Over the past few months, I’ve given a lot of thought to Social Media Releases. They are a great tool, but only if used correctly. In the few years that they’ve been out, there have been a lot of different types and styles, successes and failures, but no real agreed-upon strategy for how to use them.

I think it is time we should start thinking about how exactly to use them, and less about the actual form they should take. My recommended strategy for a course of action when including a Social Media Release in a communications campaign includes four points: Monitoring, Message, Media, and Media Relations.
1.) Monitoring: Paying attention to what is being said about your brand or organization has always been recommended as a first step. As has been said before, social media is a conversation. Just as you would wait until your turn to speak in a real-world conversation, and then say something relevant, you should do the same in an online conversation. Monitoring will help you ensure the timing, nature and relevancy of your message.

2.) Message: This is what the core of the release is. It is why you are making an announcement. It is what you are hoping your audience of bloggers and the online community will care about enough to engage with. As April Dunford recently wrote in the blog post entitled “A Skeptic’s Guide TO Social Media Press Releases“:

“You need to answer the question “Why is this interesting right now?”  What is it about your announcement that makes it important information to share right now?  If you can make your news relevant to a broader audience than experts in your space, you are well on your way to spectacularness.”

If you can’t think of a reason why your announcement would be interesting to anyone, you’re probably not going to get a lot of media attention.

3.) Media: One of the coolest things about a Social Media Release is that you can include photos, audio and video to accompany the text of the release. However, this doesn’t mean that  a JPEG of the CEO’s head and a television commerical uploaded to YouTube constitute great multimedia content. Instead, you should think about your target audience and what might appeal to them. If it is a product launch, including images of the product in use and with a plain, white background would probably be beneficial to bloggers that might use them. Similarly, including a short video of the product in use might do wonders (but keep it short).

My thought is that a Social Media Release should provide value to the intended audience. The text portion should provide value in that it is informing them about something new. The accompanying media should either reinforce this value, or provide value on their own. One of the reasons I believe that the video CNW Group produced with Mark McKay got picked up online (here and here, for starters) is because it provided educational value by teaching people what a Social Media Release was. Similarly, April Dunford mentions in her post that she also provided a white-paper that showed other companies how they could start a green program in their organization.

4.) Media Relations: Contacting journalists has always been a part of traditional public relations, and it should continue to be a part of public relations in the blogging age.  Just because the audience you are trying to reach is online and you might never see them in real life does not mean that you can simply blast them with email. In fact, a huge part of the Social Media Release is the social aspect, and the fact that it is able to connect you and your news with so many people. Research and follow blogs that are relevant to your news - just as you might have different traditional media contacts for different types of news, you will probably want to reach out to different bloggers as well.

5.) Monitoring: As with any communications plan, monitoring success and following up where necessary are an important part. In the case of a campaign involving a  Social Media Release, monitoring should include not just checking to see where it got picked up and how it was used. I included Monitoring as both first and last on the list because it marks the beginning of a new communications cycle.
I hardly think that the Social Media Release is the only tool for communicators to reach an online audience, but I do think it is a good one. If you have any thoughts, suggestions or criticisms of my “4M Theory” I’d be happy to hear them.

-Parker

(As with all of my posts on BlogCampaigning, this reflects my own personal thoughts and opinions. These may not necessarily be the same as those held by my employer, CNW Group).

Well, I’ve been tagged by Sharon in a great little meme first thrown out there by Collin Douma.

The game is two come up with 5 great examples of social media use that our peers might not have noticed.

The rules are something like this:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List five Social Media projects that deserve better exposure.
3. Tag EIGHT {as many as you’d like} “Social Media / Digital Experts” at the end of your post and list their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.
5. Tag your post “Five Gems” so we can search for all of these great examples.

I’m also going to go ahead an tack on what I think should be a 6th, rule, and that is that we should all tag our posts (and examples) as 5gems on Delicious so that they are easy to find later.

