so this is mass communication?

At the Edelman Digital Bootcamp, I presented a number of social media assignments that I have worked into my traditional PR classes. This assignment is one of those assignments.

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This assignment is ideal for PR Writing and to be used in publicity for capstone Campaigns courses.

In this assignment, students write a social media press release. In February 2006, Tom Foremski wrote a blog post titled “Die! Press Release! Die!” where he asked public relations professionals to move beyond the traditional press release and provide content in a better format for journalists. He suggested leaving behind the already-written content and instead simply providing bulleted facts, quotes and multimedia. This call led to the re-vamp of the press release into what is now known as the social media press release or new media release; SHIFT Communications released a template (pdf) for the SMPR in May 2006. In early 2008, IABC took a leadership role in devloping the new type of release. Essentially, the release is comprised of short bulleted facts, multimedia (images, video, audio), quotes and suggested tags. The movement behind the SMPR cites that the format allows those who receive the release the opportunity to “re-mix” the content to report the story without PR influence. In this assignment, students are asked to create their own social media press release for an assigned client. If desired, you can have them actually lay out the SMPR in the free online SMPR tool (just don’t release it to the wire!) and have the students e-mail the SMPR directly to you in order to turn in. While students may not completely abandon the traditional press release in their practice, the SMPR is the first major evolution to the press release format in more than 100 years and is being adopted by Fortune 500 companies. Additionally, SMPR can be used for blogger relations and the use of it can assist in providing real metrics on the success of a release.

Directions to students: Compose quotes and content for a social media press release that might be released by your client. Write acceptable quotes, use bulleted facts and link to multimedia to attract press coverage and interest.

> Learning objectives

• Use journalistic news values to determine best news facts and angle to include
• Understand how multimedia linking multimedia to a release can make content more attractive
• Understand the proper composition of a social media press release

> Layout and content recommendations

• Use PRX Builder [http://www.prxbuilder.com/] to format the text of your SMPR (create username)
• Create a new social media release through PRX Builder, save the page/file by your lastname.xml (smith.xml)
• List yourself as the point of contact (you can be a spokesperson)
• Indicate your organization’s name and other relevant contact info
• Provide contact information, making you the PR point of contact (equivalent of writing your name on paper)
• Have a headline and subhead for the release
• Provide dateline information to include both location and date of release
• Write several core news facts as bulleted items
• Link to multimedia (images, video, games, quizzes) to go along with the release (make these URLs up)
• Write several bulleted quotes from various people in your organization about the issue, 3^rd party quotes also acceptable
• Provide company information (such as a boilerplate) that is concisely written and avoid PR fluff
• Suggest keywords for tags
• Optional: Link to other relevant coverage to date or blogger coverage of the issue, so the media knows that this has already generated interest (will increase your chances of getting published)
• Optional: Link to RSS feed (just make up link or just place the standard RSS graphic there)

> Tips

• Save everything in MS Word – the Web site or program might crash and you can’t retrieve it
• Remember journalists will have to write a story from this – so make sure you include a lot of facts and solid quotes
• Consider quoting someone from outside the client’s organization (reputable source whose opinion is valuable)
• Compose well-written Web text appropriate for blogs
• See these resources for additional tips
  • http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/shift/24521
  • http://www.pr-squared.com/2008/02/prsquareds_social_media_tactic_6.html
  • http://www.briansolis.com/2008/02/definitive-guide-to-social-media.html
  • http://www.socialmediarelease.org/2006/11/02/elements-of-the-social-media-release
  • http://www.socialmediarelease.org/2006/11/03/how-to-write-a-social-media-release-for-everyone-involved-in-pr-marketing-and-communications
  • http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/10/why-use-social-media-with-your-press-release
  • http://www.socialmediarelease.org/2008/02/15/social-media-releases-a-report-from-the-field
  • http://newpersuasion.typepad.com/new_persuasion/2006/09/using_the_socia.html

> Grading rubric

When grading an SMPR, treat it much like you would a traditional release. Did the student accurately communicate facts in a concise and well-written manner? Did the student adhere to AP Style? The difference, of course, with SMPRs is the inclusion of multimedia and offering a variety of extra resources for the recipient of the release (podcast, YouTube video, white paper reports, etc.). Additionally, did the student select quality facts for the news bullets? A good SMPR will have excellent news facts, solid quotes (typically no more than 2 per source), quotes from sources outside the organization and lots of multimedia by way of logos, head shots, videos, photos, etc. Additionally, the good SMPR will have well thought out tags suggested for those who may want to re-mix the content. A poorly written SMPR does not include any multimedia, includes meaningless facts, does not use Web writing techniques and does not have quality tags.

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