Just a few bits and bobs to end the weekend.
Of course there’s the BIG BLOGOSPHERE NEWS: Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft to join start-up Podtech. Too many commenters to link here — find them on technorati, and read his own comments at Scobleizer (multiple posts). Not at all surprising that he’d want to try his hand at a start-up venture — take the risk, build something new. He has been a big part of the growth of the live web (yeah, I’m going with Doc’s terminology, works for me) and he deserves his chance at the pot of gold. Good luck, Robert. Enjoy the new challenge. Enjoy being closer to your son. Enjoy being back in a tech center NOT dominated by Microsoft.
The press release. I’m firmly with John Wagner on this one, as I’ve said more than once. It isn’t about the form. folks. Do whatever you want to the form to deliver it to your audience. They want tags and del.icio.us links. Go for it. But, the focus needs to be on content. Crappy content in a new form does NOT equal a good press release. So I wish Todd Defren and Tom Foremski and whomever else well in their mission to develop "the" new release. I expect they’ll get lots of links and search engine juice as a result. In fact, I’m giving them some here. Bully for them. Good that they have the time. For my part, I don’t . I have client work to do, and no time to devote to "fixing" something that isn’t that broken.
Tags: press release, public relations, PR, Robert Scoble, PR 2.0
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Hi Susan –
“Crappy content in a new form does NOT equal a good press release.” Did you really think that that was what I’m suggesting?
You are one of my favorite marketing bloggers so it’s buggin’ me that I haven’t swayed you to explore this, beyond the template. 🙂
The template is an enabler, not the be-all, end-all.
I’ll keep writing about this at my spot, to try to address these concerns. I hope you’ll stay tuned!
I absolutely don’t think that’s what you’re suggesting. My fear, however, is that it IS what you are enabling.
I’m all for putting material out in whatever form the audience wants it. If this new format works for someone, great. It has a lot of merit, especially for tech. BUT, the press release is and always has been one of the least important parts of media outreach.
The content is far more important. How you reach out to reporters and bloggers is much more critical. I truly honestly can see folks thinking that all they need to do is issue their news in the new format, and they’ll be doing “PR 2.0” All the while spamming reporters and bloggers with tags and del.icio.us links and god knows what else.
That said, I do think what you are doing is interesting, and I do follow it 🙂 Just can’t get too worked up about fixing the press release when I think other things are far more broken.
And BTW thanks for the compliment 🙂
Yes, the template could well enable “crapaliciousness” … but many would argue that the current press release format is often plenty crappy on its own nowadays. 😉
One of the conventions of the new version is that it takes out a lot of the bad writing and replaces it with “just the facts.” No multi-syllabic superlatives required.
More importantly, this new version enables something else: the widescale distribution of multimedia content that will be relevant not just to mainstream journalists but to bloggers, as well.
Think about the digg button on the Social Media release, as an example. Maybe no mainstream journalist covers your release, but, a few bloggers “digg” & comment on it — and potentially a release that would have died on the vine becomes a full-scale meme…which in turn leads to mainstream coverage! Such a scenario is possible for the first time, now.
And that’s just one “button.” A similar case can be made for the other tools/features on the Social Media Press Release…