Social Media Release Debate Rages On
The discussion and debate on the social media release lives on, thanks to a "study" by HubSpot this week that compared traditional and social media releases (SMRs) in terms of how effectively they were syndicated to search engines and "portal" via newswire services. The conclusion was that SMRs are less effective.
This led to an interesting discussion with our client base in which some were asking for my perspective. I want to share what I offered to them here in order to add to the broader conversation. One of the questions that has come up in my discussions with clients is whether EVERY release needs to be a social media release with a strong contingent ascribing to the view that not every release does.
According to HubSpot, one of the central reasons why SMRs don't syndicate well is because they include long encoded URLs and complex formatting that, as well as multimedia are handled differently by each newswire and do not always "translate" to the search engines or portals in the right way. To me all these points seem to be common sense and don’t really offer any new revelations.
As I see it, the most important takeaway from the study is point #4 --
Since the advent of the social media release, most of the ones I've seen are no different then what traditional releases have been for such a long time with regards to the writing and style of them. I very much agree with what Brian Solis has said in the past about how we need to use this effort to rethink the press release to change the way they are written. He hit on this again earlier this week --
News flash: New media releases aren’t a new tool to package the same old marketing "speak" that form and enforce the stereotype of existing press releases. They are indeed an opportunity to improve how we, as individuals representing a company that helps real world customers, share our story with them in a way that means something.
This was the biggest complaint Tom Foremski had three years ago when he sparked this whole debate. And since press releases now have more value as a way to communicate directly to customers, fixing how they are written is even more important.
Companies should do social media releases to offer atomized pieces of content that complement the information in the release itself. This allows bloggers, (increasingly) traditional media and members of a company's buying community that are publishers/ creators of information to embed in their own posts or online articles about the subject of the release. The other aspect that's more important now in the age of microsharing is to include triggers that prompt people to share the news, such as a "Tweet This" summary that is hyperlinked so someone can more easily distribute it. These all involve wrapping in more code within the release (embed code, encoded URLs, etc) that are naturally going to get stripped out when sent over the wires. This is why the wires have been struggling with the social media release concept and we see data like HubSpot.
The other view I have is that there is not a one-size-fits-all template that should be followed for every release. That said, the templates that are out there help to determine what people and companies should consider adding to releases. There are certain elements that should be in every release (links to company web site, Twitter summaries, straight URL's to content/channels on third party services like Flickr, YouTube, related links, calls to action with simple links to a purpose landing page for the release so it is measurable, etc.), but not every release should be in a bulleted format, nor should every release include multimedia content.
Finally, a good general rule of thumb is to keep releases that go over the wire as basic as possible - include links to supporting content as mentioned above, but then treat it much more as a social media release on your own company's web site where you have much more control and range over the bells and whistles. In some cases, I have had clients include a straight link in the version that goes over the wire to an enhanced social media version on the clients' newsrooms to drive even more inbound links.
Wherever you stand, it’s always an interesting debate...
