social media press release 2.0

I mentioned the social media press release in an earlier post – a topic that has attracted much attention in the PR community lately. The template in circulation at the time, while a useful checklist of things to include, had one major drawback: it was a PDF. Hardly in keeping with the current online media culture. Not very web 2.0ey. Why? because, while an electronic format, a PDF is intended for printing out. It’s static. Most of all, it cannot be read by search engines.
If you want to get your stuff talked about, you have to make it easy for online communities to talk about it. Easy to find, easy to link to, easy to share. As I mentioned at the time, what we need is a social media press release on a web page.
Ian Lurie has now provided an html template on this illuminating blog post. You can download the template from there, or just use it to trigger some ideas to design your own. He handily provides some instructions for creating your SMPR too:

1. Write out your headline, and the core news facts. A good headline still matters most!
2. Collect any images relating to the story. These might include product shots, pictures of people or places involved or other relevant imagery.
3. Upload the images to Flickr. You’ll need to create a free account.
4. Tag all of the photos using a single, unique tag.
5. Collect any video or audio files, as well.
6. Upload the videos to YouTube or another video sharing service.
7. Upload the audio to the server of your choice.
8. Download the social media press release template here.
9. Insert your headline and core news facts.
10. On Flickr, create a badge to display all of your images. You can create a badge that pulls images of a single tag, or in a single collection. You can also control the look and feel.
11. Insert your videos.
12. Set up a bookmark page on del.icio.us. Bookmark any related news, other press releases you’ve put out about this subject or any other relevant information. Then replace the link that reads “Or visit the del.icio.us feed” with yours.
13. Add quotes and any related links, as well as your company boilerplate.
14. Update the other links on the page to point at your site, and to any legal or privacy statements. Also update the contact information at the top.
15. Finally, if you’re up for it, use storyfeed.rss as a guide to create an RSS feed for the press release.
16. Upload everything to your web site.

Ian goes on to explain how you can get the word out, once you’ve uploaded the press release:

1. Link to it from your home page. This one’s obvious, but worth a reminder. Feature your new press release on your home page.
2. Send out a standard press release. You can send out a standard release using wire services, and link to the social media press release. That’ll get the press involved.
3. Do some blogger outreach. Use Google Blog Search to find related blogs. Write an e-mail to each blogger letting them know about the story. Bloggers want news. If you notify them once and don’t pester, they’ll give it a look.
4. Stumble it. Be sure to ‘stumble’ the press release using StumbleUpon.
5. Announce the social media release in any other online communities you frequent.
6. Use pay per click. If your story warrants it, buy a few pay per click ads on services like Google Adwords. If, for example, your press release deals with a new product, a PPC ad could bring prospective customers and reporters.
7. Ping. Your press release has an RSS feed, remember? Be sure to ping the major RSS search tools and services, such as Technorati and Feedburner.
8. Update. A social media press release isn’t supposed to be static. Add new links, upload new photos, add bookmarks to del.icio.us and update the RSS feed, pinging services with each update.

Read the full blog post, along with some examples of the social media press release in action, at conversational marketing.