widely distribute information, so there’s no need to cut off your nose to spite your face. – Mark Evans

The new media release, as we refer to it, has the potential to make PR and media more honest because the source of each word, sentence can be tracked.
Posted by: Tom Foremski

Which brings us neatly to Robert Scoble, who misses it more than most. At least Stowe Boyd’s original post was well argued, even if I don’t think he fully understands what it’s all about. – Stuart Bruce

In the end if a marketing or PR professional writes good copy, or tells a good story particularly when it is selling a good product it tends to cut through all the clutter no matter how the message is delivered. – Rick Calvert

I’m a supporter of SMR, but if we want to debate SMR constructively let’s try to have some data to base our arguments. – Daniel Riveong

I’m sick and tired of ‘leading blah blah blah’ and ’solutions’ and phony ‘pleased and delighted’ quotes. But that’s not the issue the social media news release is addressing. – David Parmet

The IDEA is to strip out all of the bullshit and hype from traditional mechanical, and useless press releases and rebuild it as a focused compilation of relevant facts, links, media and a subscription feed to help readers write, tell, and share a story their way (without having to sort through a sea of crap to find out what’s real, what’s canned, and what’s important.) – Me

The social media release is the presentation layer, and that the concept we are supporting technically is the hRelease. The reason behind supporting Microformats are many, but the simplest is that it is intended to primarily be distributed through RSS on BLOGS! – Chris Heuer

I think Solis would say that quality PR can be done without compromising the integrity of the social network experience and maybe that’s true but as with all things commercial we’ll see more obnoxious and manipulative stuff than quality promotion. And hey, that’s OK because this … is …. America and we like our commercialism crash, superficial, and obnoxious, right? – Joe Duck

Some PR people are actually good at what they do. Others are not. And what they are good at is helping refine a message. And, thus, I can see social media and the “future of the press release” being a valid concept.
J. LeRoy

I don’t think we can kill the Release just yet, it still serves its purpose. But smart companies should be trying to complement it. – Jeremy Toeman

For the record, I think “social” news releases posted on a company’s website are hugely better than traditional releases posted on a company’s website. At least a social release allows people to have input. At least you know it’s a PR pitch and not a fake blog post.
Posted by: Dominic Jones

As readers here know, I don’t have any problem with press releases, old or new format, as long as the PR people do the real job of crafting well written and newsworthy announcements without BS. The press release and other materials created for announcements are just the documentation of the story. They aren’t the story. – Susan Getgood

So, where I am right now with the idea of a social media-based press solution: let’s use better writing, a more open approach to replying to feedback, blogs and a richer markup (hRelease) to make our press information more freely available, more indexable, remixable, and just more useful. Instead of being an end in itself (or merely a set of message points we hope others reprint verbatim) hReleases should jumpstart more conversation. — Brian Oberkirch

In my opinion, the social media news release is an inconvenient distraction from the real task at hand, which is getting businesses to understand what social media is in the first place, how it changes the rules, and how it challenges received wisdom and ancient corporate communication tools like, er, the press release. The social media press release is a distraction, but it’s a meaningful distraction… – Giovanni Rodriguez

–

Observing

I don’t have a PR background, and was trying to figure out how it helps communication. Frankly, I probably don’t know enough in this arena, so I’m anxiously waiting for this to get sorted out.
Posted by: Jeremiah Owyang

There’s something about the “social” in “social media” and “social networking” and “social” everything that keeps raising my hackles, no matter how much I believe in the best elements (and intentions) of those much hyped phenomena. – Scott Karp

I find this “social media release” thing rather odd. I’m sure it’s not the case but it sort of gives you the feeling that some in the traditional business world are getting together and deciding, “Well, it’s finally about time we started understanding this Internet thing.”
Posted by: Eric Berlin

Come on, guys, do it right. Don’t just talk the talk: walk the walk. Otherwise, your clients will never get there. – Stowe Boyd

Brian, if everyone agreed with your description of what a social media release was supposed to be and do, then I don’t think there would be any problem — although I think even a social media release should be just part of what a company does to get is message out, along with blogs, etc. It’s baby steps. – Mathew Ingram

