How to Write a Social Media Press Release - Part II

"How to Write" a Social Media Press Release Template Now Available

In Honor of the 100th Birthday of the Press Release, New Worksheet Explains Social Media and the Process of Writing SMPRs

See example, history, and additional information here.

I. Headline:
Insert a short, compelling headline that features keywords, not buzzwords, to attract attention and legitimate interest by those who cover your space as well as potential customers.

II. Sub Headline:
The Subhead should further explain why someone should continue reading, providing a bit more clarity to the news

III. News Summary:
List a few compelling features of what, why, and who cares…do not use buzzwords or hyperbole (and try to keep the entire release below 400 words). You can use bullets or sentences or a combination of both.

IV. Quotes:
Not every press release needs a quote, especially if the quote doesn’t lend anything to the value of the information. If a quote is necessary, there are a couple of ways to implement into the SMPR.

Corporate Quote:
Please do not start with, "We are excited…" or "We are thrilled…" Keep the quote on target explaining why this is a significant milestone.

Expert or customer quote (if necessary):
Keep it related to the news and how the product/service benefits customers in real world applications.

V. Market Facts and Relevant Links:
Use del.icio.us or other social media-driven site to collect relevant facts about the company, product, competition, and state of the market and present it all through one link.

One Link Example:
http://del.icio.us/FutureWorksSMPR

Or you can provide the relevant links in its own category of the SMPR.

Multiple Links Example:
How To Write an SMPR – http://future-works.com/about/103106_htg.html

Todd Defren’s SMPR template – http://www.pr-squared.com/2006/05/the_social_media_press_release.html

Examples of social media press releases –
http://www.spiralfrog.com/socialmedia.aspx?control=spiralfrog-kochrecords20sep06.ascx

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/8/prweb428622.htm

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=162010

Evolution of social media press releases – http://www.briansolis.com/2006/10/evolution-of-social-media-press.html

SocialMediaClub – http://www.socialmediaclub.com

Social Media Releases - http://www.socialmediarelease.org

VI. Company Info:
Add a few sentences about the company, but leave out "XXX is a leader…" and other filler, posturing language. Don’t make it too long, you can always link to a corporate backgrounder or additional information.

VII. Image/s Link:


Include a link to images, and the best way to do so is to use a social media photo sharing services such as flickr or zooomr. The best part about social media is the ability to not only share your photos with bloggers and reporters, but with the right tags, the pictures can make their way onto the desktops of anyone searching for similar products/services for consumption and sharing.

For example, if you go the link below, you will see a set of images that I created for the purpose of sharing artwork with PR/marketing writers interested in the launch of the Social Media Club. I’ve also tagged each photo with several different tags, including "socialmediaclub" and "social media" so that others can find these images when they’re searching for photos related to the subjects.

Example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/briansolis/sets/72157594290369491/

VIII. RSS Link:

RSS is a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites and blogposts. Using RSS, webmasters can put their content into a standardized format, which can be viewed and organized through RSS-aware software or automatically conveyed as new content on another website. Now, this capability can be used for bloggers, reporters and customers to subscribe to future news directly.

Example:
http://www.future-works.com/cutenews/rss.php?category=2

or

http://www.briansolis.com/atom.xml

IX. Technorati Tags:

Technorati tracks the number of links and the perceived relevance of blogs, as well as the real-time nature of blogging.

What’s important for you to know about Technorati allows users to search by "tags" or keywords to help you identify who’s talking about your areas of interest. With Social Media Press Releases, readers will now also have access to your news – if tagged and published correctly.

For example, this "how to" will carry many keywords, tags, and links, with "PR" and "SMPR" among them. Behind the words, the following tag will be hyperlinked, http://technorati.com/tag/PR and http://technorati.com/tag/smpr and updated at Technorati. So for example, if someone searches "PR" as a tag or as a keyword, this article will hopefully appear in the list.

For more information on tags, please visit:
http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html

Example:

For the tag "futureworks", it would look like this
FutureWorks - http://technorati.com/tag/futureworks

Remember to use best practices and publish only relevant and necessary tags – do not promote tag spam.

X. Bookmarks:
It’s important to give readers a way to save the link, using their favorite tools. The whole concept here is that you provide a means to enable social bookmarking which allows other people to find and share favorite things on the web.

It’s also a good idea to provide suggested tags (or tag beacons) to help track pickup and encourage sharing all under a common umbrella

Example:
Tag Beacons: socialmedia press+releases public+relations PR brian+solis todd+defren chris+heuer socialmediaclub SMR socialmediarelease

Save to Del.icio.us

XI. News Sharing, Digg, NewsVine
These sites tap into the potential reach of user powered content. Every article on digg and Netscape is submitted and voted on by their communities. By placing a link to these sites in the release, users can help share, discover, bookmark, and promote your news.

Example:

Digg

NewsVine

XII. Contact Info:
Add contact info here. Please include relevant info, email, cell, and any IM client you may use.

Also, insert link to vcard, see example below:
http://0301.netclime.net/1_5/M/6/2/Brian%20Solis.vcf

# # #

A Note About Distribution:
Several wire services reach traditional media, but integrate social media optimization (SMO) and search engine optimization (SEO) elements as well to appeal to bloggers (because the releases can provide the information in a format that they can appreciate).

These services include:

Marketwire (traditional, SEO - working on SMO) - Marketwire distributed the example release.

PRWeb (traditional, SMO, SEO)

PRNewswire (traditional, SEO, multimedia)

Businesswire (traditional) and the new, pseudo SMO BusinessWire (alliance with PRWeb)

Weblogwire (traditional - but only tech bloggers subscribe to this service)

PRXbuilder - (SMO specific, aligned with PRNewswire)

Tags: Briansolis brian+solis todd+defren chris+heuer socialmedia social+media futureworks futureworkspr smpr publicrelations pr public+relations press+release press+releases pressreleases pr2.0 pr20 pr+2.0 newpr seo smo media