Posts Tagged ‘smpr’
Distribution is only the first step for your Social Media News Release!
June 29th, 2010
As you might be aware, Pressitt the Social Media News Release, is co-owned by Liberate Media.
Today I wanted to highlight the fact that the SMNR is not a ‘fire and forget’ tactic. It’s not a newswire either.
The SMNR is useful because it opens up conversation and allow brand owners to engage with online users and vice versa. The conversation shouldn’t end after a few hours, days or weeks.
The beauty of the SMNR concept is that you can keep the conversation alive by re-visiting your SMNR and updating it with fresh content and then re-publishing and re-engaging with your audience. It’s the start of the conversation, not the end of your news.
Ideas to update you Social Media News Release:
- New quotes or updated quotes
- Fan videos/images
- Additional links to other news coverage or user generated content
- Update on the announcement
- New findings/research
- or even just to update your contact details
- Updated product shots
- Expert commentary from other sources
Standard newswires would charge to do this, but Pressitt allows you to make any amount of edits for free.
I hope this small snippet of advice allows you to use the social media news service of your choice more effectively, if you have any further queries, please get in touch.
Social Media News Release service Pressitt launches in Public Beta
April 20th, 2009
Social Media News Release (SMNR) service Pressitt today launches in public beta, following a successful month of private beta testing.
Developed by digital PR and social media consultancy Liberate Media and web development firm Best Served Cold, Pressitt has already been trialed by an impressive list of high-profile and challenger brands and organisations. These include Johnson’s online parenting community BabyCentre, the Government’s Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, online music provider Napster, digital creative agency Collective, digital entertainment and internet solutions firm iBAHN, digital engagement agency Kerb and LED lamp producer Greengage Lighting.
In just over a month, the service has already secured a Google PageRank of four, and attracted a significant level of private beta interest.
Pressitt enables PRs and businesses to create their own SMNRs (also known as a Social Media News Release) and publish to an online community of journalists, the blogosphere and the general public. A Pressitt release contains all of the core information found in a traditional press release, but it is presented in a more digestible format along with images, video clips, links to previous Pressitt announcements and other relevant online information such as homepages, social media profiles and downloadable presentations or PDFs, ensuring all story assets are saved in one central online place.
Based on early user feedback, a range of service updates will also be launching to coincide with the public beta launch. These include brand-specific RSS feeds, enabling individuals to easily keep track of Pressitt releases published by companies of interest, and a tool called PressTwitt which allows Pressitt releases to be shared via Twitter easily. Screencast videos are being developed to provide additional guidance on how best to use Pressitt, and A new homepage design is also going live in direct response to the feedback of private beta testers.
The service is currently free to use, and a premium paid-for version with enhanced functionality will go live later in the year.
Additionally, Pressitt is also unveiling a bespoke version of the service, which enables organisations to have a customised SMNR template designed to reflect the colours, style and branding of their organisation. Those wanting to take it one step further can show-off their bespoke releases in a Social Media News Room, offering a completely branded environment housing all of their corporate SMNRs. A Social Media News Room can be a part of a company’s existing website or hosted via Pressitt.
Wendy McAuliffe, director of Liberate Media and Pressitt, says: “The private beta phase has been incredibly successful, and we’re delighted to be coming out of it after just one month of testing. The Social Media News Release has been a hot topic within the global PR industry for a while, and we’re pleased to see that businesses and brands of all sizes are eager to trial this up-to-date press release format. Early user feedback has been constructive and encouraging, and we’re making service updates as quickly as possible to ensure we’re continually innovating and responding to the needs of our users.”
Greg Doone, managing director of Collective, adds: “We’re proud to have been one of the first organisations to trial Pressitt, as we’re keen for our company news to be as ‘social’ and shareable as possible. We develop a wide range of multimedia assets for high profile brands such as Honda and EA, and Pressitt provides us with the perfect environment to showcase these to our blogger and journalist targets in one central online location.”