–

Not Sold – yet

The problem with the SMR (which sounds more like AK-47 than it should) is that it still pushes information in “blips of transparency” that you expect people to somehow care more about than their friends, who are pushing similar, yet ongoing and consistent “blips of transparency” that, over time, have resulted in genuine relationships forming. You can’t expect drive-by honesty to replace decades of abuse and indirection. Posted by: Chris Messina

In fact, even the term “social media” makes me want to cry. WTF is social media? People are social and we aren’t just idly waiting here to have really impersonal, crappy PR messages stuffed down our throats. Posted by: tara hunt

Public relations is “getting social media all wrong.” None of this is rocket science. And the PR folk have no excuse. All the relevant information is easy enough to find, if one takes the time to actually look. The fact that lots of them aren’t bothering to take the time, well, that’s another issue altogether. – Hugh MacLeod

Would it be possible to get all the little glue-sniffing communist SMPR advocate bastards together so corporate American can beat them with baseball bats? Please? CONTINUED ON ANOTHER BLOG — Lastly, the only reason this social crap has any support from PR is because a small group have glommed onto it as the new new thing and the cornerstone of their lightweight expertise. They look sillier every day. Both comments posted by: Amanda Chapel – (This is a bit weird coming from a blog that is all about hiding identity. Where’s the courage in anonymity?)

I really don’t get why society needs a stupid press release. Oh, OK, I guess we need to pre-write stories for bloggers and journalists since they can’t write their own opinions or reports down, right? Sigh. – Robert Scoble

I don’t really need to read anything else to understand that Stowe is right on point – and you understand that my post was less about the idea of a social media press release than the role of PR more generally, I assume. And I don’t personally think this is an Edelman issue. It’s simply the expected tension between the authenticity of social media and the lack of it in much of business. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is as immutable as the law of gravity. – Rob Hyndman

It’s all good. But you gotta stop caring about press releases and start caring about people. – Jenean Sessum

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After spending a week writing “Social Media Killed the Press Release Star,” which painstakingly explains in great detail the need to improve the content and overall relevance of PR and press releases as well as putting a microscope on why the hell a social media (or let’s just call it “an overhauled”) release WILL exist, people still don’t get it.

Good friend, Stowe Boyd wrote an interesting post that I’m afraid is drawing the wrong kind of attention to an important movement…the need to improve PR and fix everything that’s wrong with the press release.

Ally, Robert Scoble unfortunately jumped on the bandwagon as well tearing down the SMPR without proper background on the subject and what we’re trying to do with it. But, he did accurately capture the essence of why I’m working hard to change the game with his comment, “I really don’t get why society needs a stupid press release.”

Fellow comrade, Jeremy Toeman at LiveDigitally asked if it’s time to kill the press release. His thoughtful observation was a little more on target, claiming “Reporters for more traditional outlets don’t necessarily deserve to have their worlds come crashing down just because us “hooligan bloggers” don’t have the patience to read through a full-page of carefully crafted spin information.”

Stowe asked, “Why not just use blogs? Why do we need these so-called “social” press releases?”

Scoble demanded, “Just give us a damn demo of your product and tell us about it.”

Indeed blogs and videos are a part of communicating with people to spark many-to-many conversations and it takes an entirely new level of PR to legitimately engage without being portrayed as fake or plastic. It takes experience, honesty, and an understanding of what they’re talking about and why it benefits readers – most PR professionals are not even close to approaching the market at this level, though they should be.

In addition to providing newsmakers with a better source for writing their stories, blogs are a natural way to also start conversations (eliminating the robotic process of companies talking “at” markets).

Video demos are also exactly where PR needs to go. It’s now easier than ever to capture and share video with bloggers, reporters, and people. Consider it the “new” video news release if you will.

But blogs and video demos aren’t ready to displace press releases – at least not yet – and at the end of the day, they are additional ways to open dialogue. It’s all about the steps that get us out of using painfully out-of-date tools that have no place in the world of socialized news and the sharing of information.

Hence, the need for a tool that provides information in a way that works across a spectrum of applications, while getting us one step closer to creating a closer relationship between producers and consumers, companies and customers, and most importantly between THE people that comprise all of the above segments.

The truth is that the wires are getting it all wrong as the IR Web Report points out. And, it’s polluting the intention behind this movement and stripping away credibility away from those of us who are diligently working on fixing something that has been broken for a long, long time.

