Social media release from Cisco

First HP did it, now Cisco Systems has issued a Social Media Press Release. Not only is the release on the News@Cisco site, but it’s been distributed as a MarketWire press release (shown here picked up by CNN/Money—interestingly without the videos, but links to them instead).

This might just be an honest-to-goodness trend as large tech companies begin adopting the format!

Just to display the value of social media releases, I’ve simply copied the embed code of the YouTube video directly from the release in order to present it here in this post.

What could be simpler—both to do and to understand? That is, people who report and blog about such issues can easily move bits and bobs from the social media release to their own blogs and publications. Why people are opposed to this simply baffles me.

The Cisco release hits most of the right notes with news highlights and facts, tags and keywords, links, quotes, multimedia, contact information, an RSS feed for all company news, a trackback URL and a link to the traditional version of the release. (Evidently, it wasn’t too time-consuming to produce both.) A purpose-build del.icio.us page would have been a nice addition, but overall, a very nice bit of work from Cisco Systems.

I’ll be back with a update after tracking uptake of the release. Hat tip to Luke Armour.

1. Thanks for the nod, and looking forward to working with all to perpetuate this space and structure.

   Wilson Craig
   Cisco PR

   Posted by wilson craig  on  09/06  at  05:29 PM

2. I’m glad the release was well received. I hope that you also take the time to enter the contest!

   ~ LaSandra

   Posted by LaSandra Brill  on  09/07  at  10:08 PM

3. Shel,

   Normally I’d be giving a huge hat-tip here, but the fact that you can’t leave comments directly on the “SMR” (even in a collapsed format), sorta makes this whole thing ring hollow to me. If you look at the original SMR template or the Edelman “Storycrafter” model, there’s a critical difference between the two: Cisco chose to follow the sanitized, behind-the-glass bulliten-board model, and Edelman, at least in their initial iteration, went for the bathroom-wall, come-what-may comment model. I expected more from Cisco; this is, in no way, a pioneering move.

   Posted by Adam Metz  on  09/08  at  08:20 AM

4. Hi, Adam.

   I see your point, but I’m less troubled by this than you. The original intent of the social media release was not to become a peudo-blog, but to make it easy for bloggers and journalists to cherry-pick the elements they want to report. In other words, there’s nothing particularly social about a social media release—rather, it’s designed for use by people who do engage in the social media space.

   In fact, if you look at the original elements of the release as listed by Chris Heuer, commenting isn’t one of them. (The spec for the SMNR working group is here: http://www.socialmediarelease.org/2006/11/02/elements-of-the-social-media-release/.)

   The SHIFT communications template—the original social media release template—also has no provision for comments. It’s here: http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smprtemplate.pdf

   While I would have applauded commenting in the Cisco release, I don’t think the release is diminished by its lack of it.

   Posted by Shel Holtz  on  09/08  at  06:41 PM

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