How To Write Social Media Press Releases

As we collectively align PR with Social Media, it’s important to take a couple of steps back in order to help everyone understand the benefits of Social Media and most importantly, learn how to implement Social Media Optimized (SMO) campaigns to more effectively converse with customers and encourage them to share information amongst each other.

Technologies such as RSS, tags, SMO, social bookmarking, etc., are ineffective if you don’t have a grasp on what they are, how they work and how you can benefit from them.

The point of this page is two-fold, one to help grasp the premise of social media in order to then take it to the next level with an SMPR, and two, how to write more effectively.

It’s also important to understand that just because SMPRs provide a new format for delivering news, and, wire services provide a new push channel for companies to broadcast to bloggers, it doesn’t mean that bloggers/reporters will automatically pull your information.

As one reporter put it when learning about SMPRs, “You mean I can get the same poorly written press release in a whole new format, with fake, useless executive and customer quotes, so that I can deconstruct the content in order to figure out what the news really is?”

Great point…new technology and poor writing, still equal a bad press release.

PR101?
There are many discussions lately surrounding PR 101 in regards to writing press releases. Everyone says, “write well, write clearly, get to the point, reduce hyperbole, etc.”  But as with every educational institution, there are always different “schools” of thought on how to write well. So PR 101 doesn’t mean much if you didn’t learn the right things along the way. This really shouldn’t be open to various interpretations. Take the following advice at its core and don’t deviate from it.

Bloggers and traditional reporters are busy people. They will never ever get from a release what your product marketing and marketing department try to shove into it.

Another way to create a “better” press release is to think about it as taking the news release you would have written and then condensing it into a solid pitch letter. Get to the hook and the relevance ASAP. The process forces you to distill what really is important, why, and to whom it impacts. The end result should be a compelling, SMPR which bloggers and reporters will appreciate.


Background
For those who may need to catch up with the history…this effort was inspired by Tom Foremski's original post, Die Press Release, Die Die Die, where he tells the PR industry that things cannot go along as they are…business as usual while mainstream media goes to hell in a hand basket. In turn, Todd Defren of Shift Communications introduced his Social Media Press Release Template and it was extremely well received.

To help PR professionals create effective Social Media Press Releases, I developed a “how to” guide, using a social media format, to help put things in perspective.

I’m often asked, will SMPRs replace traditional PRs? The answer is, no, and it’s not intended to. In fact, many new media PR practitioners write and distribute both, or a fusion of the two – which leads me to one last note.  Social Media does not replace traditional PR, it complements it.

Click here to see an example - "How to Write" a Social Media Press Release Template Now Available

Click on the links below to follow through to the Social Media “How To” guide.

Word
How To Write SMPRs by Brian Solis.doc
492KB

PDF
How To Write SMPRs by Brian Solis.pdf
300KB

*The "How To Write a Social Media Press Release" Document is free for public consumption and distribution. Feel free to remove the company logo.  This document is licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you use it, please list an author credit as "Brian Solis / FutureWorks" and link the credit to http://www.briansolis.com