1. The CNW Group Social Media release announcing the CNW Group Social Media Release - Although a bit self-referrential, I think that this is an excellent case study in how a Social Media Release can be effectively used. People left comments, bloggers embedded the video on their site (due to it being educational, rather than advertorial in nature) and one site even used the CNW logo provided with the release. (disclosure: I work for CNW, and worked directly on this).

2. Journalist Source -While they aren’t using social media directly besides having their homepage built on Wordpress and using a Twitter account, they are providing a great service to writers (I’m thinking bloggers here) that might not necessairly have the kind of resources needed to research a story on their own and source experts.

3. MySpace - Look, I know that a lot of people don’t care about MySpace anymore because it is just full of retina-burning designs and emo kids. But ever since I started a music blog a few months ago, I’ve been all over MySpace. It’s where the cool stuff happens: the creative kids are on MySpace, designinging their own pages, seeing what they can do within the constraints of the site and promoting themselves. The boring kids are on Facebook, installing applications and de-tagging drunken photos of themselves.

4. I Like Totally Love It -My Blogcampaigning co-author Jens told me about this site a little while ago, and it is definitely worth checking out. I don’t really know how to describe it, but they are kind of a social-voting site for products and things that you want, or I guess, things that you, like, totally love.

5. Movember - Growing moustaches for charity…what a great idea, and they’ve really used the online space to build traction for this. I participated last year, but I can already tell that it has grown alot since then. (if anyone is doing it this year, let me know and I’ll sponsor you!).

I’m tagging Chris Clarke, Martin Waxman, Jessica Ayers, Michael Allison and Alecia O’Brien.

-Parker

I’m a “pirate.” Everyday, I steal.

I steal music, by downloading it from music blogs.

I steal movies, by downloading them or streaming them from websites.

I steal information, by reading it online.

Except that stealing information isn’t exactly stealing it. Websites everywhere are giving it away. People set up blogs for the sole purpose of giving away what they write for free. News organizations do the same thing all the time: they post content on their website, and give it away freely.

And stealing music and movies isn’t stealing either. It’s piracy. Stealing removes the original, while piracy merely makes a copy (see this diagram by Danielle for help understanding this concept).

So what is the difference between the print publications (those, not including the Globe and Mail, that realize they can still have a profitable business by giving away content for free) and the entertainment industry that refuses to change its business model in the face of the internet?

Its not like there aren’t successful examples of entertainment organizations giving away their content for free and exploring different models.

Michael Moore recently allowed his film “Slacker Uprising” to be downloaded for free. Techdirt reports that Wayne Wang (director of the Joy Luck Club and Maid In Manhattan) is giving away his most recent film for free via YouTube.

As I’ve pointed out before, BMW gave away a number of short films they created with actor Clive Owen. There’s no reason that kind of model of corporate sponsorship (in exchange for product placement) can’t work in a future of legal, free downloads.

Similarly, both Radiohead and the Nine Inch Nails have seen a great deal of success in giving away albums or allowing fans to pay what they want for them. Rapper Lil Wayne is constantly giving away his music for free, and that hasn’t stopped him from near-record breaking sales.

At least one record label seems to understand this concept, even if their hosting company doesn’t. According to this story, Quote Unquote Records worked on a model that allowed fans to download albums and songs from the label’s catologue for free. Unfortunately, the company that owned the space they were hosting their content on didn’t understand this concept and took down their site for copyright infringement.

South Korean Jin-Young Park also seems to get the new economy. According to an article in Portfolio a few months ago, his entertainment company (I hesitate to call it a music label) is worth over $100 million US, and music sales only make up a small part of that fortune. That’s because Jin-Young Park recognizes that the music promotional, and can be used to sell other products and services that his company offers related to that music. This includes concert tickets, cell phones and more.

