My hat is off to the pros at Shift Communications–a p.r. agency that created the first “social media press release” format back in 2006. This radical new take on the time-worn press release was the “shot heard round the world” for the p.r. industry, putting us all on notice that our media contacts need more from us than 20th century flackery. They’ve now come out with some important new updates that reflect newer tools that are available for sharing. Following their tips and making each piece sharable is invaluable advice.
I can’t do a better round up than they did in their original articles on the social media press release 2.0, and the mobile friendly press release. But I do have a couple things to add. The level of attentiveness and personalization they recommend in their follow ups can sound rather hard to achieve for time-strapped media relations folks. This is particularly true if you are putting together special Evernote albums or such, based on the platforms each reporter uses personally. This can be managed pretty easily, though, with updated media relations databases like Cision, MyMediaInfo and Vocus, all of which allow you to make notes on your media lists about your contact’s preferences and platform memberships, then share them with everyone on your media relations team. If you can’t afford that, survey your contacts, create a detailed media list in Excel. Either way, there’s no excuse for spamming your media list with information they don’t want, in formats they can’t use. The extra work is worth it. Personalization is the key to getting the eyeballs and respect your releases deserve.
susangosselin 