stedavies.com - communications consultant

Journalist and author of the Getting Ink blog, Sally Whittle, generally says things how she sees them (it’s a Northern thing, I think) and in one of her most recent blog posts she questions why the PR industry is slow to adopt the social media news release. She says, “Why aren’t more PRs using social media releases, given that we all seem so convinced of the value of PR 2.0 and social bookmarking and the like?”

Sally seems to think that us – for want of a better phrase – PR2.0 types are too busy pondering over which format is the best instead of just getting on with it and using them. I think she’s right too. There’s too much naval gazing going on as far as the SMNR is concerned. Not on this side of the pond but in the States some PR bloggers are writing manifestos on the flamin’ thing. As Nike once said:

But here’s a hack saying that she prefers the SMNR format over the regular press release. Admittedly, Sally will be a little more technologically savvy than the majority of her peers but aren’t us PR2.0 types supposed to be? Ben told me that a Guardian hack preferred it too after we put one out for the ITV2 Winter schedule.

Not only that but the winter brochure has received around 6000 downloads from the SMNR itself so far. Meaning that it’s a ‘direct to consumer’ type of release. So, in essence, a SMNR can hit three types of audience: journalists, bloggers and the general public using three different mechanisms: email, RSS and search. The latter two being ‘pull’ mechanisms.

Sally goes on to say that some of the SMNRs she’s seen aren’t “well written” or “compelling”. Although that can be said about regular press releases too. But speaking strictly from a platform point of view it’s a no brainer. The SMNR every time. It’s down to the creative mind of the PR person to make it compelling.

In related news: Shel Holtz challenges the assumption of some people who say that there is no proof of demand for the SMNR. As always, he makes some great points.