From press release to social media news release

Technology has changed the way PR pros handle media relations. Some time ago press releases (PRS) were sent by mail. They have been distributed via e-mail in the last years. Technology is now evolving at fast speed and leaves its footprint on public relations practice once again. Here comes the social media news release (SMNR).

What is the difference between a press release and a social media news release?
ATTRACTIVENESS, STRUCTURE and REACH to name a few. Let’s have a look.

Features compared

While a SMNR includes the elements of a traditional PRS (logo, title, facts, quotes, boiler plate, and contact information) it also adds value to its receiver through multimedia, RSS, social bookmarking and other useful links – see the pictures below.




There are a few points I want to make about the comparison:
1. “A picture is worth a million words” and one can argue that traditional press releases can also include photos. I say that opening e-mail attachments takes longer than scrolling a mouse. :)
2. A SMNR is better structured than a PRS making it easier for readers/journalists to spot the information they need.
3. The format of SMNRs is attractive (take a quick look at two photos above!). First impression always counts even if we should not “judge a book by its cover”.
4. Sharing is facilitated through SMNRs (Copyblogger).

Receivers compared

With a SMNR public relations pros can directly reach media, consumers and other social media users (Davies, 2009) while with a traditional PRS only media is directly targeted - consumers are a second audience. Not only does a social media release have a better reach but it is also more effective because messages are not filtered by gatekeepers. Consumers actually get to be exposed to unedited messages!



Still, media is a common audience for both and when talking about gatekeepers one thing is for sure: if you want to make press or social media releases appealing to the media you must make them newsworthy. Some things never change, right? :) And if we are talking about PR and journalism it is worth mentioning that Contemporarypr blogged about the An Inconvenient PR Truth campaign run by Realwire against irrelevance of public relations materials which I find very interesting.

So which of the two should we use? One of my professors once said that the answer to any question is: “It depends.” I have to agree with him on this one. :) Two of the issues to be taken into consideration are company resources (financial, video, audio etc) and receivers’ characteristics (internet users or not).