Most people want to ‘get it’: Are you willing to help?

I do get a kick out of the entire dustup over the social media release - very happy to hear people talking about it really, even if some don’t fully understand the deeper purpose and the broader implications. Those progressive, anti-establishment folks screaming that our efforts are co-opting social media are doing the exact thing I expected from them - attacking instead of offering help. This is exactly what I did back in 1994-96 when I launched an interactive agency. When any traditional agency would make a move into interactive, we would, to borrow a term from Stowe Boyd “skewer them”. If you have paid any attention to what I have been writing about the purpose for Social Media Club, you will know that this is one of the main points of what I am trying to accomplish - if you get it, share it. Not if you get it, scream at others who are trying to get it and ostracize them while calling them stoopid.

With some age and experience, has come a bit of wisdom about economic realities and human behaviour. It is only natural to want to be combative and tear down the things we don’t understand or dislike - or to throw out an entire barrel of apples for want of getting rid of a few bad ones. The funny thing is that many ‘pro-people, anti-organization’ folks are completely disregarding the fact that these organizations are made up of PEOPLE! People who want to do the right thing, people who want our help, people who want to get it and make things right.

Regardless, this is finally the beginning of the manifestation of the cluetrain principles in our society, with companies entering the conversation in a real and meaningful way. Yes many will stumble and make big mistakes (which can hopefully serve as lessons not to be repeated by others). Personally, I expected such an uprising long ago - this sort of confrontational approach is what lead to the fall of netiquette and the tighter embrace of greed over good sense. It lead to all sorts of problems with people not getting the point, nor being open to new ways of thinking, because those who really understood what it was all about were dismissive of anyone trying to figure it out - especially those older than themselves. Worse, it limited the potential for having meaningful conversations and made management harden their position rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue and understanding why things were different and how they could engage properly. It made management dismissive of those PEOPLE who really wanted to change inside their organizations rather than supportive of them.

From my perspective, this is about more than whether or not the press release is evolving into the social media release, it is about whether or not people want to find ways to help each other do things right, or if they want to find conflict and enjoy the fight. The dust will perhaps not settle for a long time, but in standing for progress and seeking what is best for the whole of society, I will continue to support the golden rule and do my personal best to stay true to The Four Agreements.

There are a lot of good points on both sides of the argument, but the finger pointing about ‘you don’t get it’, or ‘getting social media all wrong’ is not going to be helpful for anyone. There is much to be learned on both sides though, and that is the purpose I have for bringing communications professionals together with bloggers, podcasters, journalists, students, non profits and for profits - to learn together, from each other. Yes, there are many who do not understand that the very nature of how we relate to one another as human beings is changing and continue to do things the wrong way. Are these people going to learn more if you call them names and disparage them, or are they going to learn more if you appreciate that they are PEOPLE and give them the respect that they deserve for being human while trying to help them understand how they can do things differently?

I am not going to get into a tit for tat on every post and every point in this discussion because we have a lot of important unfinished business that must be addressed first, but please know where I am coming from and that my goal is to serve as a catalyst for the good cause. Transforming society through the economic engine of business and technology and communications is no easy task, and I am sure there are things I will get wrong, as will each of us, but our intentions are clear and our objectives are probably pretty similar to yours, even when our tactics and approach may seem diametrically opposed.

In the end, ‘getting it’ is an internal shift that we can not easily force on anyone - people have to want to change for themselves - it is an internal realization that what has worked in the past is no longer working. You can bludgeon people into submission to your way of thinking or you can engage in respectful dialogue and make inroads by helping them along the way. In the end, how you choose to approach this world changing mission is your own. In the end, this is my noble pursuit.

This is the second of my weekly columns we are calling “A View From The Middle” - it is still in its birthing phase, so the format might change a bit, but they are generally deeper posts about the important things I see happening, not on the fringes, but in the middle with everyone else. 

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The Social Media Release Under Attack

Earlier this week at Third Thursday, we talked about the Social Media Release and thankfully recorded the next NMRCast, so the full conversation will soon be online.  Stowe Boyd was in attendance and had some very pointed questions, which we felt we answered to a degree, but did not dive into more deeply so as to hear other voices in attendance.  His blog post entitled “Enough Already: Getting Social Media all wrong” was a one-sided commentary that failed to even link to this site or  Social Media Release Blog and has now been picked up by Robert Scoble and others.  Our response was posted over here, so please join in on the conversation and let us know your thoughts…   BTW, if you really want to know about this subject, please read the draft of the requirements we wrote.

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Interviews with Chris Heuer, Co-Founder of Social Media Club

A couple of fine fellas have done podcasts with Chris recently, and I would love to share them with you all.

(1) Shel Holtz and Chris discuss the social media press release; the evolution of the effort, the components of the social media release, the progress made by the working group, composition of the working group, the desirability of standards, the issues the social media release is designed to address, and Chris’s expectations for a release of the initial social media press release standard. Phew! All this in 31 minutes. The podcast can be heard on the For Immediate Release website.

