Duncan Riley, whom I greatly admire and respect, offered a very enlightening response to a recent question posed concerning the distribution of Social Media Releases on Gooruze, a new social network dedicated to helping marketing, advertising, search, and PR professionals learn, share and grow together. Disclosure, Duncan and I are among the eight founding “gooruze.” His points are very important and worth sharing as they will make us “think” about how, when, where, and why to use social media releases,…
The Future of the Social Media Release is in Your Hands
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…
The Future of the Press Release – Part II, It’s about people
In the first post of this series, I asked for your help in laying the press release to rest – as it exists today. Unfortunately, today’s release has evolved into a collection of posturing, hyperbole, and canned quotes that have very little impact on the ability to generate significant news coverage. One of the most important takeaways of the last article was that a significant percentage of customers are reading press releases directly through search engines as well as Google…
The Future of the Press Release – Part I, Acceptance
The press release is on life support and I’m rallying a team of supporters to euthanize it – not to put it out of its misery, but to keep it from contributing to the misery of reporters, analysts, bloggers and the people who read them. The process of writing and distributing a press release can be excruciatingly painful and is almost laughable when you read the final product. Company X Launches World’s First, Industry-leading, Innovative Thingamabob that will Change Our…
Conversational Marketing Versus Market Conversations
The much discussed and highly revered Cluetrain Manifesto is proving to be more relevant than ever. As Social Media becomes more pervasive in marketing, it’s imperative that we become gatekeepers to prevent opportunistic marketers from bankrupting the conversation economy. As someone noted, aren’t all marketers opportunistic? Yes and no. It’s the difference between leveraging an opportunity because you can bring value to the discussion vs. selling an opportunity simply because you can capitalize on it. Jakob Nielsen added a unique…
Marketwire Acquires PRNN – But is This Really Social Media?
Social Media is the new gold rush and traditional PR services are scrambling to stay relevant as new tools, channels, and experts are forcing a long overdue renaissance. Nowadays, the word “social” is getting tossed around by anyone and everyone as if it was a golden adjective with huge dividends for instantly inflating personal expertise and credibility – regardless of whether or not they truly understand and practice social media. And unfortunately, it’s bound to only get more polluted as…
New Media Release Cast 16 – Evolution of the Press Release
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…
New Media Release Cast #15 Now Online – Evolution of the Press Release
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…
Social Media Releases – Everything You Ever Wanted to (or Should) Know
The social media news release is rallying support. And more importantly, examples and discussions of usage are percolating throughout the blogsphere among PR practitioners and bloggers alike. It’s no longer a matter of if, nor when, but now a matter of practice and evolution in order to determine success and failure. As a recap, the Social Media Release has been pushed by many influencers, including Tom Foremski’s public outcry for the death of crappy press releases; Todd Defren who offered…
Attention Traditional PR, Step Away from the Social Media Release – aka hRelease
I came across a post that really smacked me in the face with a stinging sense of reality. You can’t help everyone grow; only those that realize they can. We just have to do a better job of reaching everyone else to help lay a more informative foundation for people to cause change. Regarding the Social Media Release, it’s not social media. The Social Media Press Release still adheres to the antiquated notion that public relations means appealing to the…
