briansolis: The Evolution of Social Media Releases
Geoff_Livingston
· 1 year ago
How's that cane treating you? :P Good to see a vibrant discussion on SMRs again.
Brian Breslin
· 1 year ago
Brian, couldn't this all be solved by someone pushing out a clear and simple plugin for wordpress/typepad/blogger/movabletype that formats the post to whatever the current hRelease format is, and then we see how that takes off? Every company could then instantly start publishing in minutes their SMR. Problem is its too confusing for people, and no one has just gone out and given away a simple tool/template for it. using a blog post as the basis makes things really easy.
Jim
· 1 year ago
Brian,
I am sure this is all educational and even potentially interesting information. But OMG, I fell asleep somewhere between the 28th and 29th paragraph. It's a blog, not a web novel.
I just completed a survey today asking me which of 35 PR blogs I found most useful...35! Does anyone actually work anymore or are we all just talking about ourselves and how smart we all are in our web 2.0 universe?
My dad used to tell me that actions speak louder than words; so please, can we all just set a good example through our work and stop writing about it? And if we MUST write, can we please be short and to the point?
Rebecca
· 1 year ago
Great post on the SMR subject. For someone who's spent the last 6 years focused on other areas of digital/interactive marketing and just recently joined the social media party; it was a great history lesson.
Tamera Kremer
· 1 year ago
Brian,
Got here through your tweet :)
Excellent post, and I agree with many of your points. I think this is bang on:
Some PR and New Media agencies and consultants saw the opportunity to rebrand it as a differentiated service, this may be one of the main reasons that we don’t see many case studies available to the public as it could now be considered a competitive edge.
And I think that's why I haven't commented on "Digital Snippets". Although the pdf structure is, as Maggie says, open source, the platform itself (digitalsnippets.com) is obviously being positioned as proprietary, hence the "All rights reserved" on the homepage. So is it OS or not? For me, OS is not a document that I could discern for myself just by looking at the actual SMR released for Ford and is not altogether that different from SHIFT's template, but the code behind it. If the SMR is Creative Commons then so should the Wordpress coding behind it.
Do I think it is a bad thing to try and have an edge? Not necessarily, although I would like to find out how all those SMR's are actually working out for Ford vs. their traditional channels, including their brand pages (which the Ford SMR's appear to be the standard brochure copy chunked out into an SMR template).
All in all, it's a tad confusing, and I'm immersed in the space everyday.
Re: your point that the SMR is just a tool... Right. ON. Technology enables and tools are tactics. Everyone, newbie or not, need to remember the "social" aspect to social media first and foremost and think strategy first and tactics second.
dbreakenridge
· 1 year ago
Brian, I truly appreciate how you are able to take a topic, like the SMR, which I believe is misunderstood and make perfect sense out of it. I notice quite a bit that many professionals confuse the SMR with PR 2.0. Some think they are synonomous. Have you come across this as well? Some PR professionals are also under the impression that the SMR is a tool for journalists only, and not a direct to consumer tool.
I'm seeing some change in the way professionals think about the SMR, but it's a slow process! Keep explaining and hopefully it will sink in :)
Brian Solis
· 1 year ago
@Geoff, good one ;)
@Brian Breslin, I have been actually saying that exact same thing for well over a year now. Don't be surprised if you see just that. In fact, I have a paragraph about that very thing in this post.
@Jim, ok, you got me. That was good. Honestly, this is an important discussion and this post will most likely become a reference point for PR people now and in the future. It has to be comprehensive. PR 2.0 isn't a machine gun blog. They're essays designed to help people at every level. And in doing so, hopefully inspiring action. However, I do agree with your dad, spend less time talking and more time doing. This is a unique case and on the bright side, there is a paragraph about doing included, somewhere in paragraph 42...seriously though, I tabbed it so it's easier to find.
@Rebecca, thank you. Welcome to the party.
