Movin’ on

Frankly, I thought the “press-release-is-dead” meme was over a year or so ago after the delightful Amy Gahran and I engaged in some friendly disagreement about it. What goes around, I suppose, comes around.

Stowe Boyd and I will have to agree to disagree. And he’s welcome to think I don’t “get it” (a phrase, by the way, I despise as much as Stowe dislikes “audience” and “content.”) I continue to think Stowe rocks. If you’re not reading his blog, you should be. But in this case, Stowe has incomplete information and knowledge of his subject, leading him to pass judgement on a tool he doesn’t understand but thinks he does. As I said before, everybody thinks they can do PR.

For the record, anybody (of course) is welcome to comment on anything they like (unless they live someplace like China) and Stowe is the last person I’d want to shut up, as he suggests. To support his authority in commenting on the practice of public relations, Stowe notes he’s been invited to speak on the impact of social media on PR. I’ve been invited to speak on the impact of social media on healthcare, but it doesn’t make me a healthcare expert.

But enough of this. I’m tempted to tick off Stowe’s latest arguments point by point, but there’s no, um, point. (I did tackle a few in comments to Stowe’s post, if you’re interested.) Despite those who don’t like it, the work of the social media press release working group will continue, social media releases will be issued, and the ultimate proof of the tool’s effectiveness will be in the results, not premature opinons. Now, on to other matters.

1. Shel,

   I love your blog but I’m voting thumbs down on those snap images. Seeing a snapshot of the web page really tells me nothing about the content that’s on the other side.

   On another note. Where has the social media press release actually been implemented?

   Rob

   Posted by Rob Safuto  on  01/21  at  07:15 PM

2. Hey, Rob. Thanks for the opinion on the Snap images. I just added them today to see what people thought. If others agree, they’re incredibly easy to remove (just a matter of deleting the code I added to the template). I’m undecided, myself.

   Several social media releases have been distributed or published online. One place to find them is the hrelease wiki, at http://www.socialtext.net/hRelease/index.cgi. Not too many have been posted there so far, but I suspect more will come.

   Other than that, take a look at those done by SHIFT communications, as one example:

   http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/shift/24521/
   http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/novell/25197/

   These have no commenting enabled. On the other hand, a sample of Edelman’s offering (through its StoryCrafter interface, available only to clients) look like this, an example based on the announcement of StoryCrafter’s availability (and I’ll bet you $100 Rick Murray and Robert French really said the words in the “quotes” section):

   http://edelman.com/news/storycrafter/EdelmanNews.aspx?hid=171

   Take note of the fact that Edelman employees are engaged in the comment section and that the release is linked from several blogs. It is a news release that serves its purposes beyond sociability, yet has become part of the conversation on multiple levels.

   Here’s another from SAP (again, missing comments, which I think a SMNR needs):

   http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=194856

   Belkin here (also no comments): http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/10_09_06SportCommand.html

   Neville and I produced a couple for a client, although we weren’t able to include comments, either (again, they’re important); these were pretty early—last August and September:

   http://www.spiralfrog.com/socialmedia.aspx?control=spiralfrog-universal29aug06.ascx

   http://www.spiralfrog.com/socialmedia.aspx?control=spiralfrog-emimusicpublishing-6sept06sm.ascx

   Chris Heuer can probably point you to others.

   Posted by Shel Holtz  on  01/21  at  08:06 PM