Someone on the panel misused the term “audience” which in all honesty has no place in the world of social media. According to Stowe, “Please, please, please don’t talk about audiences when you are theoretically promoting social media. As Jay Rosen has suggested, we are the people formerly known as the audience.”

He’s absolutely right. In the discussion of press releases with PR people who are starting to learn about social media, “audiences” still speak volumes when discussing the distribution and dissemination of news to various readers – unfortunately, many people aren’t there yet and they’re not connecting audiences with people. But “People” is also too generic when looking through the scope of a sniper rifle. It begets further division in order for PR to connect at a deeper and more meaningful level…

So, let’s get this straight.

Audiences = people

People = various groups of individuals with common wants and needs

PR can only participate in the conversations when it can truly understand those unique and important wants and needs.

Stowe did accurately point out that most PR is complacent and old school, “The ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ complicity of leading PR bloggers around serious flaws in the conventional notions of PR is lamentable. For example, seeing the bloggers acknowledge on one hand that CEOs don’t actually provide those quotes that are stuck into press releases while on the other hand promoting transparency and openness in corporate communications was more than painful.”

But, let’s be clear! There isn’t any lamenting or mercy coming from this PR blogger. I’ve been pretty frank with the need to improve things at every level in PR, not just writing, and have gone to great lengths to help those who feel there’s an opportunity to improve.

Brian Oberkirch replied to Stowe’s post with, “I do think something like hRelease would be good, as it would permit people to clearly round up the ‘official’ company responses to things and make them a part of larger discussions. The ails that plague press releases have nothing to do with slapping a Technorati link on them.”

Look, it all starts with the need to tell a better story in a way that means something to someone. One release no longer serves everyone. With wire services and savvy web marketers placing them in search engines as well as news desks, it’s now more important than ever, to improve the foundation. Garbage generates garbage. Benefits and relevance specific to individual needs produces interest and ignites dialogue.

Journalists and bloggers aren’t the only reader of releases these days; they’re now actively consumed by customers as well. 51% of IT professionals reported that they learned about new technology by reading releases on Yahoo over tech publications. That’s a HUGE shift and should spark an urgent need to transform the release into something more substantive for the needs of specific customers.

Remember, it’s the substance, significance, and honesty that press releases lack. The rest is technology.

The idea behind the SMR aka hrelease aka Social Media Release aka New Media Release is a bit off in Stowe’s post and among other critical PR bloggers and practitioners. It’s not about capitalizing on trends in order to take an archaic, dying press release formula and present it to newsmakers in a fancy new package labeled as “social media” just because it has trackbacks, Technorati tags, RSS feeds, links, etc.

The IDEA is to strip out all of the bullshit and hype from traditional mechanical, and useless press releases and rebuild it as a focused compilation of relevant facts, links, media and a subscription feed to help readers write, tell, and share a story their way (without having to sort through a sea of crap to find out what’s real, what’s canned, and what’s important.) This is what a good release should be anyway, regardless of trends and titles. Basically it’s the press release redux. It takes out what’s wrong with press releases and modernizes them into a usable format for journalists, bloggers, and individuals.

If you don’t get it, then move on, really. Keep using press releases with fake quotes, jargon, hyperbole, and paragraphs full of ridiculous details that have no relevance to anyone. Pay $1,000 for a wire service that will only end up in search engines, not in the news. Forget that the web in-of-itself represents a new kind of “wire.” Ignore the shift that has already taken place. Bitch about it, correct us, harp on the irrelevant details, cast all the stones you want, but don’t do so without getting your facts straight.

At the end of the day, what matters is that some of us will continue take the arrows in the back in order to change what’s wrong with PR while demonstrating success. All this, so that others can get better at what they do, and in the process learn how to engage individuals in a way that transcends the one-AT-many (audiences) approach to many-to-many conversations (with people).

Update: Chris Heuer adds perspective and insight to the conversation.

Update: The other side of the story starts to come into play over at Touchstone. Are You Paying Attention?: Sunday morning snippets

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It’s not social media if the rest of the PR industry isn’t socializing…

I was a last-minute invite to the Bulldog Reporter Advanced PR Technology in Practice event in San Francisco on Friday to discuss Social Media and successful examples in today’s PR landscape.

I joined Sally Falkow, a fellow Social Media Club member, and Eric Schwartzman, on the “Brave New World of Social Media” panel.