@Tamera, thank you for feedback and observations. I agree, the (TM) across everything takes away from the "openness" of the community that got us to where we are today. However, Todd made it open originally and this is a competitive market. I suppose any one of us along the way could have done the same thing. But yes, exactly, the SMR is only a tool...one of an incredible array of social and traditional tools to get the job done. As you say, strategy first, tactics second.
@dbreakenridge, I'm at a loss of words. Thank you. You're right...I see it all the time. And, you can count on it!
maggiefox
· 1 year ago
Hey Brian - thanks for pointing out all of the great references and resources available on the development of the SMPR. In our research and work into developing Digital Snippets, we found many of them invaluable ("standing on the shoulders of giants", etc).
To the discussion regarding open source vs. TM - we released exactly what Shift did - a template licensed under creative commons - please use it, mash it up, take what we've learned and make it better. That's the point - we wanted to share what we've worked through.
We're also actually issuing SMPRs - and yes, they're provided as a webservice that is available for a fee, and which is branded as Digital Snippets. The platform is emphatically open source - you could run along and make it yourself, should you choose to make the time investment that SMG did. But we're in the business of selling services to our clients (not giving them away for free), as are most of the people involved in this thread, so we understandably won't be releasing the backend code in the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, this has (and continues to be) a great discussion!
Brian Solis
· 1 year ago
@Maggie Fox. Tis a pleasure to have you hear! I think that's a great quote, "standing on the shoulders of giants." I personally believe not only do we learn from each other, but we also inspire one another.
Re: TM vs. open source, honestly, all it needs is a little PR for the PR. The (TM) "near" an open template associated with a "fee-based" service might create a perceived barrier to entry. Personally, I know you're giving back to the community...
I really do think you should be one of those who helps us build an online resource/library for everyone out there to learn so that new people can have a point of reference (a starting point) from which to learn and grow.
maggiefox
· 1 year ago
Hey Brian - thanks for the feedback, and point taken.
I would also love to work with you on a more open, collaborative environment that would support further SMPR development. Count us in!
Tamera Kremer
· 1 year ago
@maggie - I have no issue with you building your own platform, although to others points, it's not dissimilar from MultiVu, but semantically, it's not "open source" as you have stated. You *built* it using open source code (wordpress), but are not sharing the code, therefore digital snips is not OS itself. It's a small distinction, but an important one.
maggiefox
· 1 year ago
@tamera - thanks for the clarification, and while of course I'll disagree that Digital Snippets is similar to MultiVu, I also need to make a semantic point; Digital Snippets was built using open source, but the platform is not open source (i.e. code freely available).
However, the template itself is (or as open source as a static document can be) - licensed under Creative Commons for anyone to use or mash up as they please.
And how is it that we meet here, at Brian Solis' place, when we're only a few short miles from each other? Hope you're well!
michelle v
· 1 year ago
Brian,
Good post. What are you thoughts on PRNewswire's verion of the SMR? And do you think this is something we could really put out ourselves, or at the end of the day it's better to pay for a service and let them do the job of distributing it per se then us taking the time to do it. I guess that's the one area I'm still unclear on.
Thanks
D Theus
· 1 year ago
Great post. Thanks for the background. I'm following this SMR/PR discussion and think it's the tip of the iceberg. I just posted on it here for those who are interested, and referenced this post as background: http://m-2-m.typepad.com/m2m/2008/02/social-med...
All Comments
using a blog post as the basis makes things really easy.
I am sure this is all educational and even potentially interesting information. But OMG, I fell asleep somewhere between the 28th and 29th paragraph. It's a blog, not a web novel.
I just completed a survey today asking me which of 35 PR blogs I found most useful...35! Does anyone actually work anymore or are we all just talking about ourselves and how smart we all are in our web 2.0 universe?
My dad used to tell me that actions speak louder than words; so please, can we all just set a good example through our work and stop writing about it? And if we MUST write, can we please be short and to the point?
