Archive for the ‘smnr’ Category

CNW Group Unveils The CNW Social Media Release

08.08.13

CNW Group logoDisclosure: CNW Group is a client of my employer, Thornley Fallis. However, I have had no involvement with their account to-date and I have not been asked to write about this topic. These opinions are mine alone. If you’ve read this site for a while, you’ll know that my interest in social media releases goes back to way before I joined Thornley Fallis and I’ve written about them many times.

CNW Group has made some big strides forward in its online services recently. In its latest move, the company has released a new social media tool, the CNW Social Media Release.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of the social media release, it’s a new format for news releases that takes advantage of the linking, multimedia and social media capabilities of the web to make news accessible to reporters, bloggers and the general public. Social media releases combine text, video, audio, images, RSS, tagging, social media sharing tools and/or comments into one document.

As Brian Solis said in today’s announcement, “Social media releases can complement your outbound communications strategy by bridging your story with the people you’re trying to reach.”

CNW produced an excellent video to explain their new service:

Seven things I like about CNW’s service:

  • CNW recognizes that the social media release is just one tool — “an add-on to your traditional news release.” I’ve written about this before – social media tactics should be a considered addition to your product mix rather than a replacement. Parker Mason, Web Content Specialist at CNW Group, emphasized that tonight when I spoke to him about CNW’s service, saying “[…] you can’t ignore the traditional side.”
  • While the “newswire” still isn’t equipped to handle multimedia content, CNW will distribute an advisory to traditional media over the wire to alert them to the social media release. This is included in their standard social media release service.
  • The service permits two-way conversations via comments that are featured on the release itself rather than on a separate page. As Parker says, “If one person has a comment (negative or positive) about your organizations announcement, chances are others will as well.” CNW’s service lets you respond to those comments directly on the release. Critically for some people, you can also turn comments off if you want to.
  • The comments come complete with their own RSS feed and a comment policy (which I recommend for anyone who allows comments on their site – mine is here).
  • The standard price for the social media release includes one video, one audio clip and three images. Some other services charge to include these features.
  • The template is provided in both English and French – great for Canadian companies.
  • All of the multimedia features are embeddable.

CNW is the latest company to offer the social media release as it moves slowly from a niche market towards the mainstream (others include Marketwire, PR Web, PR Newswire and Business Wire). The company updated a chart produced by SHIFT Communications’ Todd Defren comparing social media release services to reflect their new release:

In case that’s not enough for you, CNW has also updated an excellent white paper produced by Ted Skinner and Michael Pranikoff of PR Newswire on the benefits of engaging traditional media and social media for a Canadian audience. The paper alone is worth a post here — it’s a great primer on online PR — and it’s available for free through CNW’s Social Media Release site. If you’re new to this topic, download it and read it.

Check out CNW’s announcement or find out more about the service.

From first impressions, I think CNW has done a great job with their social media release.

What do you think?

Posted in: public relations, smnr, social media

Tags: , , , ,

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Could SEO Devalue News Releases Even More?

08.08.01

On a recent episode of Marketing Over Coffee, Christopher Penn and John Wall mentioned something that made me stop and think – the idea of people issuing news releases for the Google juice.

Too much jargon

Beware of jargon That idea worried me. To be more specific, the possibility of too much search engine optimization (SEO) in news releases further devaluing the tactic worried me.

The problem: I often hear that we should be inserting keywords into our news releases so that they rank highly in search engines for those keywords.

That sounds great in principle, right?

Right up front: I like the concept of the social media release. I’ve issued them, I worked on moving government news releases towards that format, and I’m a member of the Social Media Release Working Group (although that seems to have gone quiet recently… Bueller?).

SEO sheep

My problem with this, as with many SEO principles in general, is that people will take it to an extreme. They’ll follow the advice like sheep and will force inappropriate keywords (read: jargon) into their writing, and their products (and clients) will suffer.

Sure, these releases may rank highly for some words but so what? People arrive, see a poorly written release or page, fail to find what they want and leave. It’s a cheap tactic – one that’s no better than spamming people with emails. That’s why I heard a well-known marketing personality refer to a recent  SEO conference as “the underbelly of marketing.”

Just write well

Why not just make sure that your release is relevant, well-written and on-topic? A well written release will have plenty of the important words in there as a natural result. With a little extra attention you can optimize your release without compromising its quality.

I don’t want to read a news release front-loaded with every possible keyword under the sun. I want to read about the news.

The problem is bad enough for regular websites, but it’s doubly serious for news releases. News releases as a tactic already have a bad rap after years of abuse by poorly trained or lazy public relations practitioners. We don’t need yet another reason for people to hate them.

