While I’m not a Friendfeed zealot like respected Steve Rubel, I’m seeing an opportunity for Friendfeed to help corporations further their social media efforts.
If you’re not familiar with the Social Media Press Release (SMPR), it’s a process/document that helps press releases to not only carry the traditional content (who what when where why and how) of a company announcement, but it also provides links and assets to social media: blogs, images, videos, tags, etc.
[Currently, Social Media is disparate and fragmented, making the conversation difficult to track, find, and use. Although too early for it’s time, the Social Media Press Release, will reincarnate as Friendfeed]
Alone, the social media press release isn’t an effective use of being in the spirit of social media, it’s somewhat devoid of the humanness and resulting conversation that many expect. However, full-blown announcements that contain quit a bit of images, blog posts, videos, and social networking campaigns require an ability to organize, and keep track of the disparate conversation.
SMPR too early
I’m the recipient of dozens of press releases every week, so I’m very familiar with what to expect, and frankly, haven’t seen a single SMPR since I’ve been an analyst since Oct, 07 submitted to me. You can however view Ford’s Social Media Press Release room called “Digital Snippets“, as one interpretation. Update: Inventor Todd has a small, but growing list on his site.
The good news for the pioneers of the SMPR (smart folks like Todd Defren, Brian Solis, Chris Heuer) of the Social Media Press Release is that they were way ahead of the curve, they really had foresight to how corporate communications were going to change. The bad news is they were too early, and adoption hasn’t yet happened.
[Brands will use Friendfeed like a Social Media Press Release, to aggregate their social assets, and then to spur on a conversation]
How it could look
Fortunately, there’s good news at hand, with social aggregation tools at hand, such as FriendFeed, a brand can create a Friendfeed account and easily consolidate all the assets from one location. What would this look like? A brand like Ford could create a Friendfeed account, submit to the various social services (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, Delicious, and over 30 others), then encourage fans of Ford to either follow that public Friendfeed page, or to become actual ‘friends’. The end result? All the social media assets will be viewed from one location, searchable, findable, with the ability to comment, without using a SMPR.
Many brands will get it wrong, it’s not just publishing
The one caveat is that brands will need to be part of the discussion that happens among these social tools, as what’s really important is the people that are talking, debating, and discussing what your company is announcing. For those that get it wrong, no one will subscribe, no one will talk about it, no one will ‘like’ it and spread it to their network. So be active in the comments, conversations, and an open manner.
I’ve not seen a single brand do this, but it’s what I expect to see in the coming months, let’s see if my prediction will come true.
Related Resources on Friendfeed:
You can find me on Friendfeed, “Jowyang” Start Here: What Friendfeed’s “MicroMeme” Means For You, Brands, and The Web TrendWatch: Comparing MicroMemes (Friendfeed), Network Feeds, and MacroMemes
Update: Todd has responded from his blog, although disagrees on adoption.
SMPR aside, let’s not forget that the purpose of any press release is to tell a good story, so even with all the gadgets, which are useful to bloggers and others, they need to be integratable to get the “right” message. As you say, aggregating the message into something like FriendFeed could be a better use of priceless design time, so there is a suggestion of a story to create a “pull” strategy rather than a “pull” strategy. There certainly needs to be more analytics offered as Jason mentions because it’s tough to gauge how well received your content is and measuring results is already such a huge pain point for so many marketers.
Speaking of social media press releases you over looked the most recent one done by Jim Beam for their new site “The Stuff Inside.” The social media press release can be found here http://www.thestuffinside.com/press. This is probably the best I’ve seen so far.
http://www.thestuffinside.com/press take the period off.
I would like to see a secure, enterprise-ready version of FriendFeed to make the brand better internally before pushing it externally as a support/marketing tool.