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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Do you always know what you want or need?

In nearly every discussion of the Social Media Release (SMR)—whether it’s one I’m having with a group of people or one taking place on somebody’s blog—the same question keeps coming up: “Has anybody done the research to determine whether journalists even want something like this?”

It’s too easy to point to Tom Foremski’s original post calling for a serious updating of the trusty press release and note that Tom’s a journalist. But, of course, Tom’s just one journalist. Has there, in fact, been an outcry for the SMR?

No, not that I know of. But who cares? It’s a stupid question.

No offense intended to the people who ask the question, but if people only invented stuff other people asked for, the world would be missing some pretty significant tools. Like the telephone. The World Wide Web. The iPod. None of these were introduced because there was a groundswell of support for them. The Web and the iPod were both, in fact, ridiculed when introduced, as in, “Who needs such a thing?” The history of innovation is filled with important tools nobody knew they wanted.

About eight or nine years ago, I conducted an intranet audit in a financial services company. In focus groups, I never start by asking, “What do you want on the intranet?” In fact, I don’t even tell participants that the intranet is the subject at hand. I start with this question: “What drives you crazy trying to get your work done here?” IN this case, the issue that arose over and over again was file attachments. Big ones. Entire databases were zipped into 15MB attachments to email messages and sent to colleagues throughout the company. I recommended a file attachment center (sort of what YouSendIt has become today on the Web). The idea was a hit. If, on the other hand, I had asked, “What do you want to see on the intranet?” nobody would have said, “Some kind of file attachment center to alleviate our email attachment problem.”

People don’t always know what they want or need.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering several years ago for an article I was writing. I’ll never forget his list of reasons to introduce any new technology:

  • It solves a problem
  • It improves an existing process
  • It lets you do something you couldn’t even dream of doing before

The SMR—in both its current unfinished form and as it will appear when the vision is achieved—solves a lot of problems. The metadata scheme makes it easy to find elements of a release anywhere they appear and identify them as such. The availability of multimedia and Web 2.0 elements (tags, feeds, bookmarks, etc.) make it more useful to those who would write about it, whether they’re online journalists or bloggers. The bulleted core news facts make it hard for hacks to put out a newsless news release and easier for journalists and bloggers to detect BS.

The SMR improves a process by making it easier for organizations to get the various elements of a release—many of which simply won’t work in a traditional release—into the hands of those who want it. It’s also easier for the people who want it to get their hands on it.

The comment field integrated into many SMRs let organizations do something they’ve never been able to do before—use a release as the starting point for conversation.

Personally, I think the conversation is better served on a regular company blog authored by the CEO, the product manager, whoever is inclined to write about the subject of the release.

The SMR, though, represents one-stop shopping for anybody wanting to know anything about the subject or to use that material in their reporting efforts. That is, the SMR is the comprehensive archive of information and resources on the product launch, the recall, the merger, whatever the news may be. The blogs of real people in the oreganization offer perspective and context about the announcement. And, of course, the bloggers are as free to use the material from the SMR as are those covering the news.

I see no reason to put the brakes on the evolution of the SMR just because throngs of reporters haven’t demanded it. Ultimately, how it’s used will be the proof that it’s useful.

02/08/08 | 11 Comments | Do you always know what you want or need?

Comments

  • 1.Oh no, I know you did not just try to compare a SMNR to the invention of the telephone, the Web, and the iPod. Hell to the no!

    D'Angelo | February 2008

  • 2.D'Angelo, am I comparing the SMR to the iPod? No. Am I suggesting that they bear in common the fact that there was no clamoring of the masses for them? Most certainly.

    Shel Holtz | February 2008 | Concord, CA

  • 3.Excellent post. Shel, your point is valid for sure. We don't always know what we want or need. Fax machines (to name one more example) were very popular in their day, yet I don't remember anyone asking for them. Ditto the personal computer.

    I think it's fascinating watching the evolution of the SMR.

    Donna Papacosta | February 2008 | Toronto

  • 4.People don't always know what they want or need. Like the cellular phone. If it was not invented, communication would have been difficult. What if your outside and you need to talk to someone about an important matter at that very moment and there's no telephone anywhere? That would have been difficult.

    Natashiya | February 2008

  • 5.There's one more reason that question is less than smart (or stupid, as you put it): It assumes journalists are the only people who matter.

    Ask people like Mike Volpe from Hubspot or Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR and they'd likely have trouble shutting up about how "regular people," people who want to learn about something or buy something, often use news releases as a resource.

    So we're not writing news releases - social-media-ized or otherwise - only for journalists, no matter how broad your definition of journalism. We're writing for searchers, shoppers, consumers, writers, bloggers, podcasters, journalists, reporters, bosses, search engines, investors, SEC regulators and more. If an SMNR is helpful, useful or interesting to any part of any of those groups, I'm interested in exploring its uses further.

    Mike Keliher | February 2008 | St. Paul, MN

  • 6.Excellent point, Mike. Although I hasten to add that I never called anybody stupid; just the question.

    Shel Holtz | February 2008 | Concord, CA

  • 7.It's arrogant to think that you can just invent something without a need. Great inventions serve a need. The question shouldn't be whether journalists need this, but whether social media environments do.

    I see value in SMRs, and believe in them. But I also see a need for SMR creators to understand who the stakeholders these documents serve, and for what purpose. Frankly, I see very little conversation occurring on the many SMRs I've seen, so I see comments as something social media fundamentalists want, not what the market cares about. You can offer the features, can't hurt, but sooner or later, results matter.

    Geoff Livingston | February 2008

  • 8.Geoff, there's a difference between developing something for which you know a need exists and responding to market research that shows a demand exists. My whole point is that people often don't know they want or need something, but that doesn't minimize the fact that they do. As Shannon Whitley pointed out in his post, who knew they wanted or needed Twitter? Was there a clamoring for such a service? Yet look how popular it has become. Was it arrogant of Twitter's founders to invent something for which there was no demand? Or did they figure it was a need people didn't know they had?

    As for conversation from SMRs, I'll reiterate my own belief: It's not the release that is social. It's the people who are using its elements to engage in conversation socially. If the video, the quote, the news fact gets used by an online journalist or a blogger (because it's easier to do so with an SMR than a traditional release), and that post generates conversation, I consider that to be "results." In fact, I consider that to be the whole point.

    Shel Holtz | February 2008 | Concord, CA

  • 9.I apologize, Shel. My tone in the first comment was too harsh and pointed. Please excuse me.

    Many inventions are developed that never take off, so as I commented in Shannon's post, that approach often is like shooting in the dark. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don't. For every Twitter, there's a Jaiku that never seems to take off (in the U.S. at least), or worse, just flat out fails.

    Consider how many attempts there have been to attain the local search grail... No invention has met the bar. Yet.

    One thing I do know from my studies and experiences, is that successful innovations fulfill an unknown or an expressed need. The iPod (already cited) met the need, but many MP3 players failed before and after it.

    I hope and believe the SMR is like an iPod in that there's an unfulfilled need. I do think the SMR has been out for a while, so there's been slow adoption. I don't think any of the version yet (Defren 2.0 coming soon) is the iPod of SMRs. We need more innovation... or standardization.

    At the same time, I agree with you that the real results are bloggers and social media types repurposing the content (storyboard concept). Good discussion.

    Geoff Livingston | February 2008

  • 10.But, then again, I think it is when things are invented, that's the time when people think they need something that they may really not. Just as the technologies you mentioned above, before we had them, we lived. and we lived comfortably. Now after they have been introduced, we think they're indispensable.

    Viktor | February 2008

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