Topics included:

- How Will Consumer Generated Media (CGM) Change PR Forever
- How PR Can Tap into New Social Media Networks

In the middle of my presentation, I realized that the panel might have been a little ahead of its time. While many in the audience blog, many didn’t. And, just because many PR pros blog, it doesn’t mean that they fully understand Social Media.

All of us in the Social Media realm are flying so fast and so high that we are definitely soaring over everyone’s heads – not just at the conference, but everywhere. In all honesty, this was a very insightful week, and the conference was just the icing on the cake for this realization.

This week, I wrote a series of “How to Write Social Media Press Releases” (Article #1 and #2) which culminated in the transmission of an actual Social Media Release which announced the articles and a “how to write SMPRs” template. This was my way of trying to help the masses tap into the world of SMPR. I worked with the execs over at MarketWire, and we were able to get it out over the wire. But after this week, I have reached the conclusion that these articles also need perspective and the explanation of social media and the elements that make them social – and also why.

Christie Goodman captured it best in her post, “Questions About Using the Social Media Release Format.” It was definitely an eye opener. In an impressive move, industry leaders simultaneously jumped in to help out. Kudos to Todd Defren for jumping in to also provide some helpful explanations, in his post “Basic Answers to Some Basic Questions re: Social Media News Releases.”

Mark Goodyear also had a great post that attempted to help explain things a little better in his comprehensive article, “Social Media for Dummies (and Parents).”

What I’ve learned this week…that we, as a community, need to help each other advance, while also helping everyone else “get it.”

I’ve proposed to Bulldog Reporter, and will also reach out to other organizations including PRSA,, LACP, PRWeek, among others, to work with the Social Media Club to host a series of day-long, maybe even two-day, conferences dedicated to explaining social media, one panel at a time. We can even have representatives from popular social networking and media sites on hand to answer questions, help set up accounts on-the-spot, and maybe even sponsor the events.

Here’s what I see…with everything relating back to how it benefits advertising, PR and marketing:

Session I – What is Social Media and Social Networking
Session II – What is Social Bookmarking
Session III – What is Social Photo and Video Sharing
Session IV – What are Social Content Websites and How Do They Work
Session V – What is a WIKI
Session VI – Explaining tags
Session VII – Distribution Channels, Wire Services and RSS
Session VIII – Blogs, Podcasts, Vlogs
Session IX – Social Media in Action
Session X – Blogger Relations
Session XI – Search and metrics

Of course there are a ton of other topics worth reviewing and considering. If this interests you, let’s talk. Maybe we can actually get this conference rolling.

For the complete slide deck from my presentation, jump to flickr.

For an interview that we did with Robert Scoble on Social Media, click here.

And by all means, run out and buy The Cluetrain Manifesto. It was published in 2000 and it predicted this shift and it explains, from a business perspective, the power and benefits of social media.

Also, many thanks to Greg Narain who helped me while we attended the Web2point2 conference in SF. Also, Giovanni Rodriguez, also helped me simply by publishing this brilliant post.

Please for this story at NewPR!

Tags: pr bulldogreporter bulldog+reporter publicrelations public+relations advancedpr advanced+pr pr2.0 pr+2.0 socialmedia social+media socialmediaclub greg+narain gregnarain hubbub giovanni+rodriguez prsa prweek lacp media social delicious facebook myspace cluetrain manifesto cluetrain+manifesto robert+scoble scobleizer scoble technorati todd+defren onlinepr smpr smr hrelease marketwire pressfeed sally+falkow ipressroom ericschwartzman cluetrain

“How to Write” a Social Media Press Release Template Now Available

In Honor of the 100th Birthday of the Press Release, New Worksheet Explains Social Media and the Process of Writing SMPRs

See example, history, and additional information here.

I. Headline:

Insert a short, compelling headline that features keywords, not buzzwords, to attract attention and legitimate interest by those who cover your space as well as potential customers.

II. Sub Headline:

The Subhead should further explain why someone should continue reading, providing a bit more clarity to the news

III. News Summary:

List a few compelling features of what, why, and who cares…do not use buzzwords or hyperbole (and try to keep the entire release below 400 words). You can use bullets or sentences or a combination of both.

IV. Quotes:

Not every press release needs a quote, especially if the quote doesn’t lend anything to the value of the information. If a quote is necessary, there are a couple of ways to implement into the SMPR.

