Livingston

Jan
24
2008

Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points to Consider

snippets_logo The recent release of the Social Media Group’s Digital Snippets social media release (SMR) template caused a wave of excitement and criticism, both on and off line.  Just to recap some of the posts:

Shannon Whitley: "There seem to be more entries in the world of SMNR creation tools, which is great news because we can all benefit from this creativity.  However, I’d like to throw out a challenge to folks like Edelman, WebITPR, Social Media Group, et. al.  I’ve been working on hRelease for several months now.  It’s supposed to be a community effort that will help move the SMNR distribution process forward."

Jason Falls: "The template basically says you can share information about this product or company (Digital Snippits was developed in Social Media Group’s work with Ford Motor Company) but we don’t really want to make it easy for you to see an independent third party’s review of it. …in my opinion, it isn’t a step forward in the evolution of the social media release."

Chris Heuer does a nice video recap on the history of SMR’s and their purpose.

Off-line criticism that I’ve been privy to:

  • Digital snippets is really just PR Newswire’s MultiVu socialized
  • Lack of comments on Digital Snippet SMRs
  • I’ve also received a couple of remarks from folks who seem miffed that newbies and sophomores with at most two or three years of social media experience are disturbing the process. That not enough research has been done.

Thoughts Moving Forward

Before moving forward, I advocate for SMRs. They’re in Now Is Gone and one of the most successful posts on this blog was an SMR case study. 

Press releases are not exciting documents, often loaded with spin and jargon.  While still a tool in the communications professionals arsenal, they do not comprise strategy, nor should they be relied upon as ground-breaking news mechanisms. Social media environments require a different way of disseminating news so that content creators, individual stakeholders reading social media, and possibly journalist can get this information. Enter the SMR.

But to date the SMR has not been widely adopted (though picking up momentum), and there is increasingly greater separation on SMR thought and purpose. The following candid points seek to address some of the criticism to date, and perhaps help SMR developers create widespread adoption:

  1. SMRs and press releases are tools, not strategies.  If you don’t have a great story to tell, they won’t work. Many folks have said this, and this fact should always frame SMR discussion.
  2. We are inside the bubble, and much of the discussion to date revolves around technical merits (comments, MultiVu, YouTube or not) and means nothing to the average PR practitioner.
  3. The average PR practitioner wants a tool that serves a function: Communication with social media communities.  Adoption of SMRs relies on intelligent discourse about what social media stakeholders want and need, not what we the PR 2.0 community thinks. Maggie Fox and SMG have done some research to this end, and it shows in her template. That’s why it is a step forward. Sharing this research would be helpful.
  4. Discourse needs to revolve around actual experiences on what has worked and what has not. Again, inside the bubble chatter means little, what does mean something is results. Enough SMRs have been published that we should be able to discern what works. That means people need to share their results.
  5. The ideal result from an SMR should be to engage social media communities, in turn causing community members to create their own discussions.  Kami Huyse and I call this storyboarding.
  6. What’s becoming very apparent in my experience and from seeing other SMRs is they are not ideal vehicles for hosting conversation.  The fundamentalist view that comments must be part of an SMR seems ridiculous to me. A nice value-added feature, but here are eight ways to have a better conversation: 1) Post SMR in blog and ask for comments, 2) better yet, write a post that’s more conversation in tone 3) Use Facebook Ask Qs on the SMR’s topic 4) YouTube/Seesmic 5) Utterz 6) Solicit feed back from bloggers before releasing 7) Twitter it with Qs. 8) Get a guest spot on an established BlogTalkRadio show. Etc., etc.
  7. Old-timers in the social media space need to remember there’s a great influx of new readers and minds.  They would be better served embracing these people, and making their past content easily available than kvetching about how no one researches.
  8. Old-timers in social media need to realize that innovation and adoption will occur with or without them. History means nothing when people with two years, two months or two days of social media experience are trying to create a solution that will work for their companies and paying clients.
  9. A reality check is in order, too. Dismissing people for lack of social media experience when they’ve embraced it 1) pushes them away; 2) reduces the amount of valid real world marketing experience in the process. My blog is two years old. Yet one of my first article assignments professionally in 1994 was on this crazy technology called Mosaic. 15 years of technology PR and marketing experience later, I find this elitist point-of-view to be invalid and insecure.

 

Collectively we can do more than individually.  Collaboration works better than ivory tower development.

My one major concern is that technical form must serve functional need. Great technical toys without purpose don’t help us. Web 2.0 has been great, but we need to keep our eye on the prize, which is business function. The SMR has great potential for communications professionals, but it’s the entire online communications industry’s responsibility to participate and help make something that will work.

