Social Media release battle rages on…
January 23rd, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
In years to come, it will be this past weekend that many will cite as the pivotal moment in the future of the social media release.
If, like me, you’re coming in late to this ‘discussion’ allow me to bring you up to speed.
Last week, the Third Thursday event took place in the US, which was focused on ‘Social media in marketing and PR’. What followed stirred up an ongoing conversation around the purpose and future of the social media release, which has uncovered some extremely interesting opinions, facts and the odd attack.
Shel Holtz, VP Marketing at Crayon, not only has an excellent summary of the issues, he was also on the original panel discussion.
I’m not going to go over the twists and turns in the debate, i’ll leave you to review that for yourself. You may need some time, check out Stowe Boyd and Chris Heuer as the focal points for the opposing views.
My reason for linking to this debate is simple, it offers one of the most interesting overviews of the social media release debate, and from a PR’s point of view, gives real insight into both sides of the discussion.
For what it’s worth, I agree press releases in traditional format do not translate well to social media. At Liberate Media we feel there is a requirement for a simple, fact-based news release format, accompanied by relevant links and feeds, which can be easily digested in a social media environment.
I am sure there are many ways of achieving the perfect social media release template, but in my mind we should begin with a clean slate, rather than adapt what we already know. It will be interesting to see the impact this has on traditional press release writing also.
Happy reading.