Corporate Quote:
Please do not start with, “We are excited…” or “We are thrilled…” Keep the quote on target explaining why this is a significant milestone.

Expert or customer quote (if necessary):
Keep it related to the news and how the product/service benefits customers in real world applications.

V. Market Facts and Relevant Links:

Use del.icio.us or other social media-driven site to collect relevant facts about the company, product, competition, and state of the market and present it all through one link.

One Link Example:
http://del.icio.us/FutureWorksSMPR

Or you can provide the relevant links in its own category of the SMPR.

Multiple Links Example:
How To Write an SMPR – http://future-works.com/about/103106_htg.html

Todd Defren’s SMPR template – http://www.pr-squared.com/2006/05/the_social_media_press_release.html

Examples of social media press releases –
http://www.spiralfrog.com/socialmedia.aspx?control=spiralfrog-kochrecords20sep06.ascx

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/8/prweb428622.htm

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=162010

Evolution of social media press releases – http://www.briansolis.com/2006/10/evolution-of-social-media-press.html

SocialMediaClub – http://www.socialmediaclub.com

Social Media Releases – http://www.socialmediarelease.org

VI. Company Info:

Add a few sentences about the company, but leave out “XXX is a leader…” and other filler, posturing language. Don’t make it too long, you can always link to a corporate backgrounder or additional information.

VII. Image/s Link:

Include a link to images, and the best way to do so is to use a social media photo sharing services such as flickr or zooomr. The best part about social media is the ability to not only share your photos with bloggers and reporters, but with the right tags, the pictures can make their way onto the desktops of anyone searching for similar products/services for consumption and sharing.

For example, if you go the link below, you will see a set of images that I created for the purpose of sharing artwork with PR/marketing writers interested in the launch of the Social Media Club. I’ve also tagged each photo with several different tags, including “socialmediaclub” and “social media” so that others can find these images when they’re searching for photos related to the subjects.

Example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/briansolis/sets/72157594290369491/

VIII. RSS Link:

RSS is a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites and blogposts. Using RSS, webmasters can put their content into a standardized format, which can be viewed and organized through RSS-aware software or automatically conveyed as new content on another website. Now, this capability can be used for bloggers, reporters and customers to subscribe to future news directly.

Example:
http://www.future-works.com/cutenews/rss.php?category=2

or

http://www.briansolis.com/atom.xml

IX. Technorati Tags:

Technorati tracks the number of links and the perceived relevance of blogs, as well as the real-time nature of blogging.

What’s important for you to know about Technorati allows users to search by “tags” or keywords to help you identify who’s talking about your areas of interest. With Social Media Press Releases, readers will now also have access to your news – if tagged and published correctly.

For example, this “how to” will carry many keywords, tags, and links, with “PR” and “SMPR” among them. Behind the words, the following tag will be hyperlinked, http://technorati.com/tag/PR and http://technorati.com/tag/smpr and updated at Technorati. So for example, if someone searches “PR” as a tag or as a keyword, this article will hopefully appear in the list.

For more information on tags, please visit:
http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html

Example:

For the tag “futureworks”, it would look like this
FutureWorks – http://technorati.com/tag/futureworks

Remember to use best practices and publish only relevant and necessary tags – do not promote tag spam.

X. Bookmarks:

It’s important to give readers a way to save the link, using their favorite tools. The whole concept here is that you provide a means to enable social bookmarking which allows other people to find and share favorite things on the web.

It’s also a good idea to provide suggested tags (or tag beacons) to help track pickup and encourage sharing all under a common umbrella

Example:
Tag Beacons: socialmedia press+releases public+relations PR brian+solis todd+defren chris+heuer socialmediaclub SMR socialmediarelease

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XI. News Sharing, Digg, NewsVine

These sites tap into the potential reach of user powered content. Every article on digg and Netscape is submitted and voted on by their communities. By placing a link to these sites in the release, users can help share, discover, bookmark, and promote your news.

Example:

Digg

NewsVine

XII. Contact Info:

Add contact info here. Please include relevant info, email, cell, and any IM client you may use.