Oh, and to the American record labels that are lamenting the loss of revenue as a result of declining CD sales: Jin-Young Park created his company in a country where CD sales declined 80% from 2000 to 2006.

The world has changed, and the failure of organizations to realize that they will be unable to profit in ways that they were accustomed to will be their downfall. Those that are capable of adapting will prosper.

-Parker

If I had to describe Web 2.0/ social media with two words it would have to be “good manners”: Communicate, connect, collaborate, share, exchange, listen, learn, criticise to improve not to hurt, don’t mean ill but keep it nice, value people’s time, appreciate their efforts, say please and thank you.

Apparently a definition not shared by everyone. As the Blog Herald reports the Earthcomber CEO tried to connect with Michael Arrington – by suing TechCrunch. From Arrington’s blog:

I called Earthcomber President Jim Brady this morning to verify the lawsuit. At first he wouldn’t answer - all he did was try to explain how he’s been wronged by Loopt. When pressed he did confirm that the lawsuit was filed, but quickly added that he didn’t really mean to press it with us. He wants to go to court with Loopt, but is willing to quickly work something out with us to make this go away, he told me, hinting that he’d like to partner with us. He also said he’s been desperately trying to get me on the phone but hasn’t been able to, so he decided to sue us instead.

Trying to connect with someone by violating everything the Web stands for certainly isn’t a very clever idea, even more so when your aim is a partnership – which obviously isn’t going to happen.

Writes Arrington:

The problem with using a lawsuit as a negotiating tactic is that you can’t put the cat back in the bag. The door is open, and it has to play out. In other words, suing someone to get them to return your calls is not exactly a sign of brilliance. (…)

I’ve asked our attorneys to spend whatever it takes to kill this lawsuit, and to find a way to counter sue this guy into the stone age. (…)

We will not be bullied, and people who file frivolous lawsuits need to be put down. I would rather run TechCrunch into the ground and go out of business than let this guy win.

Keep your good manners – keep your company.

-Jens

Dear Globe & Mail,

I really like you. I don’t have a subscription to you because I’m normally too busy to read you every day, but I often buy a copy of you from the newstand in my building because it is simply easier (and more environmentally friendly) to share you with my coworkers, or to simply read you online.  As I’ve written before, one of my favorite Saturday activities is to buy your weekend edition and read through it over a coffee.

Despite what everyone says, you also seem to be pretty popular with the fickle blogging crowd. I mean, as of today you had a almost 60,000 blog reactions on Technorati, and over 200,000 inbound links according to Google blog search. You’re still a primary source of information for these people.

If the recent debacle of CNN erroneously reporting that Steve Jobs was in poor health is anything to go by, citizen journalism is as flawed as Andrew Keen says it is. As a traditional media force, people still respect you.

But then you go and do something like trying to charge me $4.95 for a newspaper article that I’ve already paid for and read, and this hurts me (telling me that this content will only be available for 30 days only adds insult to injury).

Your greatest asset is the thousands and thousands of pages of information and news stories that you have in your archives. People want to view this content, and just as they have endured advertising in your print publications, they’ll endure the same kind of advertising on your website.

I understand your thinking when it comes to locking up this content behind a pay wall: it is valuable information, so people will pay to see it.

The problem is, you are only half-right. It is valuable information, but only when it is easy to access. In the age of Google, people will quickly move on and find the information elsewhere, somewhere where it easier to get at.

I know that you have a lot of people working for you (like Christie Blatchford) who don’t understand very much about computers, the state of media today or even life in the 21st century. But that doesn’t mean you have to end up as a failure. It just means that you have to pay attention to the people that want to help you.

Change your ways, Globe & Mail. or we’re through, and it won’t be because I’ll stop reading you. It will be because everyone stops reading you, and you’ll cease to exist.

Love,

Parker

PS: You should probably forward this letter to some of your other traditional media friends. I know that they are going through some tough times as well.

If you’re involved in PR and social media you’ve probably heard people talking about social media releases, social media news releases or even social media press releases and the accompanying acronyms.