Please see latest news from Social Media News Release service Pressitt below:
http://pressitt.com/smnr/social-media-news-release-service-pressitt-launches-in-public-beta/35/
Brands are on their starting blocks for the Olympic social media dash
July 10th, 2008
Over the next few moths you are going to see massive amounts of online coverage of the Olympics, most of it associated with huge brands.
One brand quickly off the blocks is Lenovo, who has a blog site called Voices of the Olympic games. As the name suggests the blog content is made up with athletes’ commentary of what they are currently up to. They also have another pretty impressive site called Lenove Olympic podium powered by Google which offers a whole host of video footage, Google maps and other multimedia content. It’s kind of like a start page for the Olympics where you can drag and drop each section to have the page set up to how you want it.
Lenovo has also got on the Twitter gravy train and is promising updates throughout the Olympics - to follow them click here - they have currently not updated!
Hot on Lenovo’s heel is of course Coca-Cola who has produced a social media press release in English and Chinese. View the smpr here. The smpr introduces Coca-Cola’s integrated Olympic campaign. Some of the interesting stuff Coca-Cola is doing around the Olympics mentioned in the smpr are:
Coca-Cola Virtual Olympic Torch Relay
Coca-Cola Olympic Photo Montage
Design the World a Coke” Interactive Tool
To participate you need a good understanding of Chinese!
Just a taste of some of the big brands getting involved in the Olympics social media push. Watch this space for brands wanting to be associated with the wholesome feel good factor of the Olympics.
What’s happend to the Social Media Press Release?
June 6th, 2008
At Liberate Media we have been following the progression of the social media press release for quite some time. Over the last few months there seems to have been a bit a down turn in coverage on the subject.
Marketwire and Webit among others are still doing their thing, Shift has recently updated its original template and you hear a bit from digital snippets smpr reincarnation now and again, but where’s the smpr buzz gone?
It seems like all the guys that were talking about the smpr have moved onto other subjects like Twitter, Friendfeed, reputation management and social media optimisation (SMO).
The smpr is definitely on a go slow at the moment and I’m not really sure why that is, perhaps there’s too much information on it, and it’s no longer a copy and paste job for journalists!
I’m still a big fan of the smpr and will be championing the cause!
South Africa’s First Social Media Press Release - The Standard Bank Pro20 Series (cricket)
April 14th, 2008
You may or may not be aware that Liberate Media has been following the Social Media Press Release for some time.
Following my previous post Will the social media press release (SMPR) reach tipping point by the end of the year?, I was pleased to hear about the SMPR being used in other parts of the world aside from the UK and US.
South Africa-based Standard Bank has been using the release template as part of the Standard Bank Pro20 Series cricket tournament.
Read more about the release here.
I was bowled over (cricket pun!) by the release. It’s one of the best examples of the SMPR I have seen to date, and of course will be added to the Liberate Media research/resource page.
Click on the image to view the Pro 20 SMPR.
What I really like about the Kaboom SMPR is:
- The design: they have taken the colourful punchy format of the twenty twenty game and used it for the SMPR.
- The release is set out on a logical way: Quick facts followed by the multimedia assets and then the core information.
- They have some great quotes for bloggers/journalist to use.
- From the release you can follow Pro 20 conversation on Twitter and join its Facebook group.
It’s a really great effort, and for me, this has set the SMPR standard. It’s clean, well laid out and easy to follow.
Will the social media press release (SMPR) reach tipping point by the end of the year?
April 8th, 2008
This SMPR has been talked about many times before. I’m asking our audience if they think it will reach its tipping point by the end of the year? At the moment it is still very much in early adopter stage, but at Liberate Media we believe it has the potential to reach ’social epidemic’ (as Malcolm Gladwell would say) in 2008. Could it replace the likes of the more traditional press release format?
A few key facts on the SMPR:
- SMNR format (PDF download) originated at SHIFT Communications by Todd Defren
Over at Wadd’s tech PR blog he has a nice post on: UK media and PR industries yet to be convinced by Social Media News Release (SMNR) - which suggests that perhaps the tipping point will not be reached in the UK quite yet, but the US have taken the SMPR format a little more on board. The comments on the post give some other excellent points of view.