Also, insert link to vcard, see example below:
http://0301.netclime.net/1_5/M/6/2/Brian%20Solis.vcf

# # #

A Note About Distribution:

Several wire services reach traditional media, but integrate social media optimization (SMO) and search engine optimization (SEO) elements as well to appeal to bloggers (because the releases can provide the information in a format that they can appreciate).

These services include:

Marketwire (traditional, SEO – working on SMO) – Marketwire distributed the example release.

PRWeb (traditional, SMO, SEO)

PRNewswire (traditional, SEO, multimedia)

Businesswire (traditional) and the new, pseudo SMO BusinessWire (alliance with PRWeb)

Weblogwire (traditional – but only tech bloggers subscribe to this service)

PRXbuilder – (SMO specific, aligned with PRNewswire)

Tags: Briansolis brian+solis todd+defren chris+heuer socialmedia social+media futureworks futureworkspr smpr publicrelations pr public+relations press+release press+releases pressreleases pr2.0 pr20 pr+2.0 newpr seo smo media

Chris Heuer, Shel Holtz, and I recorded the latest edition of the New Media Release NMRCast for Shel’s award-winning For Immediate Release (FIR) podcast.

The New Media Release Podcast, episode 10 can be downloaded here, heard directly from the FIR page, or subscribed to via the NMRCast feed. Also, the Apple iTunes subscription is now available here or by searching for NMRCast at the Apple iTunes store under “podcasts.”

Content Summary:

Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, Shel Holtz. talk about Social Media Release requirements, SMR and traditional press releases, SMR metrics, and the latest on the Working Group progress.

In This Edition:

The new Social Media Release site, home of the social media release requirements

Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)

Download the file here (MP3, 29.1 MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

Please vote for this story at NewPR!

Tags: social+media, pr, onlinepr, newpr, pr2.0, socialmediaclub, chris+heuer, chrisheuer, briansolis, brian+solis, futureworks, publicrelations, public+relations, todd+defren, chris heuer, technorati, socialmedia, smpr, seo, smo, shelholtz, forimmediaterelease, fir, socialmediarelease

As a function of the Social Media Club, Chris Heuer and I were recently discussing Social Media Press Releases with a reporter at a PR trade magazine when we realized just how many people have yet to even learn about the fundamentals of social media. For example, as we were defining the building blocks of an SMR (social media release), Chris stopped and asked the interviewer if she knew what a “tag” was. That was a great question, it turns out, because the answer was no.

That’s when we realized, as we reach out to traditional PR channels, we are definitely flying over the heads of the masses – at least for now. Social Media is not only for the elite or early adopter; it’s for everyone that cares about doing a good job and engaging with target markets. With that, it’s important that we take a couple of steps back in order to help everyone understand the benefits of Social Media and most importantly, learn how to implement Social Media Optimized (SMO) campaigns to more effectively converse with customers and encourage them to share information amongst each other.

I reached out to my friend Lee Oden over at TopRank Online Marketing and he had this to say about the subject, “Due to the increasingly social and sharing nature of the web and the increasing importance of press releases as direct to consumer communication tools, it is important for marketers and public relations professionals to adjust their message format and delivery to correspond with the needs of today’s web savvy audience. Another motivator for using social media with news releases is that editorial resources at many publications are running thinner than ever and expected to do more with less.”

Exactly.

Technologies such as RSS, tags, SMO, social bookmarking, etc., are ineffective if you don’t have a grasp on what they are, how they work and how you can benefit from them.

The point of this discussion is two-fold, one to help grasp the premise of social media in order to then take it to the next level with an SMPR, and two, how to write more effectively.

It’s also important to understand that just because SMPRs provide a new format for delivering news, and, wire services provide a new push channel for companies to broadcast to bloggers, it doesn’t mean that bloggers/reporters will automatically pull your information.

As one reporter put it when learning about SMPRs, “You mean I can get the same poorly written press release in a whole new format, with fake, useless executive and customer quotes, so that I can deconstruct the content in order to figure out what the news really is?”

Great point…new technology and poor writing, still equal a bad press release.

I’ve heard many discussions lately surrounding PR 101 in regards to writing press releases. Everyone says, write well, write clearly, get to the point, reduce hyperbole, etc. But as with every educational institution, there are always different “schools” of thought on how to write well. So PR 101 doesn’t mean much if you didn’t learn the right things along the way. This really shouldn’t be open to various interpretations. Take the following advice at its core and don’t deviate from it.