(2) Chris sat down ‘virtually’ with Brian Oberkirch and chatted about Social Media Club, disclosure/blogger ethics and the Social Media Press Release. It is a long one, but a good one which can be heard here.

Are you interested in doing an interview with one of the SMC Co-Founders? Please contact Kristie Wells at kristie [at] brainjams [dot] org for details and scheduling and I will hook you up.
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NMRcast #12

December 13, 2006

In this episode, Chris Heuer, Shel Holtz, Brian Solis and Tom Foremski discuss the entries of Fleishman Hillard and Edelman to the social media news release party; Chris provides an update on the integration of microformats into the social media press releases standard; Tom responds to a colleague’s question about whether journalists want a new type of press release; Chris covers progress toward planning a social media new release summit.You can download the file here (MP3, 12.9 MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

Related items:

• Weblo’s social media release, produced by iStudio and High Road Communications, affiliated with Fleishman Hillard
• iStudio’s blog post about the Weblo release
• Fleishman Hillard’s Ed Lee blogs about Canada’s first social media news release
• Edelman’s announcement of the debut of StoryCrafter
• Edelman’s Phil Gomes offers blog posts—part one and part two—discussing Edelman’s StoryCrafter
• The microformats website
• Tom Foremski’s post, Do journalists want a social media news release? from Silicon Valley Watcher
• Social Media Release Wiki (contribute your case studies)
• The new Social Media Release site, home of the social media release requirements
• Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)

A big ‘thank you’ to Shel for hosting and managing the NMRcast for us!

To listen to previous NMRcasts, please check out the For Immediate Release website.

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Social Media Club - Phoenix

November 5, 2006

Social Media Club is officially launching in the lovely state of Arizona this month.

Francine Hardaway has offered to lead the group and will be digging into topics covering disclosure/ethics, the new media press release and what is needed to grow the local community. NOTE: If there is a specific topic you would like to put on the table, please let a comment here and we will make sure Francine is aware of it.

Details are as follows:

Where: La Madeleine - in the wine room, 3102 East Camelback Road (Camelback & 32nd), Phoenix
When: Thursday, November 16th from 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Cost: FREE to attend (all we ask is that you pre-register so we may know you are coming)

We hope to see you there!
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Social Media Release Blog & Requirements ‘Released’

November 1, 2006

Just a quick note here that we have started a new Blog to address the progress of the Social Media Release and help practicioners to better understand best practices - ultimately making the most of the emerging standard for the PR industry. Check out the Social Media Release dot org Blog if you are interested and subscribe to that feed to follow updates. While we will still be talking about it here from time to time as a project of Social Media Club, the meat of the conversation will be happening over there and on the related Wiki.

[updated title - 3am typo]

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NMRCast #9

October 26, 2006

Chris Heuer, Brian Solis and Shel Holtz* discuss Edelman’s woes and the notion of disclosure; they also catch up on the working group progress and chat a bit more about tags (can you ever get enough?).

Shel Holtz provides a list of links supporting this podcast on his website, For Immediate Release.

You can download the file here (MP3, 12.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon). Also, the Apple iTunes subscription is now available here or by searching for NMRCast at the Apple iTunes store under “podcasts.” If you subscribe to the FIR “everything” feed, however, this podcast will not be included.

* Tom Foremski is currently in India and was not able to attend.

UPDATE: I had orignally titled this post ‘NMRCast #9: Disclose. Disclose. Disclose.’.  I realized this did not truly cover the content of this podcast, so I have changed the title to simply NMRCast #9.

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NMRcast #8 - Social Media Release powering forward

October 10, 2006

Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, and Shel Holtz discuss the Media Release working group’s progress, cover the role of tags in the Social Media release, and discuss Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s letter to the SEC seeking approval for blogs to serve as a channel for material disclosure.

Shel Holtz provides a list of links supporting this podcast on his website, For Immediate Release.

You can download the file here (MP3, 12.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

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Social Media Club NY Wrapup

September 19, 2006

I’ve attempted to take some rough notes of the meeting. As I was also actively participating, some of my notes are admittedly incomplete. Please feel free to add your own notes via the comments or point towards your blog. Also, please feel free to expand and amplify the discussion.

Meeting notes (very rough):

Introductions

Chris Heuer introduced himself, gave brief background on the genesis of Social Media Club and of BrainJams.

Howard Greenstein (that’s me) gave a brief backgrounder as well.

Chris discussed the following:
Web 2.0 – less a technology or a thing and more a spirit of rebirth, a sharing culture. Social Media is inclusive rather than exclusive. These ideas lead to the genesis of the Web 2.1 conference opposite the Web 2.0 conference.

In SMC we want to connect people from diverse communities and help them learn from each other.

3 main ideas:

1. Promote media literacy – general population, schools, underserved communities, etc.

2. Share best practices

3. Promote ethics and standards. One standard we’re working on is the hRelease/New Media Release. As part of this, Chris attended the XPRL meeting in London last week.

The group then discussed resources available to them in NY – Other groups or events.