Please let us know your thoughts on the SMPR making its tipping point, or do you think it will disappear like Lord Lucan?
Thoughts on the future of the SMPR
April 2nd, 2008
At Liberate we’ve been keenly following developments in the Social Media Press Release (SMPR), which is yet to reach tipping point within the PR industry. We therefore listened with interest today to a podcast on the subject with Tod Defren of PR Squared, sharing his insight on the take-off of the SMPR through his day job at Shift Communications.
We firmly buy into efforts to make news releases more social and useful, with greater differentiation between quality announcements and spam. However, while there has been a lot of talk about the SMPR and its benefits, we’ve had our ear to the ground for case studies where it’s worked successfully among early adopters.
To summarise Tod’s feedback (although it will take you just eight minutes to listen to the whole thing)…
- The volume and level of companies using the SMPR is growing, and includes brands such as Coca Cola, Gatorade, Semantec, Horizon.
- The most successful case studies have seen SMPR content being discussed on Twitter and in blog posts, with content such as logos being taken and re-used.
- As part of the sales process for PR agencies, it’s important that brands realise the SMPR format is not just useful for the blogosphere, but for traditional media alike, offering more content and context than the traditional news release.
- Comment functionality is most successful when moderated.
At Liberate we have our own developments in the pipeline, and have recently pioneered the Social Media Video Release, which we believe is the next step for the SMPR by enhancing its video and interactive components. Our case study for iCrossing is available here.
Our experience to date on the B2B side of things is that there’s a big education gap still to bridge, but gradually organisations are coming to understand the benefits of the social release format and want to give it a go.
We’re particularly keen to hear more stories on how PRs are currently approaching the sale of the SMPR, so please share your experiences with us here.
iCrossing social media video release (SMVR) case study
March 6th, 2008
At the beginning of the year we developed and launched a spin-off to the SMPR, which we coined the SMVR or social media video release. We debuted the template last month for our client iCrossing UK (formerly known as Spannerworks), for its brand integration announcement.
Re-brand announcements can often be tricky - they are incredibly important to the client, but are never going to set the news agenda alight. So between the client and ourselves we came up with the idea to use and harness the power of social media, in the form of an interactive video, which bloggers could easily embed into their own blogs.
Below is the case study:
iCrossing brand integration SMVR case study
Overview:
Following Spannerworks’ acquisition by iCrossing, Liberate Media was tasked with communicating the digital marketing agency’s integration into the iCrossing brand in 2008.
Communications objectives:
- Develop a hook that would interest target audiences in the UK and US
- Educate key audiences in the iCrossing proposition in the UK
- Communicate the strength of iCrossing’s worldwide presence
- Introduce iCrossing’s vision for the future of digital marketing
Challenges:
- Brand integration alone is not newsworthy due to the acquisition announcement a year earlier
- Limited time prior to launch
- Limited availability of US and UK spokespeople
Campaign:
To deliver on the key objectives for the brand integration, Liberate Media felt that a new approach would be needed to reflect iCrossing’s forward-thinking approach. It was agreed that the communications messages should be conveyed in an innovative and easily accessible format, utilising a social media-focused strategy to assist message delivery and distribution. One option was to prepare a social media press release, but the PR team felt that a more visual and audible format was needed to communicate the intricacies of this announcement.
As part of its ongoing social media research and development, the team at Liberate Media had been developing a new social media platform that it has titled the ’social media video release’ (SMVR). The SMVR contains the key elements of a social media press release combined with interactive video, allowing the viewer to click through to supporting data such as relevant sites, key statistics and research that supports the narrative. iCrossing would become the first brand to utilise this new form of communication.