Bloggers, like traditional reporters, are busy people. They will never ever get from a release what your product marketing and marketing department try to shove into it.

Another way to create a “better” press release is to think about it as taking the news release you would have written and then condensing it into a solid pitch letter. Get to the hook and the relevance ASAP. The process forces you to distill what really is important, why, and to whom it impacts. The end result should be a compelling, SMPR which bloggers — and honestly, traditional reporters, too — will appreciate.

For those who may need to catch up with the history…this was inspired by Tom Foremski’s original post, Die Press Release, Die Die Die, where he tells the PR industry that things cannot go along as they are…business as usual while mainstream media goes to hell in a hand basket. In turn, Todd Defren of Shift Communications introduced his Social Media Press Release Template and it was extremely well received.

To help PR professionals create Social Media Press Releases, I developed a “how to” guide, using a social media format, to help put things in perspective.

I’m often asked, will SMPRs replace traditional PRs? The answer is no. In fact, many new media PR practitioners write and distribute both, or a fusion of the two.

I contacted Todd Defen - since he’s the recognized expert on SMPR templates – and he offered this powerful thought, “It’s important to understand that the Social Media News Release is not intended as a replacement for the traditional news release. It’s an evolution. The SMNR’s core function is simply to allow creators of news to leverage the Web familiarity that is now ingrained in consumer audiences. With 50+ percent of consumers now creating and sharing content online (Pew Research), it just makes sense to democratize access to corporate news and multimedia assets to anyone (reporters, bloggers, laypeople) who might be interested, and, to create a forum for community and context that – to date – has been unavailable via old-world press releases.”

Amen.

Social Media Press Releases do not replace traditional releases, they complement them – much in the same way that Social Media activities and campaigns work best in concert with traditional PR initiatives. Together, Social Media + PR delivers a more effective communications program that actually “thinks about” and strives to “satisfy” the needs of your customers.

Click here to follow through to the Social Media “How To” guide.

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Tags: socialmedia socialmediaclub todddefren todd+defren chrisheuer chris+heuer briansolis brian+solis smpr pr publicrelations public+relations mediarelations bloggerrelations blogger+relations futureworks onlinepr newpr tomforemski tom+foremski pressreleases pressrelease press+release

Chris Heuer, Shel Holtz, and I recorded the latest edition of the New Media Release NMRCast for Shel’s award-winning For Immediate Release (FIR) podcast.

The New Media Release Podcast, episode 9 can be downloaded here, heard directly from the FIR page, or subscribed to via the NMRCast feed. Also, the Apple iTunes subscription is now available here or by searching for NMRCast at the Apple iTunes store under “podcasts.” If you subscribe to the FIR “everything” feed, however, this podcast will not be included.

Show notes for Oct. 25, 2006:
Welcome to NMRCast episode #9, a 25-minute podcast recorded live from the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, DC.

Content Summary:
Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, Shel Holtz. talk about about Edelman’s woes and the notion of disclosure; we catch up on Social Media Release working group progress; and we talk a bit more about tags.

Download the file here (MP3, 11.6 MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

The series was inspired by Tom Foremski’s original post, Die Press Release, Die Die Die, where he tells the PR industry that things cannot go along as they are . . . business as usual while mainstream media goes to hell in a hand basket. Foremski has even offered advice on how to create a better press release:

• Provide a brief description of what the announcement is, but leave the spin to the journalists. The journalists are going to go with their own spin on the story anyway, so why bother? Keep it straightforward rather than spintastic.
• Provide a brief description of what the announcement is, but leave the spin to the journalists. The journalists are going to go with their own spin on the story anyway, so why bother?
• Keep it straightforward rather than spintastic.
• Provide a page of quotes from the CEO or other C-level execs.
• Provide a page of quotes from customers, if applicable.
• Provide a page of quotes from analysts, if applicable.Provide financial information in many different formats.
• Provide many links inside the press release copy, and also provide a whole page of relevant links to other news stories or reference sources.
• And tag everything so that I can pre-assemble my stories.

In This Edition:
Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)

Please vote for this story at NewPR!

