IABC assumes sponsorship of social media release initiative
Hot on the heels of IABC‘s unveiling of eXchange, the association has announced its new leadership role with the social media release (SMR). IABC issued a press release this morning along with an associated social media release.
In fact, the social media release appears on an eXchange blog that was developed as a home for all future IABC social media releases. How’s that for synergy?
(eXchange lets members create blogs “for networking and collaboration.” Neville Hobson blogged about eXchange yesterday.)
The importance of sponsorship
As a member of the social media release working group, I brought the idea of getting involved to IABC. A lot of versions of the social media release have emerged since the concept was first trotted out over two years ago. Some agencies have embraced certain elements while rejecting others. A rapidly growing number of companies have issued social media releases. But the development of standards has languished, largely because the working group was unsponsored, just a collection of guys who believed in the effort. Not to put too fine a point on it, we were getting frustrated.
Under IABC’s sponsorship, I’m confident that we’ll be see accelerated progress. For example, it should be easier to get the press release distribution services more involved; Business Wire and PR Web have already committed to participation since receiving an invitation from IABC.
What the SMR is all about
None of which diminishes the work done by the likes of Edelman, The Social Media Group, WebitPR, Canada News Wire and others. In fact, all those efforts a great. The social media release is not about trying to get everyone to adhere to a rigid, inflexible format. It’s more about…
- Recognizing the need to configure company news in a way that makes it usable by online reporters and bloggers, particularly given that more and more people are turning to the Net for their news and information.
- Embracing the tools of social media, including RSS and social bookmarks, to name just two.
- Integrating links that make it easy for bloggers and journalists to conduct additional research.
- Providing multimedia elements that are easily clipped from the social media release and embedded into a blog post or online news report (just as I’ve copied from the IABC SMR into this post the following video of Chris Heuer—who founded the working group under the auspices of Social Media Club).
There’s work to be done
Some issues remain unresolved. For instance, there’s the question of commenting. One viewpoint argues that a social media release isn’t social without a comment field. Another maintains that there’s nothing inherently social about a social media release, but rather than it’s designed for easy use in social channels like blogs.
And then there’s the issue of tags that will make it easy to identify elements of any press release using search and other discovery tools. Once a tagging standard is finalized, a reporter or blogger would be able to find, for example, all quotes by a particular executive or all core news facts dealing with a particular issue.
The nature of that standard is a ways off. Canada News wire has launched a service that looks a lot like a social media release that automatically adds tags in the NewsML standard, an XLM scheme adopted by the publishing community. That’s great, but NewsML doesn’t address everything a press release might contain. There is some support for developing a microformat, but there’s also some resistence in the microformat community, suggesting that the hAtom microformat is adequate. It’s not, because there would be no way to distinguish an authoritative company news release from any other content.
Anyway, that’s all work to be hashed out by the working group that will grow and accelerate its activities under IABC’s guidance.
Here come the party-poopers
The IABC announcement will undoubtedly open the floodgates on a whole new flood of anti-SMR sentiment, led by the notion that it’s all just lipstick on a pig. The press release is dead and dressing it up in a social media costume won’t revive it. Instead, the pundits argue, companies should just blog.
Utter nonsense on both counts.
First, the traditional press release isn’t dead. To be sure, the number of terrible press releases crossing the wires is horrific. But a well-written press release has its place and still serves a lot of people. There is a growing body of evidence that the traditional press release has been reinvigorated by online placement.
Second, I agree that companies should blog. But who would want to read a blog—by a CEO, a product manager, or a frontline employee—that contains every bit of information about a new product, an upcoming merger, a response to a crisis? People read blogs for the individual’s perspective and insights, not for a lengthy recitation of facts. I would hope even the CEO, the product manager, and the frontline employee would be able to use a social media release to cherry-pick information and resources to include in their blog posts.
There’s also a camp that wonders why we’re bothering, since there hasn’t been an outrcy of demand for the SMR. I addressed this in a recent post noting that many innovations we take for granted today—even couldn’t live with out—were introduced without a surge of demand. From my perspective, the SMR just makes sense.
So, as I say, I’m encouraged by IABC’s new role as the shepherd of the SMR initiative and look forward to staying involved. Huge kudos to the IABC executive board and staff for agreeing to step up to the plate.
Incidentally, for the February installment of Cafe2Go, IABC’s monthly podcast, I interviewed Brian Solis—another member of the working group—about the SMR.
03/04/08 | 12 Comments | IABC assumes sponsorship of social media release initiative