Too cynical?

Am I being overly cynical in thinking that people will jump on the extreme SEO bandwagon with news releases? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Look at the trends:

I don’t see the trend changing. As online news releases take off (even more likely given the recent SEC decision), I expect to see even more releases full of jargon. I expect those of us working at more enlightened firms to watch in dismay as the trend continues.

Are SEO-optimized releases a bad thing? No. Of course not. You want people to find your announcements. That’s half of the benefit of online news releases. I appreciate the benefits of genuine, well implemented SEO.

My fear is that, as in the past, poorly trained or careless people will take a good idea way too far. We’ll see even more releases loaded-up with popular keywords and we’ll all get dragged through the muck as a result.

The only solution I see (apart from the trend reversing, of course) is for agencies and corporations to train their PR people well so they don’t think this is a good idea. Will that happen? Again, history shows mixed results.

What do you think?

Posted in: news release, pr, smnr, writing

Tags: , , , ,

15Comments

First Impressions of PRX Builder Social Media Release Plugin

08.03.10

There’s lots of interesting stuff going on with social media releases right now. First, we have the news from last week that IABC is sponsoring development of standards for this new format. Business Wire and PR Web have already jumped on-board.

Today, on a different scale, we have a new tool to help practitioners implement social media releases.

Shannon Whitley, a member of the existing social media release working group, today released a WordPress plugin to embed PRX Builder into your WordPress blog.

I’ve only had a short time to play around with this tool, but my first impressions are good.

(Note: this post is a little more down-in-the-reeds than most of my posts. If you aren’t familiar with the social media release, you may want to read The “Social Media Press Release” Debuts, Elements of the Social Media Release, and scan the Social Media Training Wiki page on social media releases)

The Basics

If you haven’t encountered it before, PRX Builder is a tool for creating social media releases. With their interactive multimedia content, social media releases can be daunting. PRX Builder takes that complication away and makes creating social media releases as simple as filling in a form (the only thing it doesn’t do for you is write the content – I’m afraid you still have to do that).

For all the simplicity of creating the actual release, PRX Builder is still intimidating when it comes to the original set-up. The homepage is full of enough talk of APIs and PHP to dissuade non-technical users. There was some integration with MS Office and with WordPress already, but it was somewhat confusing.

Good news: The new plugin removes even that barrier.

Setting up the plugin is no different to installing any other plugin in WordPress.

Using The Plugin

Once you’ve installed the plugin and set up an account (no personal information required), the plugin walks you through nine steps to creating your release.

Isn’t nine a lot? No, because each of those steps is broken down to its basics, making them easy to complete if you’ve done your preparation work for the release. What’s more, you can save and come back to the release at any point.

The icing on the cake: PRX Builder plugin lets you modify

The nine steps:

  1. Start – set up the basic details for the release
  2. Contact – input the contact details for your spokespeople
  3. Text – enter the core content for your release
  4. Categories – optimize the release for search engines (the plugin links to some useful articles) and select categories for it
  5. Links – create links for the “Related Links” section of your release. Again very easy – you can event import them from del.icio.us
  6. Multimedia – link to multimedia content that will be integrated into the release. You can easily import from YouTube and Flickr, but you can use other media forms too
  7. Quotes – attributable quotes for the release
  8. Boilerplate – standard text for the end of the release
  9. Finish – select your release’s template, set a few last options and choose how to distribute your release (PRX Builder integrates with PR Newswire if you want to go that route)

With those nine steps done, you’re done! And you didn’t need to do anything except fill in text fields. Easy, huh?

Screenshots (click to zoom)

Start screen Text screen
Links screen Multimedia screen
Finish screen

A Few Tweaks

I did notice a couple of things that could be tweaked to make the tool more accessible:

  • Plain language - in general the plugin explains things well, but there are a couple of places that it does fall short, notably the ‘Finish’ screen. The text assumes that users know exactly what’s going on in terms of technical details, which may not be the case. The experience could be improved somewhat by explaining some of the terms, options and processes better.
  • Support - this plugin is way more complex to use than most of the others I’ve encountered. This is fine, as it’s a complex process and the tool does an admirable job of simplifying it to the point it’s at. Still, more comprehensive support documentation would be useful throughout.
  • Other wire services - this is as much a call to the wire services as to Shannon Whitley. At present, PR Newswire (along with PRX Builder’s own distribution service) is the only wire service that works with PRX Builder. It would be great to see services like Marketwire and CNW get on board with this.