Liberate Media worked with iCrossing in the US and UK to develop the storyboard and the video element, while collating relevant evidence that would be made available via the interactive interface. Following international agreement on the storyboard and having briefed the key spokespeople, the SMVR was professionally shot, edited, coded and had links inserted to achieve the desired social media-focused announcement.
Launch:
On launch day, which was coordinated with US and UK offices, the video was launched via iCrossing UK’s blog and seeded on relevant news channels, linking all traffic back to iCrossing’s corporate websites. The SMVR was also made available to the web via interactive video site asterpix.com, and of course mainstream sites such as YouTube.
Asterpix - The main SMVR interactive site, and url (embeded code) was forwarded to all relevant bloggers and key journalist. It has had 566 views at the time of publishing.
Youtube - 1839 views up to publishing date
Metacafe - 139 views up up publishing date
Honours:
#34 - YOUTUBE - Most Viewed (Today) - News & Politics - United Kingdom - 28-01-2008
#36 - YOUTUBE - Most Viewed (Today) - News & Politics - United Kingdom - 29-01-2008
Page click results:
from the Spannerworks / iCrossing announcement blog post can be found here.
Example coverage:
- NMA - http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/36623/Spannerworks+rebrands+as+iCrossing.html
- Media Week - http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/779818/Spannerworks-icrossing-rebrand/ -Travolution - http://travolution.co.uk/Articles/2008/01/29/1241/Spannerworks+becomes+iCrossing+UK.html
- Brand Republic - http://www.brandrepublic.com/login/News/779670/
- ClickZ news - http://blog.clickz.com/080128-113619.html
- http://www.hortal.com/2008/01/28/roberto-the-video-star/
- http://seokeywordsnews.net/2008/01/28/icrossing-integrates-british-search-brand-spannerworks/
- http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=670
- http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/162961-3827188
- http://nilhan.co.uk/2008/01/28/the-day-spannerworks-became-icrossing/
- http://news.stpwebhosting.com/news/search-engine-optimization-news/icrossing-integrates-british-search-brand-spannerworks.htm
- http://www.projectbrighton.com/2008/01/28/goodbye-spannerworks-hello-icrossing-uk/
- http://open.typepad.com/open/2008/01/i-dont-work-for.html
Feedback from Arjo Ghosh, CEO and founder iCrossing UK
* How did you find the process of producing the video?
“If I’m honest I found the filming process a bit stressful. The format would have worked much better for us if we were being interviewed. Talking ‘to’ camera is really difficult if you have no experience of it.”
* What did you think was most interesting/innovative about the SMVR?
“Links interwoven into the talk. Asterpix and YouTube as the platform.”
* What results have you been most impressed with?
“Over 2000 people viewing is impressive.”
Social media press release spawns off-spring
February 21st, 2008
We have all heard about the SMPR by now, and we also know that not that much has happened since the original concept was released. But after reading my RSS feeds over the last few weeks I have noticed some SMPR reincarnations in the form of resumes/CVs.
A few weeks ago I came across the Visual CV :
“The Visual CV makes a traditional resume come alive with video, pictures and a portfolio of your best work samples and other supporting documents. Informational pop-ups provide background data on the companies you’ve worked at and the colleges you’ve attended. You can securely share different versions with your own network of employers, colleagues and friends, and control who sees what.”
Why is it like a SMPR you might ask? Well from the blurb it looks like you can add video, pictures, audio, charts, presentations and even share it on social networks. Check out a preview CV and see what you think.
But the Online Resume Builder illustrates the holy grail of social media CVs - the social media resume. The features seem pretty impressive and include images, video and direct links to your related online communities. The resume is also shareable, search engine friendly and trackable. All very impressive!
The only other SMPR spawn I know of is our own Liberate Media interactive Social Media Video Release which we did over three weeks ago for our client iCrossing, and has had over 2000 views now - case study to follow.
So what will be the next SMPR offspring? I’m not really sure , but I do think exciting times are upon us!. Now is the time for creative peoples to get their thinking caps on and evolve the format of the SMPR to the next level! WATCH THIS SPACE.