Social Media Releases
StoryCrafter, Edelman’s version of a social media press release service, has attracted a fair amount of attention. There’s no lack of good comments already out there, but the subject’s interesting to me, so I thought I’d pitch in too.
First a round-up:
Social media press releases are designed to give journalists and bloggers the elements of a release in a mix-and-match format. You get the key facts, a selection of quotes and pictures and contact details. The release itself acts a little like a blog post, with its own feed, comments and trackbacks.
It’s generally felt to be a good thing because (a) EVERYBODY hates traditional press releases; (b) email, post and fax are all broken and (c) their format is inappropriate to the online, interactive news environment that has developed over the last couple of years.
Steve Rubel – announces StoryCrafter and the idea behind it. He says: “Most importantly, every press release gets feeds, tags, del.icio.us/digg buttons, trackbacks and comments”.
Edelman – publishes its press release about the product using the StoryCrafter service itself as the vehicle.
PRSquared – notes that the product is for Edelman clients only, which he finds disappointing. Also that StoryCrafter isn’t a million miles away from the (currently free) PRX Builder or indeed the Shift Communications template. [Comments I've seen elsewhere have included the words 'blatant rip-off'.]
The Bivings Report – hopes this won’t lead to floods of haphazard releases and wonders why companies don’t just stick their press releases on their own site.
Tony Hung – hopes companies don’t think this is some sort of magic bullet for getting attention from the social web and is particularly concerned about the ‘digg’ button which rather encourages companies to spam digg.
From my own perspective, there are pros and cons. First of all, when I get a traditional press release, it’s the same as reading any other news item. It needs to grab my attention. I get about 20 a day. Most of them get marked ‘read’ and forgotten, even though I didn’t read beyond the first paragraph. I’ll pay attention if either (a) the item fits in with something I’m already writing about or planning to write about, or (b) it tells a compelling story in itself which I want to pass on. The ones I like, I put a flag on and come back and try to find it when it’s time to put the news together. It’s not a great system from anyone’s perspective: there are constant interruptions, messages go unread, get lost, cause me hassle.
So there are some great positives here in this approach. For example, one difficulty with the traditional press release is that the facts are normally wrapped up in a bunch of hyperbole about some ‘unique, world-leading and innovative product/service’. I have to strip out all that guff to work with the story (I’ll also attempt to get some more information – I’m not that lazy). This format works the other way round. They give me the facts, and I put the meat on it.
I also like it that the template shows companies what ingredients journalists are going to ask for – you need the key facts and links to more; you need a selection of pictures, ideally at different resolutions; you want quotations, and not just from the CEO saying how wonderful it all is.
Lastly, I’m really into the idea of subscribing to RSS feeds instead of having releases pushed at me. If I could reliably set up a Google Alert Feed (or similar) on the keywords ‘education IT release UK’ I could consign most email releases to the spam bin. Plus, they’d be a lot less likely to be lost in my inbox somewhere come press week.
However, the wrapping around the story is not always a bad thing. When it’s done right and the release’s writers have thought through why you and your readers would be interested, it helps journalists to see the news angle. ‘X releases new widget’ is not news. Click – delete. ‘New Widget Could Reverse Global Warming’ might be. Click – flag. Since I get around thirty times as many releases as I can actually write about, it’s obviously the ones that stand out as best fitting my news agenda that get through.
That shows a potential problem with the StoryCrafter format. If you send me a bag of flour, butter, onions and beef chunks, and tell me that I can make whatever I like with it, then I might get stuck if I haven’t got a recipe, and end up chucking the whole lot in the bin. If I’m busy, I might have preferred it if you sent me a steak pie ready for me to stick in the oven. Sure, there’s lots of times when I’ll make my own, but who knows, you might have a better recipe than me, or a great idea for a different dish I could make with those things.
Two last thoughts.. sorry this is a bit random…
Journalists and publications are competitive. I don’t want the same ingredients as my competitor. I want some special herbs and spices that will make my story better than theirs. In other words, just as the traditional press release doesn’t give journalists everything they need, nor does the social media version.
Very lastly. The submit to del.icio.us and digg buttons in the Edelman service don’t seem like a good idea. If you’re saying these new-style releases are some of the ingredients of a news story, why are you also treating it as though it’s a finished piece? Press releases aren’t the same as news pieces, though they may share many elements. And as Tony says in his comments (linked above), it smells strongly of spam when such releases are put onto these systems. But it also points to another issue. There’s no obvious way to find the releases in the first place. The problem with it being a proprietary solution rather than a centralised co-operative venture called prdel.icio.us or something is that if you deal with a 100 different agencies, each with their own service and a different feed, finding these releases is going to be as random and inefficient as the bad old days.
Possibly related:
I agree with a lot of you assessment. Regarding your idea for a prdel.icio.us; there are already plenty: PRNewswire, PRWeb, etc.
Though Digg has the propensity to be abused, as it already has been, Digging a story doesn’t mean you are digging it as a finished product. I see digg and delicious acting in many different ways for many different people. They can both bookmark and they can both increase visibility and shelf-life of a story.
I tell my clients to include links to digg and delicious when pitching journalists/bloggers because, if they can’t, or don’t want to, write about the story but still think it’s interesting or may write about it later, digging or bookmarking the release will allow them to keep track of it, see how many people find it interesting, or at least do a small part to make the story penetrate the overflow.
David – digg is *not* a bookmarking service, it’s a news recommendation system. The digg community will act against clients that submit press releases, potentially banning them.
PRNewswire and Web have the potential to be a repository for these releases, and would certainly be better than the 100 different feeds issue I highlighted. Except I really think that it should be a free service for anyone registered as a company.
James – I was especially fond of the steak pie analogy ;) I am concerned that these sorts of DIY marketing approaches move to undermine PR companies, 90% of which do a fine job at helping me find material that’s useful to readers.
I know Digg isn’t a bookmarking site as Delicious is … however, I tend to, and prefer, digging stories to bookmark them rather than use delicious. I like the dynamic digg has but am increasingly upset by the speed of the site lately. I find it much more interesting seeing the amount of diggs a story gets (especially one I submit). I think the profile page and history is much more navigable and better looking than delicious. Thanks for responding! Look forward to more …
David, my anxiety is that encouraging clients to submit releases to digg will have a negative effect. The digg people are already very anxious about it being used as a way to spam their community and I really believe that commercial sources will be outlawed sooner or later.
A very comprehensive analysis, and I have to say I share a lot of the concerns – particularly over the (ab?)use of digg / del.icio.us buttons.
And aren’t releases supposed to make journalists’ lives easier, not harder? (to your steak pie point).
Looks like Edelman have, to be fair, done a not bad job of creating a product they think clients will want. But I’m not sure they’re right.