navigate communications

I have had the opportunity to contribute to an incredible industry initiative to define, or rather redefine the news release and help establish a recommended framework for the proposed Social Media Release. This was sparked by Tom Foremski proding the PR industry (that’s putting it lightly) to revisit the traditional press release. The initiative is being driven by Chris Heuer and is a project of the Social Media Club.

Today, Chris posted the initial social media release guidelines and considerations for discussion. Most of the conversation will take place in the New Media Release Group which is open to anyone. If you want to have a hand in shaping one of the core PR tools, check it out.

“The Social Media Release is intended to make it easier on people to identify and share the most important pieces of information with others around the globe while adding their own valuable perspective and/or editorial. It also takes full advantage of HTML, multimedia and the network effects enabled by the Internet by using structured data via the Microformat, which ultimately increases its findability by interested parties - which is ultimately the driving purpose of public relations and the press release specifically.”

Chris has also posted a follow-up called “The impact of the Social Media Release and how it changes everything.” Here’s a quote that pretty much sums up what it’s all about.

“The combination of RSS, tags and structured information is a powerful force for connecting people and organizations who have information to share, with the people and organizations who are most interested in that information.”

Technorati Tags: social media release, hrelease, new media release, social media club

I had a chance to get out to the first Social Media Club meet-up in New York on Monday evening. This was a great event. As a recent transplant to New York, it was great to meet some of the folks here that work in the digital space.

Howard Greenstein was kind enough to recap the meeting and include links to some useful New York new media resources. As Howard outlines in his post, the group exists to:

1. Promote (new) media literacy

2. Share best practices

3. Promote ethics and standards

This is right up my alley as is pretty reflective of my daily responsibilities at FH.

At the end of the meeting, we got into a discussion about the new media release, or social media release, or hRelease. The goal is to standardize the approach. The challenge is to get people working together. Hence the need for this group. There is a working group (thanks to Mark Nowlan at PR Newswire for pointing this “multimedia news release” out to me) exploring some of the early incarnations of the new media release. The example that was profiled in the meeting was for SpiralFrog.

This is a great start, as is much of the work on a social media press release template (PDF) done by SHIFT. I raised a concern at the meeting about whether or not the average journalist would know how to use this format. Are they familiar enough with RSS to know how to pull the most salient chunks of content? Some are. Not sure about most though.
There was also conversation about who the ultimate target audience is these days. One of the reasons I push colleagues and clients to consider online news formats is because so many people are turning online for their news and reading news releases issued by an organization. (Does anyone have any stats on this?) In order to enable more consumer facing formats, organizations need to consider what else people want. Context is key. This is created through the elements of the social media press release template referenced above. But where is the conversation? How does it tie into the community?

My post from last week (Beyond communication: Achieving an optimal social media mix) identified the elements that I think need to be further represented in the new standard. Actually, I think there is not a single mold. Content needs to be packaged in a relevant format based on the audience. Why are they seeking out the information? How does it fit into a larger, more contextual experience? How can we engage people to become part of the conversation?

Anyway, those are my thoughts today.

Technorati Tags: social media club, new media release, social media release, hrelease

Where’s my broom? I can’t believe how much dust has been gathering around here. I’m back.

My move to New York is complete. The job at Fleishman-Hillard New York is taking off. And best of all, my family is now with me in the big apple.

I underestimated the demands of a move, let alone the intricacies of an international move, even if it’s only from Canada to the U.S.

Anyway, there are some great things going on professionally that I intend to write about. I did decide while I was away from this blog for the last little while that I don’t want to create yet another PR blog. I’m not sure how navigate communications will evolve, but over the next few posts I hope to share some of my thoughts related to setting up the digital communications group and some of the areas I plan on getting involved in beyond work. For starters, I’ll be at the Social Media Club NY meeting next week with a couple of colleagues to discuss the hRelease, or social media press release.

Technorati Tags: hRelease, Social Media Club, social media press release, Fleishman-Hillard