To continue the discussion, Shannon Whitley has agreed to a Buzz Bin interview. In addition, after SHIFT releases it’s next version of the SMR template, there will be a roundtable on SMRs hosted on Now Is Gone. Todd Defren, Jason Falls, Maggie Fox, B.L. Ochman and Brian Solis have agreed to participate.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
by Geoff Livingston | Internet Marketing |

32 Responses to “Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points to Consider”

  • maggie fox Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 10:49 am

    Hey Geoff, nicely put - looking forward to continued discussion!

  • DJLitten Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 11:04 am

    Thank you for the recap, some of the opinions shared I would have missed otherwise.

  • Todd Defren Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    Hi Geoff -
    FWIW, I haven’t said a peep about the Digital Snippets effort, yet, online or off. Still evaluating its pros & cons.

    I certainly have no beef at all with Maggie & Co. getting involved: good ideas don’t come with pedigrees!

    Anyway, as has been noted, we’ve got our own ideas cookin’ for a v2 of our template. Most important is that the conversation/debate not only continues but leads somewhere “final.” (Or as close as we can get.)

  • Jason Falls Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Happy to be a part of the conversation and thrilled we’re reinvigorating the discussion. Thank you Maggie! The continued conversation can only lead to innovation and improvement.

  • Geoff Livingston Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Thanks all! Everyone is making great contributions, and as I am more of a commentator and someone who covers this, I am thrilled at the progress everyone is making.

    Todd, agreed, you are a scholar and a gentleman. My comments are not meant to point fingers, but they are intentionally designed to set the table for an open, productive conversation with all parties.

  • Brian Solis Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    I agree with all of your points, however #8 and #9 can’t be taken too lightly. I know what you’re trying to say, and I agree in principle.

    It is important to remember that history lessons prevent us from repeating mistakes in the future. And, they also serve as a foundation for legitimate evolution in a rapidly changing media landscape. We’re talking about social media here, not just about the latest shiny new object. There’s real value in the stuff that happens behind the scenes and as we’ve all learned, companies can make mistakes and customers are quick to call them on it.

    There’s a difference between Social Media evangelists and Social Media opportunities. It’s the latter that make it difficult moving forward for the rest of us as we help others understand what it is, how to genuinely use it, and why.

    Note that everyone in this conversation, at least that I know of, are not opportunists. But, remember, that all of your offline conversations are valuable and should only serve to inspire you to see clearly and also promote views across the full spectrum of conversations. People can make the decisions that they most align with…

    And for good measure, #5…why limit it? Conversations are organic. It could be different for every company - all dependent on their unique communities.

    Thanks Geoff!

  • collin douma Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    I have been working in this space for over 13 years now, Social media is not the latest thing to come along in my career or those of my colleagues, it is the destination that a lot of people have dedicated careers to achieve. In the PR world, it is the SMPR (SMR BNR.. what ever) that is surfacing from this effort. In advertising, it’s consumer generated media. In internet development, it’s social networking. In entertainment, it’s p2p networks. In journalism, it’s blogs. These efforts have collided into this new thing called social media. Some of the people would take ownership on the concept of the SMPR. That is like taking ownership on the concept of a Peer to Peer network… it’s silly and anti-productive.

    Collaboration is how we move this kind of mountain, not fighting over who invented the bulldozer… let alone fighting over what color the mountain is, or what to name the mountain ;-) Let’s get digging! The proof is in dem der HILLS!

    If I was writing a snippet about this right now, I would edit this entire comment down to this one distilled point>

    “SMPRs are for helping bloggers tell their stories, not for telling stories to bloggers.”

    Put that on your blog and aggregate it ! (Hey… not a bad tagline for digital snippets!)

    Cheers,
    collin douma
    Strategist
    Social Media Group

  • Chris Iafolla Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 4:46 pm

    Thanks Geoff. I found point 4 to be particularly relevant. We can do all the talking in the world inside the bubble, but until we are able to show solid feedback from real-world experiences we will have trouble getting industry-wide buy-in.

  • Brian Solis Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    Collin, well said. In terms of your one-liner, I’d say it’s so much more than just bloggers…it’s a very versatile tool.

  • collin douma Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    That’s True Brian ;-)

    You must be an editor too :-)

    I should have said podcasters, bloggers, facebook group members, content creators, forum members, Journalists, flickr group admins, myspace networkers, tweetererererers (I never know when to stop erer-ing) text messengers, carrier pigeons :-) etc.