Tags: social+media, pr, onlinepr, newpr, pr2.0, socialmediaclub, chris+heuer, chrisheuer, briansolis, brian+solis, futureworks, publicrelations, public+relations, todd+defren, chris heuer, technorati, socialmedia, smpr, seo, smo, shelholtz, forimmediaterelease, fir, socialmediarelease

The previous article discussed, “Reaching the Blogosphere – Finding Bloggers in Your Market” using tools such as Technorati, Sphere, Google’s BlogSearch, Blogpulse, Alexa, CyberAlert, BuzzMetrics, Cymfony, and Umbria.

The new article explores how to identify the right bloggers for your market and how to best reach them and why they should even receive your news in the first place.

Please vote at NewPR!

Tags: pr2.0, pr+2.0, newpr, onlinepr, smpr, bloggerrelations, blogger+relations, blogs, bloggers, pr, publicrelations, public+relations, forwardmoving, forward, erincaldwell, briansolis, brian+solis, futureworks,

Just a reminder that on Monday, 10/23, the Social Media Club is hosting its latest event, “From Social Media to Corporate Media.” I believe it’s almost sold out, so register asap. If you enter the code ‘IGETIT’ you’ll receive $50 off the ticket price.

SM2CM will offer an interactive workshop for high tech communications professionals. It will be held in SAPs lavish conference center in Palo Alto from 1 to 6 p.m.

This is one of the rare opportunities to jump into social media or build-upon what you already know. Either way, social media is already a critical component of any marcom strategy…those who get it will far outpace those who don’t.

The event has an all-star line-up consisting of those helping to define the social media landscape.

Discussion Leaders

Robert Scoble

Lisa Stone

Giovanni Rodriguez

Chris Heuer

To register for the conference, tickets are $150 ($99 with the discount code), which includes a pass to the reception. To attend the reception only, passes are available for $25.

Tags: socialmedia, sm2cm, socialmediaclub, pr, publicrelations, onlinepr, smpr, robertscoble, briansolis, blogher, hubbub, podtech

Our news release regarding “From Social Media to Corporate Media” crossed PR Newswire this morning. The event is around the corner, so we hope to see you there!

Here’s the release:

PALO ALTO, CALIF. 10/17/06 – Social Media Club today announced its first workshop for high tech communications professionals. On October 23rd, From Social Media to Corporate Media (SM2CM), will offer an interactive workshop for high tech communications, PR, and advertising professionals to better understand Social Media. SM2CM will be held in SAPs conference center in Palo Alto from 1 to 6 p.m.

This workshop is a unique hybrid of a traditional conference and an unconference. During the course of the afternoon on, attendees will hear short talks from leading Social Media practitioners and engage in conversations with other Silicon Valley professionals, leaving the workshop with an understanding of how their company can benefit from producing Corporate Media using Social Media tools.

The event has an all-star line-up consisting of those helping to define the Social Media landscape, including:

Robert Scoble, PodTech.net
Lisa Stone, co-founder of blogher
Giovanni Rodriguez, co-founder of Hubbub
Chris Heuer, Social Media Club and BrainJams.org

After the workshop, participants are encouraged to stay for an evening cocktail reception hosted by SAP and Social Media Club. Registration costs $150, which includes the reception. For those unable to attend the workshop, tickets for the reception are available for only $25.

Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club, observed, “Social Media is already a critical component in some of the most effective communications strategies, and those who get it will far outpace those who don’t. If you are a Communications Professional in Silicon Valley, this is exactly the sort of opportunity you have been seeking to learn all about Social Media Strategy and Tactics.”

Links
SM2CM – http://www.socialmediaclub.com/sm2cm/
Purchase tickets – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/37277498
Social Media Club – http://www.socialmediaclub.com/
Why attend – http://www.socialmediaclub.com/sm2cm/?p=5
Robert Scoble – http://scobelizer.wordpress.com/
Lisa Stone – http://surfette.typepad.com/
Giovanni Rodriguez – http://hubbub.typepad.com/blog/
Chris Heuer – BrianJams and SocialMediaClub
Brian Solis – FutureWorks and PR 2.0

The event is sponsored by PR Newswire, Fleishman Hillard, and SAP.

If your company is interested in sponsoring the workshop and joining as one of the first members of Social Media Club’s Founders Circle, please contact SMC.

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Tags: socialmedia, sm2cm, socialmediaclub, pr, publicrelations, onlinepr, smpr, robertscoble, briansolis, blogher, hubbub, podtech