As I said at the beginning, I haven’t had a chance to play around too much with this tool yet, but it has great potential and I plan to use it more fully at my next opportunity. I’ll report back in at that point.

Have you explored this plugin, PRX Builder? What did you think? What do you think of social media releases in general?

Posted in: 301, how to, smnr, tools

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IABC Takes The Lead With The Social Media Release

08.03.05

The social media release has taken another step towards the mainstream.

In a move that caused a bit of an online stir this morning, IABC announced that it is taking a lead in the push to develop standards around the social media release. The organization issued both a social media release and a traditional release announcing the news.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of the social media release, it’s a new format for news releases that takes advantage of the linking, multimedia and social media capabilities of the web to make news accessible to reporters, bloggers and the general public (crucially, it’s an additional news release format, not a replacement). Check out the Social Media Training Wiki for more information.

IABC Social Media ReleaseFor a summary of where the social media release stands and of today’s news, Shel Holtz wrote a very well thought-out post today. It’s worth checking out Todd Defren’s post for his thoughts too.

A Big Step Forward

When I first read today’s news, my initial reaction (posted on Twitter) was:

Hoping that this is a real step forward for the SMR and that IABC doesn’t swallow and forget it.

I really think this could be the former. This is a giant opportunity to really get some momentum going with the social media release. The evolution of this format has suffered because the working group members, in Defren’s words, “have day jobs.” With the weight of IABC behind the initiative, this is a chance to drive it forward.

Hopes For The Future

What do I hope will come out of IABC’s sponsorship?

1. A clear set of ’standards’ that are open enough to be worked into different companies’ own social media products

The release is a little ambiguous on this. One hand it says:

This specification will ultimately result in a technical architecture for the social media release that can be built into a wide range of content creation and search tools, including blogging platforms, content management systems, and proprietary tools offered by wire services and public relations agencies.

However, it also says:

Many organizations have recently introduced their own versions, employing a variety of standards. IABC seeks to consolidate these disparate efforts and promote a common format for online news distribution.

I think IABC’s (and the existing working group’s) intent is right here – the first paragraph above is pretty clear. I think that any ’standard’ format that is too prescriptive may lead to it being rejected by many companies.

2. Clear communication of what the social media release is and isn’t

I’m not just talking about whether you have comments or not on your release. As far as I’m concerned, a truly useful format would be flexible, just like a broader PR toolkit – you have your options for what you can include with the release, and you pick what’s appropriate.

I’m talking about where the release fits in a wider sense. I would speculate that 98% or more of executives have no idea what the social media release is about or why they should care. A larger working group backed by an industry-wide organization can help to come up with a useful ’social media release 101′ definition that people widely accept and use to approach their bosses.

Alongside that, I’d love to see the group come up with a coherent, acceptable rationale for why this new format is needed (and wanted). This leads me to my third wish…

3. Metrics and case studies

I’ve written before about my frustration over the lack of case studies of social media successes. This is especially true in the case of social media releases. There are a few out there – Geoff Livingston has one on his site, for example. However, more are needed if we’re to convince (a) our colleagues and (b) our superiors/clients that this format is a valuable addition.

Alongside this, I’d love to see some research on what the demand is from the client side. If the release has three targets – reporters, bloggers, public – as today’s release states, it would be great to survey those to get some solid data to back up anecdotal calls for the release.

Realistic Expectations

Much of this is outside the stated scope of the working group. I acknowledge that the group will need to focus and prioritize if they want to achieve anything. It’s also true that we need to know what we want people to buy into before we start convincing people that they should.

However, it could be a big advantage to have hard data to support the working group taking the release in whatever direction they deem appropriate. I’d love to see some indication that the group’s scope can expand over time to address some of these critical components.

On a last note, following a great online conversation with some of the working group members today, one of them invited me to join the group. I was thrilled to accept the invitation, and I look forward to doing my small part to help drive this forward.

I’m thrilled by today’s announcement, and by the potential of getting involved and bringing another perspective to the table. Congratulations to Chris Heuer, Tom Foremski, Todd Defren, Shannon Whitley, Brian Solis and Shel Holtz for getting the social media release to this point.

What about you? What do you think of today’s announcement? Do you think it’s a good thing, or is the corporate sponsorship a hindrance?

