The Perfect Example OF PR People Not Getting It

Stumbled across this post via Technorati, and Kyle Flaherty exemplifies exactly the concern I have about PR professionals not getting social media. He points to Phil Gomes' post, riffing on what Scoble and I said the other day about social media, press releases, and all that.

[from Blogs are to hieroglyphics as Scoble is to _______?]

Here is a trace of my thinking:

--Scoble and Stowe seem to be saying that all things can be delivered through the blog...however the majority of people still aren't reading blogs

--OF COURSE I believe in the power of blogging, but let's not take ourselves too seriously, blogging is NOT revolutionary, it is glamorous form of email, which was a glamorous form of letter writing, which was a glamorous version of carving words into stones, which was a glamorous version of hieroglyphics

--Which brings me back to the SMPR and the fact that what Edelman, Shift, Horn Group, and others are trying to do is simply evolve the content of press releases, the information, concerning company products, earnings, staffing, and more. This is done more and more using blogs as a platform for parallel delivery (linking to a press release)

--A blog that replaces delivery of press releases (social media or not) is simply another delivery mechanism for the press release itself...no different than BusinessWire. So yes, we could deliver SMPRs through a blogging platform, but that does not change the fact that you STILL NEED THE ACTUAL PRESS RELEASE. And if you still need the release isn't it better to have a release that includes links, video, and other 'social media' techniques?

Basically what I'm saying is: Content is still King, the blog is just one form of transportation.

Oh, yes. Blogging is a/ not revolutionary (fume, splutter, gag), b/ it's just another channel, it's "a glamourous form of email", and c/ if we get companies to use blogs to post the information in press releases it's just another delivery mechanism (ouch!).

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It you look at it as a channel to broadcast you miss the point.

People are engaged in conversation through blogs. They are not sitting there waiting for you to push a message down the "Internet tubes" (Senator Ted Stevens famously getting the Internet wrong). If companies want to converse with people about their plans, announced products, whatever -- the stuff now packaged as press releases -- they will have to adopt a conversational manner, which includes dropping most of the crap associated with press releases. So, no, you really don't need the old "press release": you need something else, altogether.

And you don't need PR dinosaurs leading you who tell you that "the blog is just one form of transportation." The press release is dead, and the PR pros just don't want to move onto whatever is next.

tags: phil+gomes, robert+scoble, ted+stevens, kyle+flaherty, the+press+release+is+dead, social+media+press+release, social+media

Comments

[Shel Holtz, ABC]

So, let me see if I have this right:

1) The only fodder for conversation in the blogosphere is other blogs, and no other media are worth talking about.

2) An employee blogging about something pertinent to his organization needs to (a) include all the boring information most people don't care about (but some do) in his post or (b) leave out information (that may be required by regulatory agencies) -- information that fit very neatly into the "dead" tool called a press release.

3) The "press" -- all those local weekly newspapers and trade publications and mid-market TV stations and websites from media outlets like the New York Times -- can just find another way to get information despite the fact that the press release worked perfectly well for them because the press release has been declared "dead" by people who "get it" better than they do.

4) Companies requiring an official statement of record can just invent something new because the press release is "dead" but a blog post won't satisfy that requirement.

5) One tool -- a blog post -- fulfills every need, even if it means jamming a round peg into a square hole. If it ain't conversation, it ain't acceptable. (Bad news indeed for fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)

6) There is no reason an organization should ever broadcast anything. Ever.

7) As a journalist, Tom Foremski is just plain wrong in asking for what he needs -- information clearly parsed without spin that includes elements that help him do his job, which has moved from print (the Financial Times) to the Web (Silicon Valley Watcher). Tom and his peers should just spend hours gleaning the facts by filtering them from blog posts on the topic, assuming he's subscribing to the right feeds, entering the right terms in a search engine, or otherwise lucky enough to find them.

Okay. Now I get it.

[Jesse Ciccone]

Let's assume for a moment that "getting it" isn't a ridiculously arrogant, flawed and devisive concept (it is all those things, but let's put that aside for now).

Isn't the social media release merely one attempt to help the unwashed masses reach the heights of enlightment that gurus such as yourself attained?

A LOT of people (or more to the point in this case, a lot of companies) aren't nearly 'there' yet. What's wrong with incremental steps to help them along the way?

Did you 'get' it all at once? Was there no process of learning, trial & error, etc. along the way?

[Dave C.]

Although I agree with most of what you're saying here, I don't agree that the press release is an archain marketing tool only because there are probably hundreds of thousands of businesses that have no idea what blogging is, but they know how to submit a press release to their local paper/magazine. I believe the press release is dying a slow languishing death, but it's not going anywhere for awhile.

[Dennis Howlett]

So SOX and other compliance doesn't count? Having your corporate ass sued for something you say is irrelevant? I don't like press releases any more than you but the alternative you're proposing doesn't make sense to these types, especially those in the legal department. Those are the people you need to convince.