Riffs, Tiffs and What Ifs

I visited a lot of social media newsrooms (SMN's) for the "Social Media News Releases Are Absolutely Worthless" article. Below are examples of real newsrooms engaged in real business, and just not some theoretical treatises on the joys and efficacies of a social media newsroom concept. The companies spread out among different industries - a fairly decent cross-section. The Big Bang I saw a lot of SMN's that started out with a hot flash, big bang ... then stopped. They haven't been updated for months, if at all. Why? Novelty? Too much work? Risk? No results? Not enough digital assets? Part or all of those things? Don't know. I'll take a shot at it though. It's related to "doing the work." It's a lot of hard work pulling all the content, multi-media and social news sharing capabilities together without making yourself "look a fool." The Hard Work is not the Hard Work And the hard work part is not the hard work. Creating or...

CONTINUED FROM : Social Media News Releases Are Absolutely Worthless! There aren't a lot of SMNR's out there. Cost, complexity, risk, usefulness? Some of the more recent ones have multimedia and social sharing capabilities - but no comments section. Why, if you did the work, bore the costs of distributing a SMNR, would you not use the comments section? Don't understand it. Enabling the comments section is live PR. Live community building. Live customer service. Live product and marketing feedback. Live ... good business sense. IBM Tackles Global Energy Crisis Blyk Launches "One Stop Shop" Designed for Advertisers and Agencies Nuts About Southwest Now Even Nuttier Graphics Evolves Beyond Gaming With New NVIDIA Geforce GTX 200 GPUs PR Practitioners From Across The World To Gather For World PR Conference & Festival In London PR Agency SHIFT Communications Adds Four New Clients in San Francisco Are You Smarter Than a... 17th Grader Cisco Drives Innovation in Bu...

Frankenquoted buffoon-a-puffery (neologism) is typically a useless quote from a company official that hardly anyone will ever read - except the Frankenquotee. Increases the word count. Adds less than zero value. Usually found in press releases. Closely related to the dreaded corporate gobbledygook disease (sorta like brothers). Example? We’re Great! We’re ( or insert company exec name) great!” “Our company is great.” “Our customers love us.” “Industry analysts love us.” "We're SO EXCITED to be working with them." Sound familiar? Here’s a 2-minute cartoon video that describes Frankenquoting pretty well. Frankenquote Memorialized in a Snapshot That was crude, wasn't it? I tried to stop myself. Just couldn't. Sorry.