    We need a name for everybody… Maybe Digital Katamari?
    :-)

  • Lindy Dreyer Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    “My one major concern is that technical form must serve functional need. Great technical toys without purpose don’t help us.”

    I share your concern. Sometimes the toy overshadows the strategy work that really is more important. I love shiny and new as much as the next person, but I also have a closet full of stuff I never use.

    Confession time…I’m a social media “sophomore” and proud of it. Does that mean that in a couple years I’ll graduate? I’m constantly struggling with balancing the right time to speak up versus the time to listen and learn. Ultimately, though, we’ll need to make sense of innovations like the SMR to executives with far less experience than even I have. For my part, I promise to keep doing my research. ;-)

  • Kami Huyse Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    A little late to this party, but I have a few observations. I love the Digital Snippets concept. I like that you can find all of the assets around the story in one place. One of my biggest pet peeves as a B-to-B journalist was that I always had to scrounge for all of this stuff. So, this is just as useful for mainstream media as it is for bloggers.

    After looking at this, and thinking about it for a few days, I have some additional thoughts:

    1) While it is pretty, unless I know what it is, the Diggital Snippets seem to be an advertisement. Problem with this is that you minimize the success of use by the casual keyword surfer. I would like to see some text up top explaining what this is.

    2) In the section Conversation, I have no idea what this conversation is. How about a line like, “What Others Are Saying About the Ford 150,” or similar. Then I know as a blogger that I might be linked to in this section. Also, is the linking automatic, or are you all picking and choosing (I understand that might have to happen to prevent spam)

    3) I would also have a link somewhere to an explainer page, to give a full account to what the release is for and how the content could be used. For example, you could have some creative commons licensing language there. Since all of this is new to almost everyone, I think the more we can communicate the benefits the better.

    A word about the “conversational” part of the SMNR. There has been a lot of debate around the idea that there should be comments and conversation in the SMNR itself. I say that this depends. There may be a use where comments would be a good idea, and others where it wouldn’t. I am against the SNMR being defined by this criteria.

    I also don’t see this as a rework of MutiView or EON. For one, this uses social sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr to deliver assets. Also, it has the added benefit of helping them to throw a more diverse and wide net across the Internet, which in turn will help with search.

  • maggie fox Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    This has been (and continues to be) a great discussion!

    @Collin, I have to confess when I read the bit about “newbies and sophomores with at most two or three years of social media experience… disturbing the process” it took me a minute to realize that they were referring to us. Which, I have to confess, I find absolutely hysterical. We’re “newbies” in a field that didn’t exist four years ago, and in which we’ve been working since 2006 on large global accounts like Yamaha Motor, Ford, SAP, Harlequin Publishing, Corbis, Fiserv… I’ll stop myself there.

    With fewer than a dozen pure-play social media agencies in North America today, we’re ALL newbies, and the great thing is that if we want to, we can share our work with one another to help better shape the things to come. Which was the spirit behind the release of our template. We wanted to share what we’d learned in our practical application of the SMPR format for one of the largest companies in the world, in a format everyone was accustomed to. We’re not theorizing here, we’re doing, which is providing us with unique insight that we’re happy to continue sharing, whether or not it upsets certain applecarts.

    And @Kami - thanks for the feedback, and I agree - I think we have some design and simplicity issues with the template, we’ll noodle on that a bit.

  • Jeff Majka Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    Geoff,

    Excellent recap! My thoughts exactly- press releases, social or otherwise, are merely tools that serve a larger strategic goal. The value of public relations is much more than the sum of its specific parts.

    Jeff

  • Geoff Livingston Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm

    Just wanted to acknowledge everyone who has commented. It’s a great discussion, and I am listening. I plan on monitoring SMR development for the next 6 mos as I think it’s could breakthrough as a common practice. Thanks, Brian, Collin, Chris, Lindy, Kami, Maggie and Jeff for your latest insights.

  • Dana Theus Says:

    February 12th, 2008 at 10:21 pm

    This is a great subject and your posts on it were really helpful. I just wrote a post on the SMPR and triangulated on some data you highlighted from e-Marketer on the influence of non-official sites. Here’s the link for those who are interested: http://m-2-m.typepad.com/m2m/2008/02/social-media-pr.html

    Thanks for the great blog. I’m hoping to come to the event at Viget later this month.

  • dscoville Says:

    June 13th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    I particularly like collin douma’s comment about the definition of SMPRs. Thanks Geoff, for your summary of Digital Snippets and SMRs.

