The proliferation of blogs, podcasts and online versions of print and broadcast media channels have created a new kind of influencer. Savvy public relations departments and firms are beginning to realize that these new influencers have different needs than their traditional journalist cousins. Most of these new influencers have not been assigned the story, nor are they paid to write for their preferred platform. They do it out of the desire to participate, the esteem of being a topic expert, or simply out of enthusiasm for a topic, product or message. They do this by using their platforms to start conversations.
That makes our strategy very clear: enable conversation by helping these new influencers tell their stories. The SMPR (Social Media Press Release) is how we do it. Social Media Group has taken the developing notion of the SMPR and standardized it into an indispensable tool for every savvy corporation’s public relations toolkit. We call this platform “Digital Snippets”.
Download out the Digital Snippets SMPR template.
Once released to the public, the traditional press release is not able to evolve the story. The content is often long, tremendously detailed and heavily editorialized text that the “traditional journalis” is paid to sift through. An SMPR, however, cuts out the editorial and streamlines the core content into easily digestible, quotable and most importantly, updatable “Digital Snippets”. This makes every item posted on an SMPR a potential “asset” for the influencers to quote, republish and editorialize credibly.
“Digital Snippets” updates the story with any combination of available multimedia assets including photos, videos, audio clips, graphs, pdfs, textual facts and any other type of story update imaginable. Since the new influencers are generally not paid to write, nor are they interested in spending more free time than necessary to create a post, podcast or article, we don”t wish to ask them to sift through 2000-3000 word press releases looking for “the point”. We want to give them the latest information in easily digestible chunks and we want them to be sure their source is credible.
An SMPR speaks to this and unlike the traditional press release, can be updated to tell the evolving story. Subscribers to the information get an editorial-free update to the SMPR as a “Digital Snippet”.
Check out the following SMPRs I strategiezed and designed for Ford at Social Media Group using the “Digital Snippets” platform and approach:
UPDATE: here is the SMPR and “Digital Snippet” buzz around the web:
Social Media Group: Social Media Press Release: Digital Snippets
Livingston : “Social Media Release Criticism: Nine Points to Consider”
The Social Media Press Release hits SMPR 2.0
Social Media Group updates the press release
A New take on the social media press release
New Version of Social Media Release lacks essentials
Social Media Press Release Evolves Slowly, but Nicely
On Digital Snippets
Rebranding the Social Media Press Release
Neues von der Social Media News Release
Social Media Group: How it works
Ford Uses WordPress and Social Media
Tweet This!
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10 Responses to “Digital Snippets – Standardizing the Social Media Press Release”
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January 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
do you think you have enough shadows on things? its almost over done.
is it just me or are these “digital snippits” blogs about certain things? with content that gets constantly updated by the PR department….
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
This is an interesting take on the SMPR. My feeling is that for a client like Ford, it’s great, but for PR firms who work mainly on a project basis, this would almost be too much weapon to wield.
I will say this – if nothing else, the design has been greatly improved.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Watch the shadows… got it. Thanks Drew.
You are sort of right on your assumptions, but this is not a blog. At it’s core, Digital Snippets is not about telling bloggers the client’s stories, it’s about helping bloggers tell the bloggers stories. The content is optimized for maximum “repost” ability. If you wanted to find a current, credible link to reference on a particular subject, you know have the source… That’s the idea. The updates are not necessarily coming from PR either. They can come from Engineering, Design, Marketing, etc.
Thanks for the comments!
collin
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Thanks for the Comment Ryan.
It does work well for big clients, but don’t forget, everything is scalable. You are right however, these SMPRs tend to be longer term strategies in contrast to a traditional press release.
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
The concept makes good sense, but I still wonder how many “key influencers” there are out there in the blog world… yet…
From my experience the whole idea of a press release is to “release” the press from the work/research required to write the days story. These SMPRs seem a tad cluttered and could be viewed as work in themselves.
These days, I seem to be getting solid interest from my key bloggers simply by getting good press in the old media world [bloggers do like to comment on things they read in their morning papers it seems].
I’d be interested in seeing the results. Do you folks have any examples of your digital snippets content showing up in key automotive blogs? – Have you tested this format against say, a well worded email with, short and sweet, with quick concise links to a “media elements” site somewhere within the Ford site?
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Great questions Curm.
I can’t give you the results/numbers behind these SMPRs as this data belongs to our clients. However, I can safely say that the reach has gone far beyond our expectaions generating post views into the millions.
We are lucky however! Bloggers love talking about cars
In the automotive world, there are thousands of small influence blogs, (with a technorati rank of 25k or above for example) dozens of medium influence blogs(with a technorati rank between 5K and 25k), several high influence blogs (with a rank between 2k and 5 k)and a handful of power blogs like Jalopnik: 185 rank and Autoblog with a current rank of 68. (Technorati is not the only criteria we use to measure influence, I’m just using it as a general reference for your questions)
I can tell you that all of levels of influence have used assets originating with these SMPRs
A site like Jalopnik gets nearly 500K unique visits a month, Autoblog comes in at around 540K.
Our data shows that many people spend time actually reading posts on blogs. This is something nearly impossible to quantify in the print world beyond circulation numbers and reasonably educated guesses.
That said, It would be foolish to abolish your Traditional press strategies. This is a new tool in the chest, and should not replace the old ones.
As a special note, it is not only bloggers using this content. I have spoken directly to traditional news paper journalists who are using this content for their online stories.
very interesting stuff.
c
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March 16th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Haha ^^ nice, is there a section to follow the RSS feed
March 16th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Radley
?
Um, yeah, right at the top… wait a minute… are you a spam bot