DEATH OF THE TRADITIONAL MEDIA RELEASE?
Social media is not a new concept. It’s been emerging with ferocity over the last few years. According to Wikipedia, social media is a term that describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video, with popular social mediums including blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.
The impact of the rise of social media has been the topic of much PR discussion – what is the corporate impact? How do we minimise risk and maximise the advantages that can be drawn from this new trend? Companies worldwide have begun incorporating social media into their promotional campaigns. For example, Volvo, in promotion of the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, started a campaign in which people worldwide could hunt for "Pirates Treasure" which was a pirate-themed Volvo SUV. To promote the contest they allowed people to share tips, clues and even poems through "The Hunt" blog hosted by MSN Spaces. Volvo was able to get over 30,000 people involved in "The Hunt" leading up to and during the release of the film.
Now, as social media grows ever stronger, the role of some traditional PR tools are being questioned and even slaughtered. First to the chopping board is the media release/press release, with the Social Media Press Release proposed as its ideal replacement.
The concept of the Social Media Press Release was first spawned by ex-Financial Times journalist Tom Forenski in a blog early last year. In this blog, he proclaimed:
“Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin, they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes. Often they will contain quotes from C-level executives praising their customer focus. They often contain praise from analysts, (who are almost always paid or have a customer relationship.) And so on...”
He then suggested:
“Deconstruct the press release into special sections and tag the information so that as a publisher, I can pre-assemble some of the news story and make the information useful.
- 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.”
From here the concept has crept into PR industry discussions and is already materialising at the agency level. A US PR agency created a Social Media Press Release template, and Eldeman, the world’s largest PR firm, announced that it has developed StoryCrafter - a Web-based software tool for helping companies produce and deploy social media news releases.
While the change is expected to be a gradual one, the movement is applauded. If audience involvement is changing, then so to are a journalist’s needs, and so must the service that PR agencies provide.
Useful Definitions:
Digg.com – Originally a technology site Digg had now branched out into covering a wider range of topics, including entertainment and business. Click the Digg button at the foot of an article to add the story and other community users will then Digg (rate) your selection. The more popular the story the higher up the page it will become. The more Diggs your story gets the higher it will appear in the ranking.
del.icio.us – One of the most popular social bookmark websites. Dei.icio.us is a way of storing all your favourite web-pages and then sharing then with the other users of the del.icio.us service. Once you have added your page you can also add your own keywords, or tags, making the content of the page easier to find for all the other users.