In the olden days, journalists were called ‘the press’ (an example of synechdoche) because the primary form of media was the newspaper, which was printed on

If Google trends is anything to go by, the majority of people still think that those releases that go out on the wire are called ‘Press Releases.’

However, most modern-day communicators will probably agree that this is an antiquated term, and that we should be calling these ‘News Releases’ or ‘Media Releases’ instead.

So, that gets rid of the term ‘Social Media Press Release’ and its ugly acronym “SMPR.”

We’re now left with Social Media Release and Social Media News Release, and I’m going to argue that the former is better than the latter.

I’m fine with calling a traditional release a News Release or a Media Release, and I think you’ll agree with me that calling it a Media News Release or a News Media Release is a little bit redundant (and referring to it as just a ‘release’ sounds odd unless you’re talking to people from the industry).

So why do we need to refer to PR’s hottest new tool as a Social Media News Release? Yes, it has a bunch of fancy Web 2.0 features that enable it to be easily shared. That aspect is covered by adding “Social” to the front of ‘Media Release.’

I’d actually be happy with either Social News Release or Social Media Release, but I think that the latter sounds better.

So, can we agree to standardize the name as Social Media Release?

-Parker

image courtesy of vivid tangerine on flickr

A few weeks ago, I started following DVD Quotes on Twitter.

Who ever is running the account will send out a Tweet beginning with “WMITF?” (short for “What Movie Is This From?”) followed by a quote. The first person to reply via Twitter has a chance to win a free DVD. Sometimes instead of a quote, they’ll send a link to an image from a film. When someone wins, they’ll congratulate them publicly, ensuring that the winner gets their own 140 characters of Twitter fame.

When I first started following them, they had around 3,000 followers. Now, they’ve already got over 5,000. These aren’t just 5,000 people putting their business cards in the fishbowl on the counter of a Subway restaurant in the hopes of winning a free lunch for their office. These are 5,000 people who are actively reading the Tweets that DVD Quotes is putting out there.

Just yesterday, I noticed that they sent out a Tweet alerting their followers that the winner of the next round would win an Iron Man DVD courtesy of linkbee, a service that purports to earn you money for sharing your links on social media sites.

Now, I’m not quite sure if linkbee is advertising on DVD Quotes or if linkbee is actually behind DVD Quotes but either way it is a great approach to marketing via Twitter. I know that I won’t mind reading a bit of marketing text for the chance of winning a DVD. If its well targeted and doesn’t become spammy, I can see this sort of thing working well.

Whether people eventually get sick of this kind of advertising, or whether other companies adopt this method remains to be seen. What matter is that linkbee seems to be one of the first to do it, and I applaud the move.

-Parker Mason

This afternoon I’ll be joining social media vet Michael O’Connor-Clarke and Natalie Johnson, manager of Social Media of General Motors Global Technology Group onstage at the Albany Club in Toronto to discuss Using Advanced Technologies Effectively in front of members of the Canadian Investor Relations Institute.

From the event description:

Advanced technologies are revolutionizing communications in every field. Investor Relations is no exception. New technologies such as blogging, Web 2.0, RSS feeds, search engine optimization (SEO) and new channels such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo Finance are changing the way IR professionals execute their strategies. Join us as our expert speakers explain how best to employ these technologies to improve the effectiveness of your capital markets communications.

I think it should be a great talk, and I’m looking forward to a healthy discussion period with some of Toronto’s IR professionals.

-Parker Mason

Wow…what a week in Ottawa.

Last Tuesday, I spent my morning having a Social Media Breakfast at Overlay.TV and hearing Fat Canary’s Ryan Anderson give a great, quick talk on Reputation 2.0 (thanks for having me out, even though I signed up late).