    • Trackbacks

  • Media Orchard, by the Idea Grove: Media News, Marketing Views, Celebrity Culture, Political Spin Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] Submit your story!Travolta talks Heath Ledger: Real sympathy or blatant attention grab? (Deceiver)Are people STILL flogging the social media news release? (The Buzz Bin)Facebook made me kill myself (Collateral Damage)Scott and Cam argue about Iraq, again [...]

  • Spin Thicket Comments Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] [...]

  • PR 2.0 Says:

    January 24th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] only to acknowledge it directly along with the great work contributed by others in the space.Geoff Livingston is right when he says, “Old-timers in social media need to realize that innovation and adoption [...]

  • Rebranding The Social Media Release | Social Media Explorer Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 8:00 am

    [...] Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points To Consider [...]

  • Association Marketing Springboard - ideas, tools, articles, resources, links: Social Media Press Release News: Is Your Association Ready? Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] The blogs are all a twitter (Twitter’s twittering, too) with the release of Digital Snippets, a new web service designed to take the work out of creating the ultimate Social Media Release (SMR). Digital Snippets comes from the group that did this SMR for Ford. The tool itself is among a new generation of PR services trying to perfect the template for the SMR.An SMR is a dynamic storyboard that contains portable content. Unlike a press release that locks down the story and presents the “company line” on a topic, the SMR is designed as building blocks for other content creators–bloggers and reporters who might like to tell their own story using your photos, graphs, videos and news updates. This is very exciting stuff–and a whole new way of thinking about working with the content creators of your industry. Check out these two templates to see what we’re talking about here…Social Media Group’s Digital Snippets TemplateAn earlier version from SHIFT CommunicationsSo with this shiney new toy comes much responsibility. What are the strategies that this supports? How does it fit into an organization’s overall social media strategy? Overall PR strategy? Are associations ready to make the plunge? Who has already taken the plunge? These are the questions that will be on my radar in the next few months as I do even more research into this new communication standard.Check out these jumping off posts about SMRs…Chris Heuer video post about the difference between a press release and an SMRGeoff Livingston SMR Criticism: Nine Points to Consider [...]

  • (EMP) E-Marketing Performance » : » Team Reading List 1.25.08 Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    [...] Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points to Consider [...]

  • Social Media Release Evolution | Shaun Low Says:

    January 25th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    [...] Livingston is right when he says, “Old-timers in social media need to realize that innovation and adoption [...]

  • links for 2008-01-26 « Das Textdepot Says:

    January 26th, 2008 at 1:18 am

    [...] Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points to Consider » The Buzz Bin Sehr gutes Update zur Diskussion und Weiterentwicklung der SMNR in den USA mit einigen kritischen Überlegungen (tags: socialmediarelease) [...]

  • PR-Kloster » Neues von der Social Media News Release Says:

    January 26th, 2008 at 4:48 am

    [...] diesmal mangelt es nicht an Kritik, die “The Buzz Bin” (Blog der US-Agentur Livingston Communications, die selbst bereits Erfahrungen mit der SMNR [...]

  • Social Media Group » Blog Archive » Digital Snippets - how it works Says:

    January 28th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    [...] platform and shared the template that explains its functionality. The news spawned quite a bit of discussion online, which is fabulous! We’re really hoping that interested parties will dig into the work [...]

  • Social Media Press-Releases – part 2 « Pete’s View Says:

    January 30th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    [...] A few days ago Maggie Fox released her company’s version, providing details of the internal lay out and the elements that should be included. That engendered quite a bit of insightful discussion (here, and here). [...]

  • 50 best social media links - Twitter Blogs and Bookmarks Says:

    February 10th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points to Consider [...]

  • Digital Snippets - how it works » Social Bookmarking News: social, bookmark, marketing, ranking, hits, snippets, smpr, ford, issued, verve Says:

    February 14th, 2008 at 8:45 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] platform and shared the template that explains its functionality. The news spawned quite a bit of discussion online, which is fabulous! We’re really hoping that interested parties will dig into the work that [...]

  • Riffs, Tiffs and What Ifs: Social Media News Releases (SMNR's Are Absolutely Worthless) Says:

    June 21st, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] Suggestion for the Social Media Release Shannon Whitley: The Wire and the WebGeoff Livingston: Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points to ConsiderJeremiah Owyang: How Brands Will Use FriendFeed - The SMNR will die. But be reborn as [...]

  • POSM #2: Give me another viewpoint please | Engage in PR Says:

    October 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am

    [...] is his ability to disagree with folks, trends, tools and practices.  He brings a thoughtfully contrarian viewpoint to a conversation that all too often sees people just nodding in agreement with each [...]

Leave a Reply

Twitter Users!
Enter your personal information in the form or sign in with your Twitter account by clicking the button below.