Posts Tagged ‘social media press release’
CIPR Social media for PR practise workshop
November 6th, 2009
Yesterday I attended the CIPR Social media for PR practise workshop - focusing on the CIPR’s Education and skills group. Liberate Media was represented by my colleague Tim Greenhalgh, who was on the sharing best practise panel discussion with Simon Collister of We are Social and Nic Mitchell from Teesside University and led by Tracy Playle, Vice-Chair, CIPR Education and Skills sector group and Pickle Jar communications.
My colleague Andy Merchant and I led the afternoon session focused on building social media news releases with our Pressitt hats on. For those that don’t know, Pressitt is a free social media news release platform that Liberate Media developed with our partners Best Served Cold and launched earlier this year.
The morning session was focused on discussing the findings of the CIPR’s research into the use of online media in UK higher and Further Education institutions as a means of enhancing press and media relations, called PR 2.0 - managing news in a digital world, which launched on the day. (I’m chasing down a link and will update ASAP). The work group session was used to explore how PRs should use social and online media to communicate with journalists, looking specifically at the most useful online tools, how to manage time to engage with social media and how do you get senior management buy-in for supporting your use of social media, etc.
Of course they also discussed the findings of the research, which includes a host of interesting stats and feedback, my favourite of which was this little gem from an unnamed former FT journalist who confirmed the following about the traditional press release, which takes us back to where the social media news release movement all started.
“Press releases are nearly useless. They typically start with a tremendous amount of top-spin; they contain pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes. Often they will contain quotes from C-level executives praising their customer focus.
“Press releases are created by committees, edited by lawyers, and then sent out at great expense through Businesswire or PRnewswire to reach the digital and physical trash bins of tens of thousands of journalists … this madness has to end!”
His proposal: “Deconstruct the press release into special sections and tag the information so that as a publisher I can pre-assemble some of the news story and make the information useful.”
Hear, Hear!
In the afternoon it was over to Pressitt and the Social Media News Release. The session seemed to go well, and we had a mixed group in terms of social media understanding. When asked for a show of hands of people that had published an SMNR I received nadda, no hands, no expression…gulp, I thought, this could be difficult. However, preaching to the converted is easy, but helping PR professionals to understand the benefits of a social media news releases was much more rewarding.
We faced some tough questioning which we welcomed as this wasn’t an audience of converts, this was an audience of concerned professionals that wanted to embrace new tools, but needed to ‘get-it’ first of all. I think Andy would agree that this made us re-think our approach and we also got some good ideas for Pressitt 2.0, which we hope to launch in the new year.
After the event we had a great deal of positive feedback and promises from a number of people to give Pressitt a go, which at least one has already done, and after all that’s all we can ever ask.
So what did I learn from the event?
1. We still live in a social media bubble - it’s easy to talk about the development of social media in groups of likeminded social entrepreneurs, but is that helping the development of social communications?
2. It may seem obvious, but it’s true, if you want to develop a product, take it to people that have never seen it before and let them pull it apart! We probably learnt more from a group of SMNR novices than we would from hours of feedback from the so called experts
3. Every sector of PR is different we might argue that social media is the way forward, and I still stand by that, but its acceptance, relevance and use in the various industry sectors is vastly different.
Thanks to Tracy Playle, Vice-Chair, CIPR Education and Skills sector group and Pickle Jar communications who not only developed and led the session but gives up her time to the CIPR for free - top job!
And if you’re reading this and haven’t given Pressitt a go yet, please do - join up, develop your release and hit publish - it won’t cost you a thing. Then let us know what you think and we both might learn something out of it.
Win a Pressitt Social Media Newsroom and Bespoke Release Template
August 3rd, 2009
Pressitt Social Media Newsroom competition
In order to celebrate the launch of our new Social Media Newsroom offering, Pressitt is offering a limited number of free bespoke news release templates and Social Media Newsrooms, which of course can be used in conjunction with the Pressitt platform and easily linked to from your own site.
What are were giving away?
Three packages are up for grabs that include a Social Media Newsroom and bespoke Social Media News Release template that our designers will mock up in the style of your present website.
Your Social Media Newsroom and release template will be given a unique url: yourbrand.pressitt.com
View an example newsroom here: Bright One
The Rules
The competition will run for one month after the publishing date of this post.
The competition is open to agencies, corporations, challenger brands, and anyone who has a passion and interest for the Social Media News Release and is going to use it!
To enter, all you have to do is sign-up to Pressitt with a valid email address. No Google, MSN or Yahoo sign up’s will be entered into the draw (make sure you only enter once).
All previous active members who have signed up with a valid email address will automatically get entered into the prize draw.
To qualify for entry, you need to have released one newsworthy SMNR on the Pressitt platform.
The draw will be made by an impartial adjudicator.
The winners will be contacted via email and sent a briefing sheet for completion of the Newsroom and bespoke release template.
A bit about the Social Media Newsroom.
The Social Media Newsroom is a unique company landing page offering access to all of your multimedia news releases. It is a first touch for brands wanting to engage and participate with online communities, including journalists, bloggers, and even consumers researching your product or service.
Follow us on Twitter and find us on Facebook to get competition updates and news.
Good Luck
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.