Building a social media news release
A new 'widget' has been launched - PRX Builder - which, it is claimed, provides a one stop shop for pulling together a Social Media News Release.
The PRX Builder service enables PR & marketing professionals to easily create Social Media news releases through a series of guided steps.
All releases are developed in Portable Release XML (PRX), a simple, distributable XML document format. Once a news release is created using PRX Builder's toolset, the content creator can preview the news release in "Social Media" format. PRX promotes a "write once" model for release distribution: users can create the release, post the PRX file to the corporate website, and then send the PRX link to distribution services for processing.
The PRX Builder system can automatically include Technorati tags, a Digg button, and can also auto-download users' selected del.icio.us account links and Flickr photos, to provide instant context for anyone viewing the online version of the news release.
All releases created using the PRX Builder system are also optimized for RSS. As ongoing industry initiatives such as the Social Media Club have been struggling with this for a while so it will be interesting to see what PRX Builder can deliver.
It’s not clear from the stories I’ve seen who is behind this but I have seen that PR Newswire is involved.
Dave Armon, CEO at PR Newswire says: "The Social Media News Release is a very practical adjunct to the standard release format and has the potential to be an exciting step in the continuing evolution of public relations and business communications.
"We look forward to supporting its growth, as well as interest in Web 2.0 technologies and the expanded communications options that they offer."
We shall see...
5 comments:
Thanks for mentioning PRX Builder. We're very excited about this week's launch and hope that everyone will give our new service a try. PR Newswire has developed a very cost-effective package specifically for our service and it's really worth the time to take a look.
I'm Shannon Whitley, from Whitley Media, the creators of PRX Builder. This project began several months ago in the blogosphere. I read Todd Defren's first post about the Social Media Press Release Template and realized how powerful this could become, especially if it were automated and easy to use. The result is PRX Builder.
We have a lot of other ideas cooking to improve the lives of PR folks and journalists. I hope this is a first step toward many improvements in the world of professional communicators and media enthusiasts.
I'm still neutral on this but I wish you all the best in the venture. To be honest, I have still not been able to get my hands on it because of the firewall at my office won't tolerate Flash - maybe you guys should do it in straight web-lite.
In the UK people are still rather puzzled by the whole concept of social media, so I would be more than happy to champion PXB (once I get my head around it!) because I really do believe this will become a very potent tool over the next couple of years.
We have one client who really understands the whole Web 2.0 schtick - www.whisky.co.uk - and I will keep you informed how PXB works for them.
By the same token - keep me posted.
Ian
I also notice it won't tolerate pop-up blockers! A bugbear of mine.
Hi Ian. Thanks for the mention - glad to have your voice in the conversation.
Does it really look like a struggle or did I misunderstand your reference? I had not thought of it as much of a struggle really, but appreciate your perspective. We have been trying to get a bigger conversation going with a wider variety of input, but I suppose it appears slow since we have not built it out yet. Should have probaby just done it first and asked for input later, but I thought that it would be better to get community participation first. The thinking behind what we are doing has certainly improved from those conversations (particularly this past week), but I had hoped we would have seen more experimentation by now.
The good news is that the general requirements we drafted last month will be published in the next couple of days for open discussion and we are working to publish the draft specification at the Society of New Communications Research Symposium in Boston on November 2.
I have heard from others that the PRX Builder is a good first step in the right direction, but have not fully explored it yet. Once we are done with the Social Media Release Microformat, PRX will hopefully be one of the first companies to support it.
It really is an exciting time for communications professionals with all of this great innovation and activity happening. It's good to know there are a few people like Todd Defren and Shannon Whitley out there helping push things in a new direction.
Thanks Chris,
"Struggle" is not a perjorative term by the way ( Jeeze - you guys!)but an clarion call that all things worth doing never come easily.
I look forward to developments and already offered my humble service sin the Uk to the SMC.
Good Luck.
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