How to write social media press release

According to Brian Solis defines social media release, "A social media release should contain everything necessary to share and discover a story in a way that is complementary to your original intent; but, the difference is, how they find it and the tools they use to share and broadcast. Social media is one big extension to the web, except it promotes voices, along with content, in a way that focuses on people and their social networks." The advancements of the Internet and of social channels has made the traditional format of a press release less effective as journalists, press members and readers crave small chunks of succinct details that incorporate social media, linking and multimedia to make it more digestible and relevant. The quicker, easier and more creatively that one can get points or message across, the more likely it is to be picked up, shared, re-tweeted, or more.

Elements of a Social Media Press Release

Headline: Headline as it is, it focus on brevity. One should go specific to the point and avoiding to be too creative. A few keywords should get the job done.

Secondary headline (optional): This refers to an extremely important nugget of information that you think will get users to read on, put it here. Otherwise, skip to the overview.

Overview: It is a brief summary of the release and what manager is covering. This is where manager will hook the reader or lose them, so he or she has to keep it under two paragraphs, uses of keywords and real thought into every single sentence is important.

Body: This is meat of the release, this should be the news. Manager should avoid scatter bias in here; just lay the facts out for what you are pitching (think about it like a journalist would, and cover the who, when what, where, why and how).

Facts: You need some statistical data or bullet points to back up your claim from above. This information should be easily shareable so if someone wanted to pull this right out of your release, they could.

About the Company: Very brief company bio with a link to your website, Twitter feed and Facebook fan page.

Multimedia links: The social aspect of the release, this should include videos on YouTube, images, RSS feeds and more. You don't want people to be driven away from your message, but you want to be seen as a useful resource.

8.    Relevant links: This is a good way to promote your company and what you've done a bit more. If you have related releases, include links to them here. While this particular product might not be a fit, if you've kept someone's interest this long, they may find your other products of use.

9.    Tags: Recommended sharing methods, whether via social bookmarking sites, Twitter hashtags or Facebook fan pages.

10.    Contact: This may sometimes be overlooked, but don't forget to include your name, email, Twitter alias and more. If you are willing to put all of that info out there and stand behind your release, it lends it a bit more credibility.

However, once you've determined that you need to write a press release incorporating social media, if you have an understanding of traditional releases, it shouldn't be hard to grasp the essential elements that need to be included. You can talk to five different PR professionals and they'll tell you differently where these elements need to fit into your release, but they need to be there in some capacity.

DAHAYE THERESIA