As a big advocate of the Social Media News Release (SMNR), and someone who has spent many hours over the last few years researching the subject for my own benefit and that of Pressitt’s, it’s worth noting where we’re up to with the SMNR concept.

On the plus side we have great vocal and influential supporters such as Brian Solis, who every year creates a huge resource-focused blog post to invigorate the SMNR bandwagon (hats off to the guy), other SMNR stars such as Todd Defren who frequently blogs and comments about the release, and there have been a few nice examples of the SMNR in action such as my own personal favourites - the Standard Bank cricket efforts, and of course all the good work carried out by Digital Snippets for Ford.

Other services like the fantastically successful Pitch Engine have been quick to realise the potential of the SMNR and have done a good job of creating a place to stimulate online conversation - something that Pressitt, our UK-based SMNR and creation service hopes to achieve and emulate.

On the downside, ask many non-digital and even some digital journalists what a SMNR is, and they still won’t have a clue! It’s not just about the journalist though, as SMNRs are also aimed at bloggers hungry for news, microbloggers and social communities (the social masses). These people need to be educated and helped to understand the benefits of the SMNR format. PRs and marketers are slowly getting there but there is still a massive education job to do.

Two rather worrying points that I’ve also noticed are:

- The Social Media Release blog has not been updated since the 7th of March 2008.

- The IABC assumes a Social Media Release leadership role, but they don’t seem to have taken a very proactive approach.

To sum it all up, in the three years since Todd Defren’s ground breaking SMNR template, not as much has happened as could have been possible. At Pressitt we are optimistic that in 2009 the SMNR will reach its tipping point. It’s going to take a lot of hard work from all of the people mentioned in this post as well as ourselves and others, but I really hope we can help to prove that the SMNR is a great way of creating and sharing news socially. I’ll be shouting about the SMNR from the UK rooftops!

Here are some of the better SMNR links I have discovered over the last three years:

— Andy Merchant