Got here through your tweet :)
Excellent post, and I agree with many of your points. I think this is bang on:
Some PR and New Media agencies and consultants saw the opportunity to rebrand it as a differentiated service, this may be one of the main reasons that we don’t see many case studies available to the public as it could now be considered a competitive edge.
And I think that's why I haven't commented on "Digital Snippets". Although the pdf structure is, as Maggie says, open source, the platform itself (digitalsnippets.com) is obviously being positioned as proprietary, hence the "All rights reserved" on the homepage. So is it OS or not? For me, OS is not a document that I could discern for myself just by looking at the actual SMR released for Ford and is not altogether that different from SHIFT's template, but the code behind it. If the SMR is Creative Commons then so should the Wordpress coding behind it.
Do I think it is a bad thing to try and have an edge? Not necessarily, although I would like to find out how all those SMR's are actually working out for Ford vs. their traditional channels, including their brand pages (which the Ford SMR's appear to be the standard brochure copy chunked out into an SMR template).
All in all, it's a tad confusing, and I'm immersed in the space everyday.
Re: your point that the SMR is just a tool... Right. ON. Technology enables and tools are tactics. Everyone, newbie or not, need to remember the "social" aspect to social media first and foremost and think strategy first and tactics second.
I'm seeing some change in the way professionals think about the SMR, but it's a slow process! Keep explaining and hopefully it will sink in :)
@Brian Breslin, I have been actually saying that exact same thing for well over a year now. Don't be surprised if you see just that. In fact, I have a paragraph about that very thing in this post.
@Jim, ok, you got me. That was good. Honestly, this is an important discussion and this post will most likely become a reference point for PR people now and in the future. It has to be comprehensive. PR 2.0 isn't a machine gun blog. They're essays designed to help people at every level. And in doing so, hopefully inspiring action. However, I do agree with your dad, spend less time talking and more time doing. This is a unique case and on the bright side, there is a paragraph about doing included, somewhere in paragraph 42...seriously though, I tabbed it so it's easier to find.
@Rebecca, thank you. Welcome to the party.
@Tamera, thank you for feedback and observations. I agree, the (TM) across everything takes away from the "openness" of the community that got us to where we are today. However, Todd made it open originally and this is a competitive market. I suppose any one of us along the way could have done the same thing. But yes, exactly, the SMR is only a tool...one of an incredible array of social and traditional tools to get the job done. As you say, strategy first, tactics second.
@dbreakenridge, I'm at a loss of words. Thank you. You're right...I see it all the time. And, you can count on it!
To the discussion regarding open source vs. TM - we released exactly what Shift did - a template licensed under creative commons - please use it, mash it up, take what we've learned and make it better. That's the point - we wanted to share what we've worked through.
We're also actually issuing SMPRs - and yes, they're provided as a webservice that is available for a fee, and which is branded as Digital Snippets. The platform is emphatically open source - you could run along and make it yourself, should you choose to make the time investment that SMG did. But we're in the business of selling services to our clients (not giving them away for free), as are most of the people involved in this thread, so we understandably won't be releasing the backend code in the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, this has (and continues to be) a great discussion!
Re: TM vs. open source, honestly, all it needs is a little PR for the PR. The (TM) "near" an open template associated with a "fee-based" service might create a perceived barrier to entry. Personally, I know you're giving back to the community...
I really do think you should be one of those who helps us build an online resource/library for everyone out there to learn so that new people can have a point of reference (a starting point) from which to learn and grow.
I would also love to work with you on a more open, collaborative environment that would support further SMPR development. Count us in!
However, the template itself is (or as open source as a static document can be) - licensed under Creative Commons for anyone to use or mash up as they please.
And how is it that we meet here, at Brian Solis' place, when we're only a few short miles from each other? Hope you're well!
Good post. What are you thoughts on PRNewswire's verion of the SMR? And do you think this is something we could really put out ourselves, or at the end of the day it's better to pay for a service and let them do the job of distributing it per se then us taking the time to do it. I guess that's the one area I'm still unclear on.
Thanks