I think that the breakfast format is a great way to do these things, and I look forward to helping Joe Thornley get them off the ground here in Toronto. As much as I love having a beer and chatting with people after work, I also love going home at the end of the day and would much rather wake up early with a cup of a coffee, some breakfast and an inspiring talk.

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On Wednesday and Thursday, I participated in the Advanced Learning Institute’s Social Media For Government Conference. Joe Thornley did a great job of making people feel guilty for not using Twitter, and I think there were more than just a few who felt his heat and signed up on the spot.

In fact, Twitter was huge at this conference. In addition to the rookies, there were a number of vets that helped keep the Twitter conversation going. While others were speaking, I found a lot of value in having side conversations with others in the room who I only knew via Twitter.

(For those of you new to Twitter, Mark Goren has two great blog posts about how to get started (part one, part two) and I’d also recomend a post I wrote a few weeks ago)

On Thursday morning while I was giving my presentation about Social Media Releases I was also pleased to learn that the Twitter conversation continued on. I also felt pretty pleased with the fact that #ALI was the sixth most popular trending topic during my presentation, according to Search.Twitter.com. As a speaker, it provided me with great feedback about my presention.

It also gives me a chance to follow up with some of the questions or concerns that the audience had at the time.

“Distribution of social media releases is the elephant in the room because wire services can’t send out social media releases” tweeted one audience member. While it is true that the actual newswire can’t distribute social media releases over the wire due to limitations of the technology on the side of the major media points, newswires like CNW have gotten around this by issuing an SMR advisory over the wire, and by distributing the actual Social Media Release via Twitter and RSS.

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I also had a great time at the CPRS Ottawa season kick-off event last Thursday, hanging out with the CNW Group Ottawa Bureau crew and other CPRS members in Capital City (and CPRS Toronto has a lot to learn from CPRS Ottawa, particularly in how their websites are designed and updated…more on this later).

It was a busy week, and I didn’t have time for blogging but I’ve got what I think will be a couple of kick-ass posts brewing up.

If you are reading this because I met you in Ottawa, thanks for checking out BlogCampaigning! You can subscribe via the orange button on the right hand side of this page. Feel free to get in touch with me via Twitter, email (parker (at) blogcampaigning (dot) com) or by commenting here on the blog.

-Parker

A friend of mine who’s a prospective movie producer asked me to act as music supervisor for his (yet to be finished) diploma project. He needed some authentic country and 50s old school rock’n'roll for the soundtrack. Unfortunately there wouldn’t be a budget – and he would need the worldwide rights for an indefinite amount of time for all kinds of media (DVD, television, cinema…).

Confronted with this task I of course turned to the web – to Last.fm and Myspace to be precise.

As I’m neither to familiar with country nor with 50s rock’n'roll Last FM’s function to look for similar artists came in handy (beginning with Johnny Cash seemed like a good idea…) as did Myspace’s search functions, the possibility to listen to several tracks and to contact the band. The seedy bottom of the internet seems to be good for something after all. In regards to  presenting and discovering music it still has quite an edge on Facebook.

In short: There’s a vast talent pool out there, pretty much all our needs were covered by (mostly) unsigned or young and upcoming bands.

All this – again – made me realize just how important these platforms became for music and which great chances they offer for both parties involved. Even though we didn’t have a budget for the soundtrack what we could offer was a worldwide DVD-release which surely comes in handy in terms of exposing music to new markets – we got great tunes and the bands a chance to introduce themselves to a new audience, all without a middle-man or complicated license agreements.

Another example, even though in a completely different league, are my Australian friends from Operator Please, whose career certainly owes a lot to Myspace. Just recently, they were nominated again for two Aria awards (in one category they’re up against Kylie!).

So keep on posting your stuff onto the web, you never know when some random German movie person wants you for the soundtrack of his flick.

-Jens

PS
Check out the trailer for my friend’s old movie “Die Schwarze Kolonne” (The Black Platoon), a spoof on comic adaptations with German soap actor Tim Sander.