|
The press release is evolving.
The age-old public relations tool, once crafted as fodder for print journalists, is now being applied more to the online world. A recent study by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) found that most releases now target consumers and customers directly, rather than through the filter of the news media.
But what about content that is geared to help reporters prepare their stories? Since so much reporting—both by traditional, mainstream journalists and new-media correspondents like bloggers—now occurs online, the print-focused press release just doesn’t cut it.
Enter the social media release (SMR).
IABC is supporting a working group that is guiding the SMR’s development. The working group includes representatives of all major U.S. and Canadian wire services, along with PR agency leaders, technical specialists, journalists and bloggers.
The overarching goal of the SMR is to get the organization’s story in front of as many of the right people as possible. If that sounds like the goal of the traditional press release, it should. The difference is in who produces the content. Traditional releases were produced for print, newspapers and other mainstream media that were pushed to audiences; at one time, the filter of the media was the only way an organization could tell its story short of buying advertising.
SMRs are designed for all those bloggers and web site owners producing content that targets the interests of their readers. For bloggers already inclined to cover your company’s news, the SMR can be a compelling resource, resulting in your video, customer quote or PowerPoint presentation appearing in their posts, which are already highly credible to their community of readers. (It’s also worth noting that the SMR can be an equally valuable resource to company executives and employees who are blogging their own perspectives about the announcement.) For now, SMRs reside on web sites. A link in the traditional news release, along with links in other logical places, directs bloggers and reporters to the resource.
Origins of the SMR
The social media release originated from a blog post back in late February 2006 by blogger and former Financial Times correspondent Tom Foremski titled, “Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!” Foremski complained that traditional press releases were narrative exercises in spin that took time to deconstruct and reassemble into a story of interest to his readers.
Foremski made several recommendations, which SHIFT Communications principal Todd Defren took to heart, so much so that, in late May 2006, he released a template of what he dubbed the “social media press release.” That was followed by an update to the template—version 1.5—in mid-April 2008.
There was more to Defren’s effort than the parsing of information Foremski sought. Recognizing that bloggers and journalists writing for web sites have far fewer restrictions than print publishers—they can incorporate links into their articles and embed multimedia elements—Defren created a template incorporating a variety of elements that could easily be lifted from the release and added to a post or article.
Among those inspired by Defren’s template was Chris Heuer, a founder of the Social Media Club, who created a mailing list to discuss the SMR, set up a site to house information about it and began working to make it a standard. Ultimately, managing the SMR process became too much of a chore to continue as a purely volunteer activity. In March 2008, IABC announced (with a social media release, of course) that it was assuming sponsorship of the effort.
SMR basics
In order to appeal to those bloggers and reporters who are communicating with people you want to reach, the SMR needs to achieve several objectives:
1. Parse information into easily identifiable sections, including news facts (without spin), genuine quotes (not fabricated), boilerplate information and product specifications, to name a few. This lets reporters and bloggers cherry-pick the pieces they want to use and even copy-and-paste some elements into their stories.
2. Provide easily embedded assets, including images (from photos to packaged art), audio and video. Ideally, no downloading should be required. Just copy the embed code and add it to your article or post.
3. Make it easy to research the story by including links to related materials. These can include tags that bloggers have added to posts they’ve written on the subject and archives of links to related coverage.
4. Through a uniform infrastructure, make it easier for reporters, bloggers and readers to reuse pieces of the SMR in various unique ways.
The most misunderstood dimension of the SMR is the tagging structure, even though the concept goes back to Tom Foremski’s original post in which he asked producers of press releases to “tag everything so that I can pre-assemble my stories.”
The hRelease specification—released at IABC’s 2009 World Conference in June—includes a variety of tags that are assigned to information within the SMR, such as dates, places, news, multimedia and quotes. Consistent with the XML standard, these tags aren’t anything that you (or I) have to learn. Instead, they’re cooked into the interfaces used to generate an SMR. For instance, if you fill in a field for a news fact, the system you’re using will automatically generate the news tag in the code it outputs.
With all SMRs incorporating a consistent set of tags, it becomes easy to find and use this content in a wide variety of interesting ways. A publisher could, for example, create a visual time line of events based on date tags. Someone reading the release (or an article based on it) could schedule an activity listed in the release on their own calendar. Reporters could also find common information from a number of different releases.
Does it work?
Two recent studies seem to indicate the SMR is delivering on its promise. One study, from global PR agency Text 100, revealed that bloggers are inclined to take advantage of social media releases. The other, from U.K.-based press release service RealWire, shows greater pick-up by both traditional editorial outlets and blogs from social media releases than traditional ones.
There hasn’t been enough research yet to really substantiate the value of the SMR, nor have SMRs been around long enough for any research to be truly meaningful. But if you consider the need online scribes have for content and digital assets to enhance their reports, it becomes clear that the SMR’s function is a valuable one. The concept will no doubt continue to evolve with every little enhancement or tweak from every organization and agency trying their hand at the SMR. Eventually, the SMR could be as standard as a traditional release.
Shel Holtz, ABC, IABC Fellow, is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. He has more than 30 years of organizational communication experience, including the application of online technology to achieve strategic business results. He is a regular speaker on topics surrounding online organizational communication and the author of six communication-focused books, including his most recent, Tactical Transparency, published under Jossey-Bass’s IABC imprint. |
