Today I wanted to highlight the fact that the SMNR is not a ‘fire and forget’ tactic. It’s not a newswire either.

The SMNR is useful because it opens up conversation and allow brand owners to engage with online users and vice versa. The conversation shouldn’t end after a few hours, days or weeks.

The beauty of the SMNR concept is that you can keep the conversation alive by re-visiting your SMNR and updating it with fresh content and then re-publishing and re-engaging with your audience. It’s the start of the conversation, not the end of your news.

Ideas to update you Social Media News Release:

• New quotes or updated quotes
• Fan videos/images
• Additional links to other news coverage or user generated content
• Update on the announcement
• New findings/research
• or even just to update your contact details
• Updated product shots
• Expert commentary from other sources

Standard newswires would charge to do this, but Pressitt allows you to make any amount of edits for free.

I hope this small snippet of advice allows you to use the social media news service of your choice more effectively, if you have any further queries, please get in touch.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

Maddie Grant published a great post over at Social Media Today offering her thoughts on creating a compelling social media news/press release. She goes on to say:

A social media release has 4 elements:

• Good headlines – write for 3 audiences / 3 readers (human readers first). Use subtitles (helps SEO). Short and to the point. Keywords up front if possible. Think to yourself, if it appeared on Facebook, would I click it?
• Body copy – 3 audiences / 3 readers – tell a story. No bullets, no PR or marketing speak. Write like a person. Write like an article, not an announcement. Write for diagonal readers (lots of scanning, 10 second readers – headlines / section titles / bold / links / pictures/ graphs / summaries). Use humour.
• Additional content elements- related content, multimedia, links to related articles, social media sharing, easy to email/print, moderated comments.
• Technical considerations – search engine ready, RSS ready, sharing ready.

All of which are very good pieces of advice, the third bullet rings especially true for Pressitt, which utilises them all of the key points listed and more.

Here are some additional useful links to help you understand more about the Social media News/Press release.

How to Write a Social Media Press Release

Social Media Releases - Everything You Wanted to Know

Why Use Social Media With Your Press Release?

Blogger Relations vs Social Media News Release (SMNR)

More about Pressitt

If you would like to discuss the benefits of Pressitt or the Social Media News/Press release format in general, please contact [email protected]

— Andy Merchant @andymerch

After the successful re-launch of Pressitt last week (including coming out of BETA) and the launch of our new white paper titled: Has the Social Media News Release (SMNR) finally come of age?, we wanted to share PR week’s coverage of the news with you all. See below.

— Andy Merchant @andymerch