6 Reasons to Avoid the Social Media News Release
The Social Media News Release is a template available for the sole purpose of incorporating social media and multimedia into press releases. And while it may sound like an absolutely ingenious idea, it probably isn’t the best use of time and money for your business. Here are 6 reasons why using a SMNR may be one of the biggest mistakes you’re making.
1. People Don’t Read Them. Let’s face it, this is not the best way to get your information out to the general public. The number of people who actually view releases on news release websites is quite small. There are better ways to reach your potential customers that aren’t nearly as expensive or time-consuming.
2. They’re Expensive. The optimal use of an SMNR is to send a Social Media News Release with Multimedia, and it’s expensive. Even a limited distribution will cost you hundreds of dollars at minimum. Compare this to the cost of writing a blog, which will also allow you to include images and video. The blog is far cheaper and gives you a much higher return on your investment.
3. There’s No Critical Mass. One of the most important aspects of marketing with social media is that you can gather a huge number of like-minded or like-interested people in the same place. If you use an SMNR to send your information out to 500 websites, you may only get one or two comments on each website. If that’s the case then your interested parties aren’t talking to each other, which defeats the purpose of social media marketing. Not to mention the time and tedium involved in responding to comments on each of the 500 websites to which your release was sent. Consider instead how you might get those 500 commenters to have a conversation with each other.
4. They Don’t Help Your SEO. The whole point of news releases in general is to get inbound links to your site. And while SMNRs contain links, those links are not optimized and generally link to resources other than your website. Use the online Press Release Grader to see how your SMNR release stands up. You’ll most likely find that you have too many links, and that diminishes the effectiveness of your release greatly.
5. They Don’t Help You Reach Your Goals. The whole point of marketing your business is to get people to come to your website and get them to buy your products. So why would you spend money to put your information on another website? We’ve already noted that SMNRs generally don’t result in optimal links to your site, so there’s really no sense in using them for that purpose.
6. They Don’t Allow You to Use Your Own Mutlimedia Accounts. Did you know that if you want to include a video in your SMNR then you have to upload that video to the news release service’s YouTube account? That’s right! Never mind that you’ve already uploaded the video to your own account; now you have to upload it to theirs as well. This means that your video is sitting in an account with thousands of other videos that aren’t at all related to your product or service. So if a potential customer actually finds your videos and wants to see more from your business, he has to search a lot harder than if all of your videos were lumped together in your account. Another problem is similar to the one we mentioned in #3. The comments left on the new release service’s account are separate from the ones left on your account, so your commenters don’t have the opportunity to interact with one another. And you have to visit your video in both places to respond to all of the comments.
You’re much better off simply creating your own release, without images or video, and sending it over the wire, specially if you don’t have the know-how to optimize them. Save the really cool release for your own website where you have control over what happens to it. You’ll save time and money, and the results will be greatly beneficial.
The Response was as expected 
… rightly so to a certain extended that is why there is a second part on how to do it right! Checkout the second part of this post Social Media News Release Part II
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
Full disclosure: I represent a company which offers SMNRs as a product and service.
“People Don’t Read Them.”
Erm, yes they do. What a sweeping statement to make.
“They’re Expensive.”
Depends how you define expensive and the ROI you receive from your investment. Different providers charge different costs.
“There’s No Critical Mass.”
Did I just read that correctly? You said that an SMNR shouldn’t score coverage around the web?
“They Don’t Help Your SEO.”
Hey, I’m no SEO expert but it depends what you mean by “your SEO”. Your own site you mean? If that’s the case then no they don’t. But in other SEO situations they do. Greatly.
“They Don’t Help You Reach Your Goals.”
Another sweeping statement. Every organisation has different objectives. You’re speaking from a SEO point of view. Remember we’re talking about a PR (as in Public Relations) tool here.
“They Don’t Allow You to Use Your Own Mutlimedia [sic] Accounts.”
No, maybe some services make you do that but not all. If you are correct about this then I find it ridiculous that they do this.
“You’re much better off simply creating your own release, without images or video, and sending it over the wire, specially if you don’t have the know-how to optimize them.”
Well, an SEO specialist with vested interests would say this though.
[...] the last article on the Social Media News Release, we discussed reasons to avoid using the SMNR for all of your press releases and that caused quite [...]
Leave your response!
Blog Categories
Browse Tags
Blogroll
Internet Marketing Resources
Personal Favorites
Archived Articles
Blog Comments
Top Visited Pages
Blogroll