Media gets Social

by Harry Hoover

Published on this site: August 7th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

Consumer content creation is the big deal online these days. There are at least 30 million blogs online, podcasts galore, as well as nearly 100 million photos available via Flickr. All sorts of new web tools have been developed to enable this new social media, as it is being called. Stowe Boyd, an authority on collaborative technologies, offers his definition of social media:
http://getreal.corante.com/archives/2005/12/06/social_media_defined.php

PR practitioners and marketers need to know about and understand how to leverage social media, or be left behind. So, how does one take advantage of social media sites? You start with media relations and work your way out.

Shift Communications has reinvented the news release to take advantage of social media trends. You can download it here: http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smprtemplate.pdf

However, even with this template you must have a news release distribution platform that supports it or your release is simply an electronic document. For my money, PRWEB is that platform.

My wife's first mystery novel, Double Dead, will debut January 2007. So, I distributed a news release recently via PRWEB about her signing with Gale/Five Star Publishing. PRWEB offers Technorati and several other bookmarking tools like del.icio.us - on the site that you can use to tag your release. I used the tools to post the story on Digg and del.icio.us. Each digg story is user nominated and voted upon by the community. The more votes, the more people get to see it because it moves up the list. Follow this link if you want to see what del.icio.us is all about.
http://del.icio.us/search/?all=terry+hoover&src=moz

Here's a quick list of some other social media platforms to check out if you want to see what it's all about:

• Newsvine
  
• Tagworld
  
• Brightcove
  
• YouTube
  

Harry Hoover is managing principal of Hoover ink PR. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, Brent Dees Financial Planning, Focus Four, Levolor, New World Mortgage, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd executive Learning Systems, Velux, and Verbatim.