Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

What’s the difference between a social media press release and the more traditional version?  This is one of the most common questions we receive here at PR Newswire, and the answer is simpler than you may think.

At the outset, the social media news release (SMNR) — originally conceived by Todd Defren of Shift Communications — looked pretty complex, incorporating a host of multimedia assets as well as links to related information, such as other press releases from the company and quotes from experts.    The emphasis on the format intimidated many, and frankly, continues to do so today.

The difference between the two release types, in our mind, is pretty clear.  A social media release at its most basic is easy for readers to scan, includes elements (text, multimedia, etc.) that are easy to share, and offers readers ready access to a collection of associated, relevant information.   A more traditional message lacks these features....

Back in 2006, SHIFT Communications pioneered the first social media press release. It was super-cool, with links to other sites, shorter media snippets, recommendations for social network posting, multimedia, and more, well ahead of its time. But that was years ago; is the social media press release still relevant?

In some ways, the answer might surprise you: the Social Media Press Release isn’t relevant as a standalone press release, because these days social media and earned media are one and the same. Gone are the days where you needed separate communications for someone who was in the mainstream media and someone who was a blogger. Today, if you don’t treat new media creators with the same level of access as traditional media outlets, you’re in for a bucket of relative obscurity, especially if your product isn’t especially share worthy.

If social media isn’t fully and wholly integrated into your overall earned media and marketing plan, you’re fundamentally asking to be ignored....

SHIFT Communications’ release of anupdated Social Media Press Release template—first introduced in 2006—more fully weaves social media into the release with a focus on making it as easy as possible to share its various elements.

While the first template and the version 1.5 follow-up both sparked a considerable amount of attention, the new 2.0 version caused barely a whisper. When we chatted about it briefly on our podcast, For Immediate Release,Neville Hobson remarked that interest has waned considerably and that nobody much talks about the concept any more....

If we start to think of the press release as a component of our content marketing efforts, odds are we’ll embrace these principles by routinely incorporating social media elements to the release. We’ll also focus onanybody who would be interested, not just the press and influential bloggers for whom press releases are most often crafted. (That’s why we opted to call it the Social Media News Release when trying to create more enthusiasm for the idea.)...