stedavies.com - communications consultant

We’ve been working hard over here at webitpr towers. So much so that we’re the first UK (possibly European) company and first wire service to launch a version of the Social Media News Release. And what a good version it is too if I don’t mind saying so myself. First off, kudos to the original SMNR template developed by Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications which he/they kindly released out into the ether (better known as the blogosphere) just over a year ago with no copyright notice at all. Todd’s just referenced us in his most recent blog post.

Each SMNR we distribute will credit the SHIFT template btw.

We’ve tried to adhere to all of it’s original specifications and during this current beta phase we’ve received feedback from the man himself along with Brian Solis who knows more than most on social media and the concept of the SMNR. Take a look at this post by Brian.

We also received some great feedback from the guys from Converseon, Constantin Basturea and Paull Young, which, again, we have implemented into our version.

This particular SMNR is purely to demonstrate all of the features we’ve incorporated. Guess who the topic of the story involves? That’s right. Me. So for the time being forget about the content (and try to ignore my ugly mug) and concentrate on the features – there’s everything in there that’s specified in the original template and more. We have:

* Core facts
* Quotes
* Contact details
* Images
* Audio
* Video (with the option to use social networking video a la YouTube)
* RSS feeds
* Comments (which can be turned on or off)
* Social bookmarking
* Blog reactions (from Technorati)
* Related links
* Related coverage

Finally, we’ve integrated the facility to domain map each release so it can tie up with the client’s website and branding . If you take a look at my example you’ll see that it’s tied to the news.prblogger.com sub domain of my own url which means the client website (or in this case, my blog) will get all the Google juice. Have a look here to see it in the Google search results. We also have the option to set up data analytics software (e.g. Google Analytics) to track stats on each release.

I’m really proud of what we’ve done here and how we went about doing it. This is, in my humble but slightly biased opinion, the best version of the SMNR so far. Our belief is that it’s something that will continue evolving over time so we’re always looking for feedback and constructive criticism.

As a sidenote, I’m also proud that a smallish UK company beat all the HUGE wire services to it.

1 – nil to us.

Love it!

technorati tags: social+media+news+release, smnr, webitpr, todd+defren, shift+comms, brian+solis, stephen+davies