Posts Tagged ‘social media press release’
Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up (07-05-2010)
May 7th, 2010
Welcome to another instalment of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’.
1. Embedable Tweets. No more need for screen grabs and Photoshop. Simply copy and paste the Tweet URL page and add the code to your blog post.
2. Copyc.at allows you to add your website to the search bar , which in turn generates a usability score based on the readability of your website.
3. Zoofs has all the most recent talked about videos on Twitter, viewable straight from its platform.
4. Find Icons is a great search tool for finding icons of any type, which is handy if you need icons for PowerPoint presentations or similar.
5. Wave. What they say: “WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid humans in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.”
Social Media post of the week: 6 terrific examples of social media policies for employees
SEO post of the week: Most common SEO mistakes
More of the same next week.
Check out previous issues of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’
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.
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?
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.
Not the Social Media Press Release…but the Social Media Video Release
January 28th, 2008
At Liberate Media we have been closely watching the progress of the social media press release (SMPR), but after an initial debut by Shift Communications, progress has been slow with only few notable exceptions.
As part of our ongoing social media research and development, we recently came across a site called Asterpix, which we felt offered lots of potential for PR. Asterpix has a wealth of sharing options, such as the ability to embed your interactive video directly into your website or blog, use the ’share’ button on the player or website, and functionality to copy and paste the video URL link into an email or instant message. This makes it a perfect social media platform.
The premise of the site is to make videos interactive, so the user clicks highlighted links embedded at relevant points in the film, which open in a new window (additional information). This we felt was the next stage for the SMPR.
We decided to test the concept of a Social Media Video Release (SMVR) on our new company website, which launched last week. Each of the company directors filmed a video biography, and sourced additional online links referencing the credentials they talk about. These resources included visual cues for Flickr and LinkedIn, as well as downloadable photos that we hosted, and a PDF script for accessibility and fact checking purposes.
Their profile videos were filmed with a basic handheld video camera, and edited using open-source software. This was to show that the process is accessible to any one with a little imagination.
Our trials were so successful that we pitched the idea to our client iCrossing (formerly Spannerworks in the UK) for their re-brand announcement. They very much liked the idea but wanted a more polished finish, and more in-depth additional information. The resulting video is here.
We are monitoring the results of the iCrossing SMVR very closely, which we will feedback through our blog, so look out for a case study to follow. We are also asking journalists for feedback. Please take a look at the videos and let us know your thoughts. All feedback is welcome to take this inventive idea to the next step.