{"id":913,"date":"2007-01-20T22:44:21","date_gmt":"2007-01-21T03:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/01\/20\/do-we-need-a-social-press-release\/"},"modified":"2007-01-20T22:44:21","modified_gmt":"2007-01-21T03:44:21","slug":"do-we-need-a-social-press-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/01\/20\/do-we-need-a-social-press-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we need a social press release?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremiah Owyang, a web strategist with Podtech, has gotten <a href=\"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/22\/edelman-release-the-social-media-press-release-tool-storycrafter-i-dont-get-it\/\">a debate going<\/a> on the idea of the &#8220;social media press release&#8221; or SMPR (you know when something becomes an acronym that all hope is lost), which is an idea that some PR types have been tossing around for awhile. I think the idea, which my PR friend Ed Lee has <a href=\"http:\/\/bloggingmebloggingyou.wordpress.com\/2006\/12\/05\/canadas-first-snr\/\">written about before<\/a> is essentially to update the traditional press release with social-media links and content.<\/p>\n<p>Edelman has tried to push this particular train forward by putting out something it calls <a href=\"http:\/\/www.socialmediarelease.org\/\">Storycrafter<\/a>, software that is supposed to help companies put together social-media releases. But not everyone is sold on the idea &#8212; and frankly, neither am I. Stowe Boyd makes some excellent points in his post here, about how the SMPR is still more about talking <i>at<\/i> people instead of engaging with them in some way, and to pimp out the press release with tags and Digg links doesn&#8217;t really solve that problem.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"left\" id=\"image914\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/press-release.jpg?w=525\" alt=\"press-release.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Jeremiah has some similar questions, saying: <em>&#8220;Why are we formalizing the word of mouth network into these clean nice buckets? Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the point of conversations to have them flow nice and easily? Is this a way for Marketers to infiltrate \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Social Media\u00e2\u20ac\u009d communities with a few clicks and graphics? Where\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the relationship building? Where\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the humanity?&#8221;<\/em> Steve Rubel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.micropersuasion.com\/2006\/12\/edelman_storycr.html#comment-26887365\">responds<\/a> that the SMPR is a sort of intermediate step, to get clients to dip their toes into social media.<\/p>\n<p>I know when Ed asked me what I thought of the SMPR that High Road put together for Weblo, I said I thought it was a good step, and I still think that. A baby step, perhaps, but still a step. Not everyone is going to jump feet-first (or head-first) into blogging. But I would also agree with Stowe and Jeremiah &#8212; and Brian Oberkich <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianoberkirch.com\/?p=751\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livedigitally.com\/2007\/01\/20\/time-to-kill-the-press-release\/\">Jeremy Toeman<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irwebreport.com\/daily\/2007\/01\/17\/social-media-wire-releases-are-bogus\/\">Dominic Jones<\/a> &#8212; that it does not go nearly far enough. And it looks like my friend Tony Hung <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deepjiveinterests.com\/2007\/01\/20\/why-social-media-press-releases-matter\/\">agrees with me<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More on the subject from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.briansolis.com\/2007\/01\/enough-already-getting-social-media.html\">Brian Solis<\/a>, Scott Karp at <a href=\"http:\/\/publishing2.com\/2007\/01\/20\/demented-and-sad-but-social\/\">Publishing 2.0<\/a> (complete with <i>Breakfast Club<\/i> reference) and from Chris Heuer at SocialMediaRelease.org, who says Stowe took things that were said at the Third Thursday get-together out of context and is deliberately trying to stir up controversy &#8212; which, knowing Stowe a little, I find hard to believe.<\/p>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Shel Holtz, who was part of the Third Tuesday panel, has <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.holtz.com\/index.php\/weblog\/throwing_out_the_tool_with_the_blogwater\/\">a long and thoughtful post<\/a>, and Stowe has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stoweboyd.com\/message\/2007\/01\/social_media_an.html\">responded to<\/a> Chris and others as well. In the end, I would agree with my friend Mark Evans that <a href=\"http:\/\/markevanstech.com\/?p=2049\">there is a place<\/a> for press releases &#8212; social or not, as well as for blogs and pretty much every other kind of social media. A place for everything, and everything in its place. And Dominic Jones has a persuasive argument for why any kind of press release, social or not, isn&#8217;t anywhere near <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irwebreport.com\/daily\/2007\/01\/17\/social-media-wire-releases-are-bogus\/\">as good as a blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><i>(cross-posted from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/media\">my media blog<\/a> &#8212; be sure to check out the comment from Amanda &#8220;Strumpette&#8221; Chapel)<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremiah Owyang, a web strategist with Podtech, has gotten a debate going on the idea of the &#8220;social media press release&#8221; or SMPR (you know when something becomes an acronym that all hope is lost), which is an idea that some PR types have been tossing around for awhile. I think the idea, which my &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/01\/20\/do-we-need-a-social-press-release\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Do we need a social press release?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}