Bar Camp NY

Next NY

Meetups (New Technology ones, as well as others (Russian language, etc. )

We discussed ideas for future meetings:

1. More about the non SM literate communities – how we can reach out to them, etc. Someone asked if when we mention these communities we were considering both the computer users who were not SM literate, and those who had limited or no online access – yes for both.
2. SM club as part of schools. We had a discussion about how we could best reach out to Schools – NYMouse.org, other groups
3. Someone would love to see the group share volunteering opportunities
4. An entreprenur has been asked to create an SM site for a 2008 campaign and wants to know how Social media will affect the public discourse around the election, and other public events.

We then got into a discussion about information overload. There are many, numerous different kinds of tools for Social Media, and many web 2.0 services. To which ones should we pay attention?

Discussion of Feed Readers, how many feeds and inputs can people handle?

Someone mentioned Berry Bloglines as a way to read feeds on the Blackberry mobile device.

We then moved to a discussion of Podcasts, and how many of them people can and actually do consume. Many good podcasts mentioned:
A few: Dr. Floyd, Podshow Music Rewind, Gillmor Gang, Jim Leher News Hour, etc. Debate (with Googling) of how many people listen to or have tried podcasts, and how to measure. Also, how much to measure vs micro or narrow casting. Discussion of narrow casting vs spray and pray large audience advertising - which works better?

Moved into a discussion of the Social Media Release/hRelease format. Points included some first and second hand accounts of how Journalists actually use and consume releases, what they would need to adopt a new format. Discussion of what to include in a release. Someone noted that the press release may just be one part of a much larger campaign, and ability to show people the associated ads, products, campaign material could be quite beneficial both to the company issuing the release as well as to the journalist or especially the blogger who is trying to put the release into context for a story. Feeing that Bloggers and Citizen Journalists more than journalists might benefit from the New Media Release format. Additional discussion ensued.

The next meeting will be announced with location shortly. Thanks to all who showed up, and to BusinessWire for hosting the event!


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XPRL Meeting in London

September 15, 2006

When I first saw the note from David Phillips about this meeting, I was intrigued, but after discussing the XPRL standard with more seasoned PR folks did not have high hopes honestly. People I spoke with said it was a dead but valiant effort to bring standards into the professional Public Relations world. They said the principal reason for failure was the lack of adoption in the many years since it was conceived. As is often the case with technology projects, it seemed that there was not enough early buy in from the people who were affected by it.

I was happy to see this was not lost on the members of the group and was indeed one of the key points of emphasis pursued during the course of the meeting.

In attendance were: [Read more]

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They Get It #1 - Jackie Danicki

September 7, 2006

They Get It is a new show from Social Media Club that invites you to learn about social media directly from the people who really 'get it'. Each week we will be interviewing one or two of the most insightful Social Media people we have had the pleasure to meet.

In our first show, Chris Heuer interviews Jackie Danicki who shares her insights on the importance of looking at the whole picture. She also reaffirms the mantra of the upcoming Web 2point 2 Unconference - the point is people!

Jackie also nominated Adriana Lukas and Brian Oberkirch as two people she knows who also get it. Each are now honorary members of "They Get It" and we will try to interview them very soon. Each will be receiving a one year professional membership to Social Media Club as well as some other tokens of appreciation which will be announced shortly.

The theme music is from Jeff Shields, Podcast Troubadour called EnoRoxyTheme.

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New Media Release #4

August 16, 2006

Chris Heuer and Brian Solis are live at SES and discuss search-engine optimization of press releases and the role of XML schemas in press releases.

The podcast can be found at the For Immediate Release site.

It’s a thriller folks.

Show notes for August 15, 2006



Welcome to NMRCast episode #4, a 23-minute podcast recorded live from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Download the file here (MP3, 15.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

Sorry; the ability to hear a stream from this page is not available for episode #4

In This Edition:

• New Media Release wiki
• Search Engine Strategies conference
• XPRL, the eXtensible Public Relations Language
• Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)
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NMR Cast #3 - Wire Services

August 1, 2006

The New Media Release Podcast, episode #3 can be downloaded here, heard directly from this page, or subscribed to via the NMRCast feed. Also, the Apple iTunes subscription is now available here or by searching for NMRCast at the Apple iTunes store under “podcasts.” If you subscribe to the FIR “everything” feed, however, this podcast will not be included.

Content summary:Tom Foremski and Brian Solis join Chris Heuer and Shel Holtz for a discussion what to call this thing, how to get the profession to work together on a single product, and the role the wire services will play.

Show notes for July 31, 2006



Welcome to NMRCast episode #3, a 32-minute podcast recorded live from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Download the file here (MP3, 12.9MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

In This Edition:

• New Media Release wiki
• Chris Heuer’s post on the name of this initiative
• Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)
Posted by shel on 07/31 at 04:17 PM

Chris’ Note: Again, much thanks to Shel for hosting and helping out with this initiative. Also, my apologies to Jason and Noah from theWeblogWire, which I mistakenly misidentified during the podcast.

Listen to this podcast now: