That’s what Stowe Boyd says:
For those who have missed the idea, a social media press release is supposed to be a webbish/bloggish version of old timey press releases. These will incorporate elements of the now commonplance blog motif: links, tags, comments, and trackbacks, for example.
This all begs the question (which I raised early on in the evening): Why not just use blogs? Why do we need these so-called “social” press releases?
I never really got a deep or usable answer to that question. What I did hear, however, was a widespread misunderstanding of what social media is.
I can understand where Stowe is coming from but I try not to get too worked up over what companies, marketing flunkies and PR flacks do while trying to trick us bumpkins into buying their crappy stuff.
Heck I run a business myself and try to get people to buy my no so crappy stuff (at least I think so) every day. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
In the end if a marketing or PR professional writes good copy, or tells a good story particularly when it is selling a good product it tends to cut through all the clutter no matter how the message is delivered.
I love new media but I don’t have this naive view of what it is. Some of it is good, some of it great, and some of it is crap just like every other product in the world.
Others blogging: Robert Scoble agrees with Stowe
Stowe Boyd speaks out against social media press releases and other lame ideas. He’s right. I hate that idea too. Just give us a damn demo of your product and tell us about it
Chris Heuer has a rebuttal at his blog:
If you had done a bit more research you would understand that the term social media release is the presentation layer, and that the concept we are supporting technically is the hRelease. The reason behind supporting Microformats are many, but the simplest is that it is intended to primarily be distributed through RSS on BLOGS!
The interesting thing about proposing a Microformat for it is the structuring of the information in the press release to make it more findable, which both Brian’s previous comments hints at. Additionally, I believe it is a way to distinguish everyday blog posts, from official corporate announcements, such as those that accompany a product launch, and to bundle all the facts/information in a way that will let other people tell the story – whether journalists, bloggers, raving fan customers or haters.
For you to harp on us for the one ot two uses of the word audience is not fair nor accurate and quite honestly feels more like an attempt to nitpick for the purpose of creating controversy.
Chris also says he tried posting a comment at Stowe’s blog yesterday and it hasn’t shown up yet, so I guess I will repost here what I left in comments at Stowe’s blog as well. It wont be word for word as I didn’t save it anywhere nor remember exactly what I wrote but you will get the gist.
Big companies may be able to just post their news on their blogs because traditional journalists hang on their every word but if a little company posts it’s latest product release on their company blog it is going to have the same effect as a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it.
Smart little companies will use press releases, blogs, wiki’s and every other way they can think of to get their message out to the world. If their message or their product is great the world will cheer and hopefully buy their stuff. If its crap the world will respond accordingly.
Stowe also takes issue with the broad use of the term social media. In my personal experience people who are actually creating it call it new media. People who are trying to sell me something call it social media. At CES someone insisted the real term is digital media (I rarely hear that one). John Battelle recently called in conversational media ( I like that term a lot). Call it whatever you like blogs, vlogs, podcasts, wikis, internet radio are all cool and as they get more eyeballs and ears they will continue to attract more and more companies to the medium who want to sell stuff.
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