Maura Welch on Social Media

Kill the press release

I'm up late tonight working on a press release that's not a press release. It's a "social media release." Sure I wish I was sleeping. But it could be worse. I could be working on a press release.

A social media release recognizes that the web has changed the game and journalists don't want to get a heavily canned press release that's dense with run on sentences like this one that contain a million bits of jargon all awkwardly architected in language that pushes the bounds of grammar and often never seems to get to the freaking point already.

When I was writing for the Globe, the releases I received largely went unread. The pitches I really payed attention to were very short interesting emails. But even then, if they didn't contain a link directly to more info, I just passed them by.

Social media releases have a headline, a short summary and then bulleted lists below that contain key facts, approved quotes, and links to media (blog, site, video, image, etc.).

Mark Glaser has a nice piece on the current state of the social media release.

Help to kill the press release!

Personal paparazzi

Source: Springwise

Call NY-based MethodIzaz and hire your own paparazzi:

The service "will send an anonymous photographer to surreptitiously capture select moments in a consumer's life and immortalize them with a portfolio of professionally produced photos. To arrange the service, the consumer provides a self photograph ahead of time along with details of their schedule and any specific emotion, mood or theme they hope to capture."

Makes a nice gift. Or ego trip.

"It's the people, not the technology"

Source: Fast Company via YPulse

Anastasia Goodstein says it right. I work with technology all day long. But all the technology in the world won't help you unless you have a flexible, smart and creative team that understand how to work and accomplish goals with other humans.

Fast Company uses IBM as an example of a company actively encouraging this behavior.

“IBM puts emphasis on employee contributions of ideas, collaboration, and motivating people to engage in…pro-social behavior.” The company seeks out instances where employees help others succeed. “Too often, we have measurement and reward systems that are focused on how many transactions did you process, how many orders did you ship, and how many deals did you close -- rather than who helped these other people succeed.”