A Swift Kick into "PR 2.0"

Among the challenges raised among the voices who reacted to the debut of the Social Media Press Release template: the sense of "unreadiness" among media, PR, clients, and the wire services themselves. Jeremy Pepper probably said it best: "it's all about baby steps, and I think this is too big a step for a lot of consumer companies."

I admitted at the start that this template may well be too bleeding-edge (for now), but frankly I've been blown away by the positive reactions among clients, media and PR pros; the positives far outweigh the negatives so far (and even the so-called negatives have been constructive). My in-box is flooded.
  • One journalist told me, "This is cool; there are less things for me to ignore!"
  • The director of PR at a billion+ dollar company (not a client) reached out to say, "This is just the kind of thinking that we need."
  • The prez @ bitePR let me know they were working on similar projects for their clients.
And that's just a sampling. Wow. Thank you, all! We'll see what happens...

A key lesson learned from this effort is that if anyone seems truly "unready" for the next-gen press release, it's the wire services. Despite their claims, it seems it's still "horse & buggy" time.
  • 24+ hours turnaround, and only during business hours? Responsiveness? - slug-like.
  • Very poor knowledge or utility when it comes to Web 2.0 stuff like del.icio.us, Technorati, etc.
  • Formatting nightmares.
  • The multimedia nature of these Social Media Press Releases = more $$$. This will be a deal-breaker for some clients.
Interestingly, Mr. Buffett's pet, BusinessWire --- with whom we've enjoyed a warm relationship for years --- was worst of all. PRWeb was pretty good, but clearly not as up-to-snuff as they'd have you believe. Ultimately, PR Newswire was the acceptable middle ground in terms of functionality and breadth. Their MultiVu version of our release was the best of the bunch. I wouldn't hold them up as a shining example, though (mostly due to their pricing, and their 24-hour, business-hours-only policies, which seem out of step with today's 24/7 culture).

You can argue that this is "bleeding edge" stuff; you can argue that no one's touched the press release format in 50 years ... but, c'mon --- it also ain't rocket science.

Everyone has some hard work to do in this arena, and --- based on the reactions so far --- it seems to be work that's worth doing. Giddyap!