Over the last few weeks, we have seen a reincarnation of the old debate that the press release is dead. Though recent forms of the argument have been a little less dire, the sentiment is still the same in some circles. Whether the argument is that the Social Media News Release will replace the traditional release or that the press release is dead, it is an argument I'm willing (and eager) to take part in.
It's been a very peculiar few days in the blogosphere as it relates to this topic. On Monday we saw an epic post (yes, another great one) by Brian Solis entitled, Reviving the Traditional Release. He focused heavily on how to enhance a traditional release and what kinds of tools are out there that enable a release for use across all media and mediums.
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.Some of the conversation that ensued circled around different tactics, grandiose claims, agreement and disagreement. I largely agree with what Brian went over in the post, however the were a good bunch points I'd disagree with. Adding a photo to a release, no matter when it was done, does not make it Social. PR Newswire has been issuing releases with photos since 1996. Those weren't the first Social Media Releases either. Let's not forget that there really weren't any viable social networks in 2001 that were being used widely, let alone in 1996 (except for ProfNet, maybe ;-). The first social media release was the MNR created for the movie, Pearl Harbor, in 2001. Since then the MNR and SMNR have evolved greatly as has the space it was created for.
When Todd Defren used the MNR to disseminate his template, a new version (and name) for the vehicle was born: The Social Media Press Release. There was, and still is, a ton of conversation around the template and the theory: A release with multiple multimedia assets will be more of value to journalists and consumers. While that theory has held true in my mind, many of the tools used in that template were superfluos. The most obvious example of this are tags to delicious or technorati. These tags are disruptive, are a barrier to stickiness and take the audience away from the key messages. Additionally, there has been no data to suggest that bullet points or isolating quotes makes a release get more pickup, views, or visibility. What do you have left then? A release with multimedia enabled for the social web ... an MNR. Will the IABC version of the template make this an easier vehicle for journalists and bloggers to consumer with an hTemplate? I doubt it.
Today, on the other hand, Hubspot hosted a Webinar to supplement a blog post entitled, Study Shows Social Media Releases Are Less Effective Than Traditional Press Releases. The webinar and the blog post featured some really great tips that all wire clients should heed. However, the target audience for the webinar and post is more Marketer than PR Pro as Hubspot was determining success by the amount of times a release was syndicated as opposed to picked up ... the perpetual earned vs. unearned media dilemma. They took a close look at traditional text releases vs. SMPRs. But they didn't look into dissemination and syndication of video, audio or photos. They didn't take into account traditional releases enabled for Social Media. They didn't take into account a lot of things ... A release isn't successful if it's only displayed, verbatim, on another site. A release is successful by so many other factors that their too numerous to list. Here are a few: earned media pickup, traffic driven, conversation, tonality, volume, impressions, etc.
Considering three of the major voices online have taken mostly contradictory views of the future of the release, I am curious to find out, "What's Next?"
What do you think?
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