Posted in: smnr

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PR Web Takes The ‘Social’ Out Of Social Media

08.02.07

In the lead-up to PodCamp Toronto 2008, we’re issuing a news release with details of the event. Given that it’s a social media event, we decided to issue a social media news release.For those of you who may not be familiar with the basics of social media releases, we intended our release would differ from a traditional release in several ways:

  • Bullet point-style news that cut to the point rather than wordy, spin-filled paragraphs
  • Content divided into distinct sections: news, quotes, quick facts, learn more
  • Multiple links to useful information like the location, registration form, speakers, etc
  • Embedded social media tools – tagging, del.icio.us links
  • Limited embedded multimedia content – graphics and audio
  • Ability to share the release through social media tools like Digg, StumbleUpon or similar

(This is a gross over-simplification of the format, but for the purpose of this post it suffices)

With these requirements, PR Web was a logical choice. The company’s services seemed to match our needs perfectly:

PR Web Service Options

PR Web LogoWe plumped for the third option, “SEO Visibility” – the level above “Social Media Visibility.”

Registration for the site was quick, easy and painless. The problems began when I uploaded our release.

Within an hour, I received an email from PR Web, conversationally titled “Editorial Hold Advisory from PRWeb – Please Do Not Respond to this E-Mail”:

Our editors have determined that a few changes need to be made to your press release in order to effectively distribute it on PRWeb. Your press release has been placed on editorial hold status in order to allow you the opportunity to make the required reviews and edits to your press release.

Please review the following editorial explanation describing why your press release was put on editorial hold:

  • PRWeb no longer distributes news releases with an excessive amount of links. Please limit your link count to 1 per 100 words. This policy is in place to protect the value of the links that you include in your release and the value of links within the PRWeb network.

The reviewing editor has also made these additional comments:

  • Your release also lacks an introductory paragraph in the body text that clearly outlines your news. Please insert one. Thanks!

Yes, you read it right:

  • Our “social media news release” had too many links
  • We had to drop the to-the-point, bullet-focused approach and lead with a regular paragraph.

Not very encouraging. Too many links? I have more links in my email signature. PR Web clearly doesn’t understand the concept of the social media news release.

PodCamp Toronto 2008 is only two weeks away so time is tight. We’re debating what to do at the moment. I’ve already contacted the company. What do you think? Should we:

  1. Re-structure the release into a traditional format?
  2. Negotiate with PR Web?
  3. Ask for a refund and use another company?

Let me know what you think.

Update (Feb 7): Jiyan Wei, Online Product Manager for PR Web, contacted me this morning to discuss this situation.

Firstly, thanks to Jiyan for getting involved, both via the comments here and with me directly.

Jiyan explained PR Web’s rationale for the links rule – while Google loves links, Google News apparently doesn’t. If a news release has too many links in it, Google News may decide it’s spam. He also informed me they’re willing to be flexible on it with our release, and that they’re considering whether to make the ‘rule’ more of a ‘guideline’ for users in the future.

Their second original request, about an introductory paragraph, also relates to Google News. As I understand it, the service won’t pick up releases that don’t fit their idea of what a news release should be. Bullet points don’t fit that idea.

All in all, a productive discussion.

In the meantime, several other newswire services contacted me. I’m very impressed that they’re paying attention – thanks to them, too.

Update (Feb 8): We released our release on PRWeb this morning – we went with a more traditional format in the end.

In an interesting twist, CNW stepped up to the plate and offered to let us try their service. Our SMNR-style release is now live on their site.

This was a fascinating experience. It’s great to know that the news wire services are listening. PRWeb handled the issue very well – they joined the conversation early, listened to my concerns and were flexible. Marketwire, webitpr and CNW all noticed and contacted me too. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take advantage of all their offers without spamming media outlets with multiple copies of the same release.

This is a great example of why companies should get involved in conversations like these. I think it worked out well for everyone.

Posted in: news release, smnr

Tags: ,

25Comments

Social Media News Release: An EXTRA Tool, Not A Replacement

08.02.02

It’s been over 18 months since Todd Defren released his template for a new news release format and over that time the a healthy debate has raged over the idea.

Recently, Maggie Fox’s crew over at the Social Media Group released Digital Snippets, their own take on the format, re-invigorating the debate.

I love that the social media news release seems to be gaining traction. I love the flexibility, the multimedia content, and the way it forces writers to cut out the crap. I evangelize the format at every opportunity.

Still, a few months ago I wrote about how we needed to find a middle ground with the social media news release. In my eyes, the new format isn’t a panacea – it should add to our toolkit rather than replacing the 100 year-old press release.

My concerns in that post:

First and foremost, communicators need to think about their audience. However, we also need to think about how we’re going to get the message to that audience, and that means segmenting the media.

There’s a big difference between the larger media outlets and smaller, community-based media.

The social media release is a great idea for the larger outlets where the reporter is always going to break down the story and look at it from all angles. However, smaller community papers simply don’t have the resources needed to do this. We frequently see releases published almost verbatim by these outlets.

