It’s time to expand media relations

 

I’m still amazed at the number of communications people who talk about social media and claim to ‘get it’, yet still cling to the traditional press release as a centrepiece of their activities.

Hello!!! The public is changing quickly and the target of communications activities is no longer just the local journos, whose ability to influence is waning fast.

In this light, it’s encouraging that social media news releases continue to be discussed across the industry. I particularly liked this recent definition of a social media news release:

” a release designed specifically with the blog, citizen media and social media communities in mind.

It does not include the ’spin’ of the traditional press release, but provides multimedia content in an accessible format that can easily be repurposed and shared on blogs, websites and social networks. Unlike the traditional press release, the content of the social media news release is deconstructed so that the core facts, quotes, contact details and boilerplate are all individually segregated to allow users to disseminate its various elements.

It can accommodate links to relevant websites, images, audio and video (including embedded social media video including YouTube) – and any amount of background information.  Ideally, the release is tagged for distribution to social networking distribution sites and RSS feeds.

 Come on communicators, get out of the comfort zone and see if you really believe in social media.