Government social media releases
Michael Sommermeyer over at wordy mouth posted about his experience with a social media release, Social Media Release Unwinds, and more specifically about the less than stellar reception that it received from some of the media.
As an example of an SMR, it looks pretty pretty much like the original template put forward by Todd Defren. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, as Michael says, one of the media he pitched it to didn’t necessarily appreciate it:
my implementation was too disjointed, didn’t help him understand the message, left him hunting for the story. In short, he didn’t like it.
As (public sector) communicators, we have to listen and, where necessary, adapt.
Michael’s experimental subject obviously has the tech skills, and is a journalist so pretty much constitutes the target demographic, but still found the SMR wanting. How can we fix this?
I posted here recently about the different requirements for government communicators and how the SMR, or more specifically hRelease, can support them.
Essentially, my argument is to focus on the (semantic) markup of the release, not the presentational format. The audience for government releases is not just tech-savvy media and bloggers, so it has to be discoverable and usable by all comers. For technical details, see this post on a NZ government SMR.
Michael’s release is actually a tremendous step forward in terms of its markup, and for that he should be applauded. It is not buried in nested tables, the elements are marked up semantically and it would be accessible to pretty much anyone, or anything. (A doctype and cleaning up some of the markup so that it validates would be my only quibble).
And as Michael notes in his post, there is no harm in using the more traditional format, at least as a transition strategy:
In any case, it may be more useful to sneak some of the elements of the SMNR into our usual inverted pyramid-styled press releases. A few links to relevant information mixed in with the text. A sidebar pointing to our Digg or del.icio.us tags…
That would make the release usable for the majority of the audience (including all non-media interested parties) and the improved markup would make it more discoverable, accessible and re-usable.
Technorati Tags: social media, SMR, hRelease, microformats, government, public servants.
April 5th, 2007 20:53
I actually took inspiration from your use of the SMNR and figured it was time to test it out. And I think it is important for us to experiment with new forms of communication and see where it leads us.
Fortunately, I rarely need to use a press release; my media contacts usually accept a phone call and a pitch, especially if the idea is worthy and news. However, from time-to-time it would be nice to distribute our news to others outside of the city and build some goodwill for the courts.
I think anything we do should be easy to re-purpose and viewed by as many people as possible, and certainly over time more of my journalists are going to be seeking out information via RSS, XML or whatever may come next.
Testing is important too, and I would like to see more people report their findings. The adage, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” is certainly the motto I plan to follow through with in my next attempt.
April 21st, 2007 16:01
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