If we were to stop issuing traditional releases for community-based stories, I’m willing to bet we’d see a drop in coverage in local media.

My thinking has evolved a little since then, but my fundamental concerns remain.

It seemed to me that a lot of people agreed.

However, I’ve heard rumbles about organizations using it to replace the old format, and started to wonder if maybe I was behind the times. Maybe I missed an evolution in thinking since then.

So, as I have a habit of doing nowadays, I asked my friends on Twitter:

“Social media news release: a replacement to the traditional release or an addition to the toolkit? I say the latter. You?”

The responses reassured me, and I was particularly happy to see Todd chime in:

Addition, Not Replacement

The social media news release isn’t yet a replacement for the traditional format. It’s a valuable addition to our toolkit which we can use as appropriate.

That said, a couple of sub-themes emerged here:

  • We need to write better news releases.
    • Todd and Brian Solis say it well in the post Todd linked to above: “A crappy press release is still a crappy press release regardless of multimedia or social bling.”
  • Social media is growing but “traditional media” is still the mainstream. Sometimes the old format is more appropriate to communicate with them.

Learn More

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Posted in: news release, smnr, social media

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Using Social Media To Create Social Media Training

07.11.12

Communications training courses on traditional strategies and tactics just don’t cut it any more. The ever-increasing rate of change on the Internet, and its emerging impact on media consumption, means organizations need to seriously consider offering social media training to their employees.

This environment, along with a few well-documented faux-pas by PR practitioners, has had me thinking about this topic a lot recently.

I got to thinking, "What should a social media 101 course offer?" I work with a lot of people who have no knowledge of social media. If I had one day to teach people a few key basics, what would they be?

Then I thought, "Why not use social media to create that program?" So, I’m trying something different here.

I’ve established the Social Media Training Wiki at http://socialtraining.wetpaint.com and given it some basic structure.

I’m throwing out a challenge to the online PR community: As a community, let’s develop a best-practice social media 101 training program.

Let’s create a one-day, scratch-the-surface program that will help employees who are new to this social media thing to find their feet.

Let’s put it out there for the good of the community.

Let’s encourage people to adapt it and adopt it.

Let’s see if we can raise the bar for social media knowledge in our organizations.

Check out the wiki. Participate. Input. Discuss.

A wider understanding of social media benefits us all.

Posted in: blogger relations, blogging, news release, pitching, pr, public relations, smnr, social media, social networks, training, web 2.0

2Comments

Support Builds For Social Media News Releases

07.10.03

CBC’s Tod Maffin wrote today about his frustration with the traditional news release:

There’s the lead paragraph, followed by some bullshit quote from a senior executive (”I’m pleased to announce the blah blah blah…”) and then usually a string of meaningless brand names… er BRAND NAMES… and no real sense of the news value or the real story.

He also proposes a ‘new format‘ for news releases:

It contains the bare essentials, in bullet-point form, to catch the eye of journalists. It still includes the obligatory crappyquote from the executive, but it’s written in a simple, non-hyped style.

Todd’s proposal adds to the voices calling for social media news releases. I’ve had a lot of conversations about these recently, both at work and here on my blog, and I increasingly find myself evangelizing this tactic.

(Pointer: I discovered the NMRCast a couple of weeks ago through Brian Solis‘ blog. What an amazing resource! If you want to find out more about the social media news release, check it out)

Todd Defren (it’s all Tod(d)s all the time today) drew my attention to a great social media release issued today on MarketWire. I love this release for a couple of reasons:

  1. It provides a bunch of easily-used links and resources for journalists
  2. It’s written in clear, plain language

The first point is critical (the second is a topic for another time).

One of the main reasons I like the social format is that it makes life easy for journalists. They don’t have to spend time digging through the release for the news – it’s right there.

I’ve already blogged that I don’t think the social media news release is a ‘one size fits all’ solution. There’s a definite place for a well-written traditional release, especially if you’re looking for coverage in local or multicultural media. However, for the mainstream media, this format has (in my mind) clear benefits.

I recently talked to a former Toronto Star journalist about this new format. He loved the idea from two perspectives:

  • For the reporter, the format makes information and resources easy to find
  • For the assignment editor, the format makes additional content – images, video, audio – clear, reducing their uncertainty around the story

I can see the draw-backs to this – extra work, increased lead time, higher costs. However, with the potential benefits, why not try it out?

I try to play a small role by promoting the concept of the social media news release in my organization. I’ve received a good reception so far; time will tell where that will lead.

What are you doing?

Posted in: news release, smnr, social media

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