On a previous blog post, I discussed the issue I had with the social media release. Since then, I’ve spoken with Todd Defren, the inventor of the social media release. Although I’m not entirely convinced of the release’s vital role to PR, he did persuade me to rethink the way press releases are viewed.

Here is a bit of background, courtesy of Todd. The social media release was developed in 2006 when wire services like PR newswire didn’t include aspects of multimedia in releases. Generally speaking, releases were not geared towards SEO, nor were they interactive. In fact, they were extremely boring. To fix this, Todd created a release that was search engine-friendly, used multimedia and employed bullet points instead of a narrative to fix the “unreadability” problem.

That was a few years ago.

Now, conventional news services include many aspects of the social media release – in fact they’ve been coopted by those services. Wire services can be utilized for a traditional release, along with many features inherent to a social media release. These extras include: multimedia, the option to share via social media, links and more.

So where do we go next?

Todd suggests going back to the future by using a traditional release – yes, you heard that right — and including links back to a social media newsroom.

“Your traditional release on the wire services points to a sexy release on a website,” says Defren.

His reason?

“There’s a challenge when you put releases over a wire service for downstream news outlets like MSNBC.com or Yahoo news to take content in any form other than straight ASCII. A social media media release that looks beautiful looks like crap when it goes downstream.”

There is also a cost savings by not paying for multi edia add-ons with a wire service. An alternative is to use a service like PitchEngine which make it exceptionally easy to create and distribute social-media releases, adding multimedia, SEO features and hyperlinks without charge to a traditional release. PR Web is another cost-effective way to get a release into social media.

For our clients, we typically send a traditional release over a wire service like Business Wire and propagate a release in social media using PitchEnge.

Meanwhile, back on your website, you can pull out all the stops, adding multimedia, trackbacks, comments and make your website a hub for connectivity. Companies like Cisco and Ford are doing just that.

Only one thing. Much of the engagement seems to be happening off the reservation on sites like Facebook. Cisco, for example, integrates all its social media activities on Facebook where its fans can comment on its activities. In fact, Cisco was recently recognized by B2B Magazine for “Best Use of Facebook.”

Which brings me back to the press release. While a good PR professional can decrease the boring quotient of a press release, no matter how a release is configured and no matter how talented the writer, the release is still meant to convey facts, not engage. In our age of conversation, you also need to interact with your prospects/customers. Social media be it a blog, Facebook page or Twitter account is the natural forum to do that.

So don’t put such a heavy burden on a press release. It’s just one part of your PR tool kit. Used in conjunction with social media, it can be a powerful force for getting your story told.

(see original post on Fast Company Blog)