Press Release – 100 & Dead!

Ivy Lee also known as the father of modern Public Relations issued the First Press Release on 28th October 1906. The traditional press release completes 100 historic years in 2006 shouldn’t we be celebrating – maybe not! Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher is dying to kill press releases as he thinks they are nothing but useless. He strongly suggests that it’s high time we as PR practitioners move on from press releases and comply with the changing needs of the end consumer and at the same time facilitate it for the media. He proposed that the press releases should be deconstructed and all the information must be tagged, such as – a brief description of what the announcement is, quotes from the CEO, customers, analysts. It must provide financial information in many different formats and provide many links inside the press release copy, and also provide a whole page of relevant links to other news stories or reference sources. So as a publisher the news story can be pre-assembled and the information is made more helpful, after which we should leave the journalists to spin their own stories. This newfangled format for the press release has been sweltering since last February and a few PR agencies in the UK have been working on this idea and designing templates for the same. Todd Defren, principal at SHIFT Communications, designed a new format for the press release and termed it as “Social Media Press Release” which would exploit various social media services. The chief purpose to generate social media press release is to make it more readable by the machines and to motivate major web companies, like Technorati, and distributors, like PRNewswire and also to create Tools for it. Another PR agency – Edelman designed a template too, called the ‘StoryCrafter’ and they are the first to introduce the web based tool for publishing. Although right now these select PR agencies who have taken initiative to work with social media press releases are not hoping to impress much, as much as to help! They believe that it will triumph if the PR sphere starts to download the PDF and tack it to their walls for future reference. There has been an ongoing debate about the workability of social media press release, and the success seems to be unclear as it is still in its infancy stage. However, I personally do like the concept of social media press release, which according to me could be the next big trend in public relations for 2007 and the years to follow. Soon we and other PR practitioners will be downloading the templates to maximize media coverage for our clients and to simplify it for the journalists. Just like anything useful and new, goes through a round of trials and errors, the social media press release will have to pass that stage too, but once it is well accepted by the PR fraternity and the journalists, it will be the biggest boon. ("Social Media Press Release" template by SHIFT Communications)

I reflect that social media press release would triumph… do you?
Do you think journalists would accept Social Media Press Release?

YouTube: The Latest Addiction!

This post is a response to my first comment and thankfully was a positive one!

We are all familiar with YouTube and I bet, most of you’ll are as addicted to it as I am. Kami Huyse’s Blog was very interesting where she observes the developments of social media in 2006, and lists down 5 trends that will make an impact in 2007. Out of the 5 trends the First Trend essentially interested me; which includes the user-generated rise of viral video – YouTube. It has opened up the approach for all kinds of consumer-generated content, and is easy to view and share videos, with just a simple click! For example, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in September 2006 began running an anti-drug Public Service Announcements (PSA) through the YouTube System. In response to that, many YouTube users began uploading negative response and ranking the Public Service Announcements down. However, good or bad response it indicates the growth of interactive media, between the audiences, organizations and the PR practitioners. YouTube offers many ways in which PR practitioners can manipulate it to connect with their audience, for example a big company such as American television network – NBC and YouTube that proclaimed partnership in September 2006 to liberate more avenues for the viewers and media to reciprocate to the PR activities between NBC and YouTube. This partnership will merge NBC’s quality programming with YouTube’s massive audience to improve the entertainment experience on YouTube. And it will also engage viewers in innovative new ways to promote NBC’s fall program line-up and other hit shows over the next year, an excellent PR strategy by NBC to promote the channel and the shows. The numbers of PR activities one can carry out on YouTube are endless, since all you need to do is upload adverts of companies, movies or music videos for viewers to watch. For example, young talents who are just beginning their career in the music industry, such as Leona Lewis, the winner of The X-Factor can upload songs and videos on YouTube to get an audience to watch it and probably even like it. Even though I am hooked on to YouTube, I cannot gauge its reliability since anyone can use this service – not just PR practitioners, which does not make it an authenticate service to be used as a long term PR tool. In my opinion, YouTube is great to create a bit of hype, but it might not facilitate far-reaching public relations in the long run.

How reliable is YouTube as a PR tool… any comments?

Are we experimenting/exploiting Social Media?

Everywhere in the world there is a need to define and better understand the public relations industry, identify trends and highlight emerging key issues. After going through an interview, several books, and websites and blogs written by some of the best public relations practitioners around the world about our future, I discovered this hype about using Social Media, a term coined by Chris Shipley, Co-founder and Global Research Director for Guidewire Group. I would like to share an experience I had this vacation, which is also a reason for me to choose social media as my topic on current trends in public relations. I have been looking for a job in the PR sector for a long time, I finally got a call and had a telephone interview with Mr. Kerman Kasad, Head Corporate Communications at Symantec Enterprise – the conversation started off pleasantly, and after enquiring about my basic details, he asked me if I was social media savvy, I replied I was - aren’t we learning how to write blogs for our assignment! After the phone interview, I thought to myself, “Is social media an important criterion for PR practitioners in today’s world to excel?” I wasn’t sure, so I decided to call back Mr. Kasad and ask him what were his views on social media as a tool for public relations, and he was polite enough to speak with me again. After a long discussion, I agreed with him when he said, “PR professionals are trend setters, and we always need to be ahead of time and early adopters of the technology will benefit from the opportunities and a whole new array of communication platforms”. Although, from my perspective it is not only important to adopt a new technology but what is most significant is to know how to optimize its effectiveness. Social media such as blogging, podcasting, video blogging, photo blogging, and viral videos are so frequently used by PR practitioners, for consumer sectors, corporate sectors and regularly for the entertainment industry. I understand that social media is one of the easiest and fastest means to reach a large number of audiences; however it might not be efficient enough to address the desired target audience, which is most likely achievable by traditional public relations techniques, such as press releases, newsletters, events and conferences. And my concern as an aspiring PR practitioner is that as more and more PR agencies use social media extensively and rigorously, for example a social media service such as MySpace has got popular celebrities such as, Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Simpson, and Tom Cruise to set up spaces on MySpace. It is not only restricted to actors and singers but even some big corporations like the energy drink Red Bull and Aquafina have set up their company profiles on MySpace in order to promote and connect with their clients, buyers and chiefly the consumers.

As we can see, PR agencies are rapidly making use of social media services, would this in turn minimize the use of traditional PR techniques?

Trial & Error...

This is my first attempt in setting up a blog page... it has taken me some time to understand how the whole blogging works and I think I have managed to do it well so far. This blog page is set up for an assignment for my Masters in Public Communications and Public Relations, and the topic is 'Current Trends in Public Relations'. I have chosen to do it on Social Media, as I think it is the next big trend that will be practiced for 2007 and years to follow. I hope you will enjoy my blog, as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing about it. Please do comment on my blog whether you agree or disagree, since that would only help me to understand PR better as a profession, and a constructive argument is most welcome! Thank You…