DISQUS

Garrett Smith · 3 years ago

Lee:

Do you advocate companies sending out/creating both traditional and social media press releases? For instance, Wize, seems to have both - a social media press release and a traditional press release about the same news - If you do recommend both, do you send them both out through a service such as PRWeb.com?

Lee Odden · 3 years ago

Hi Garrett, in the case of Wize we created both traditional and social media press releases. We used PRWeb to distribute the traditional press release and then posted the keyword optimized social media press release as an HTML web page.

We also created an email pitch template and MS Word Doc template based on the social media format.

Cristian Mezei · 3 years ago

Here is the digg article guys.

Jennifer · 3 years ago

Using social media in press releases is a wonderful idea and one that I will be taking advantage of. Great blog.

Jennifer

Todd Defren · 3 years ago

Awesome post, Lee. The key is "well written and produced." The best SEO/SEM can't help a crappy release. ;)

I blogged about this (tangentially) at my blog.
http://snipurl.com/10xzo

Cristian Mezei · 3 years ago

Jeniffer is this a new way to spam or what the heck ?

Lee Odden · 3 years ago

Heh, I edited out the "spam" part of her comment Cristian. :)

Cristian Mezei · 3 years ago

Cool, thanks :-)

Brian Solis · 3 years ago

Lee, again, another great post. Thanks for keeping this important topic in the spotlight. Here's a related post for your readers as well - and thank you for an insightful quote.

Lee Odden · 3 years ago

Hey Brian, no problem. Thank you for the inspiration to write the above post. There's going to be a lot more written about the compound value of optimized releases and social media news releases forthcoming. I will in fact, be speaking about this very topic at the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Las Vegas Nov 14-17.

Cristian Mezei · 3 years ago

Feakin' spammers.

David Evans · 3 years ago

Interesting. I got turned on to this last night at the Boston SMG event. If adding video and Delicious links (why Delicious?) and tags to press releases is what this is all about, its a good start.

Clarification, tags are not "Technorati" or any other company. They can be used/accesed via many blog and traditional search engines. In fact, I bet someone will come up with a specific Delicious clone for press releases. Only a million people use Delicious, whereas many more use Yahoo bookmarking service. And why Flickr? I love and use it daily, but who decided that was the place to stuff all your images? Just wondering if anyone is thinking about this stuff.

How about digging into the Atom specification and seeing what's in there that could be used to further improve the usability and readability of news?

I can see parsers going through press releases, finding tags, looking up related tags, jumping over to other releases and digging up much deeper meaning in terms of the how the news relates to the space the company competes in.

The specification seems more like a better practices guide. I was expecting more RSS, search and linking capabilities, which is what real microformats are about.

Lee Odden · 3 years ago

David, one of the important reasons to use social media in press releases is for the audience. Delicious links are not for bookmarking in a press release, they are links to a collection of resources hosted at Delicious for journalists - to make it easier for them to write a story on the topic being pitched.

The microformats issue with news releases is something under discussion and development over at the New Media Release Group

Ed Lee · 3 years ago

Fantastic article! I have always told my clients to consider their press releases as mirror images of their own website and to use SEO and Social Media to maximize visibility.

On a slightly different topic, have you heard of the Korean search engine, "Naver"?

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-04-30-go...

I think this is a great example of how social media can hold its ground against Google.

Instead of relying on Google algorithms, Koreans prefer tapping into their social communities as resources.

-Ed

Lee Odden · 3 years ago

Good point Ed. Regarding Google and Korea, I wonder how much of it has to do with localization. It seems Google will be allocating more human resources to the region and perhaps nore feet on the ground will give them the insight they need to better compete.

Ed Lee · 3 years ago

I believe some of Google's troubles can be pointed to localization but the USA Today article seems to imply that most of the disconnect is cultural.

If Google indeed allocates more "human" resources, perhaps the y can bridge the gap and give their site the Wikipedia experience that Koreans are seeking.

Jennifer Smart · 1 year ago

With the Social Media Release would you send it to Bloggers as a pitch or would you use a traditional pitch without all the tags? Is the SMPR just useful to newswire services, what other channels can I utilize with a SMPR?

Todd Defren · 1 year ago

Hi Jennifer - These links might help you out.
http://www.pr-squared.com/2007/10/the_future_of...
http://www.briansolis.com/2007/05/social-media-...

Lee Odden · 1 year ago

Jennifer, the links to Todd and Brian's sites will offer one perspective on the SMNR. If using it in conjunction with a pitch to bloggers, you would include a link to the SMNR within the pitch. The SMNR would provide the blogger additional resources with which to understand the story idea - images, audio, video, bookmarks to other resources, etc.

Some of the newswires support elements of the SMNR or the actual template from SHIFT.

We've found that a SMNR as a web page, or one page media center, can be very productive as a PR focused SEO tactic. Ranking well in the news and standard search engines for keywords related to the story can be instrumental in a pull PR strategy. Both consumers and journalists/bloggers pull themselves to your news through search.