Thursday, September 6, 2007

Press Release 2.0: The "Social Media Press Release"

























And just when everyone was worried about the immanent death of the press release, it has instead been re-innovated to have a place in our 2.0 world as of May 23, 2006. The brainchild of Shift Communications, they have provided a downloadable PDF template for public use for writing a digital press release full of social media bells and whistles. Though it may not be aesthetically pleasing, it is a great way to tell PR professionals what features need to be included.
Read Shift Communication's press release about the template while also seeing it in action here.

As PR Squared puts it nice and concise: "Love it or hate it, what is important is that the banal, unhelpful, cookie-cutter press releases of yore have outlived their pre-Internet usefulness."

Personally, I am excited to see the revitalization of the press release that does its job while being technologically relevant. Since it's been over a year since Shift Communications' original release, it seems that creating such releases should be expected of PR professionals along with the good-ol' paper version. This actually makes me excited to do a press release. Can ya digg it?

Learn More:

Here's a news release about Edelman's new template software for making social media releases. Looks nice enough, but read the critiques in the comments for different views.

1 comment:

corinnew said...

Megan - nice looking page! Good job!

We'll definitely revisit your blog entry later on in the semester when we will talk about the social media press release.

For now, we might want to consider the following questions: How is it different from a traditional news release? How does it take advantage of the technologies we are exploring in this class? What are its benefits (& drawbacks)?