Social Media Releases, Are They Worth It?

October 6, 2008 | Posted by: Jayson Schkloven

Last Friday I attended a Digital Media seminar put on by PRNews. Among the highlights for me was hearing John Earnhardt discuss Cisco's video podcast strategy, as well as a compelling discussion on the value and measurement of Social Media Press Releases (SMRs).

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, an SMR is a more visually appealing and socially enabled departure from the traditional press release. SMRs typically include bulleted facts and attributable quotes versus text-heavy paragraphs.  They often feature embedded audio and video podcast content and high resolution image galleries related to the announcement along with embedded links to social book-marking tools like Digg and Reddit; and more. Here is an SMR that Merritt Group built for our client Blue Coat Systems and here is another we designed for Microsoft Public Sector.

One of the panelists at the seminar stated that social media releases provide little real value to the enterprise and are a wast of time because sites like Digg, Reddit and Technorati HATE press releases.  I would have to wholeheartedly disagree with the first point. For Merritt Group clients, SMRs have proven to be an highly effective tool for engaging readers; whether they are bloggers, journalists, customers or investors.

Our clients that leverage SMRs often experience improved coverage results from online journalists and bloggers for the simple fact that everything they need to write a story is included in the SMR. Concise facts and bulleted quotes that are free of marketing language make it easier to get to the heart of the news, while high resolution images, podcasts and additional content provide all the resources needed to create an engaging online story or media-rich blog post; without having to follow up with anyone to request additional materials.

In addition, SMRs have proven to be a great entry point, or "gateway drug" as I like to call them, that get management thinking more strategically about new media.  SMRs take the common press release, a communications tool that most executives are familiar with, and add attractive visual elements that leverage content already created by marketing.  The increased online coverage that often results from the SMR proves to executives that new media content does have measurable RIO and therefore is worth investing in.  This often leads to the necessary conversation about the organization's broader new media strategy.

For these reasons, I think SMRs have tremendous value to the enterprise. As for the second point about how social book-marking sites view SMRs, admittedly I need to do a little more homework on that. Stay tuned and feel free to comment with your thoughts.