The news wire isn’t dead. If you want to reach the cutting room floor of John Q. Editor, putting your press release out over the wire is still your best bet. Unfortunately, press releases, for all their pomp and circumstance, are extremely expensive and for many companies that rely on word of mouth and “influencers” for their initial base, trying to get the attention of the New York Times isn’t worth the cost.

What’s the alternative? The Social Media Release.

Most companies worth their micro-blogging platform have some conceptually clumsy methods of using “New Media” to present their products to early adopters, but few see Social Media in the same terms as they do the newswire, as a channel to distribute information to a specific audience.

What would a prototypical Social Media release look like?

Stage One – Is This Appropriate?

If you are selling lawn mowers in Boise, Social Media isn’t going to help you anywhere near as much as pounding the pavement will. A lot of time and effort can be saved by identifying when web content channels aren’t appropriate for your product. Hint, the rule of thumb is that if the transaction (whatever it is) can be done entirely online — then online channels are where you should be promoting your stuff.

Stage Two – Find Your Fit

You have three major weapons in your arsenal: blogs, social bookmarking and social networking. Depending on your goals and the type of product you are developing you might need to use any or all of them for a successful release. Where companies stumble is that they believe that these three pillars exist in isolation and they rely too heavily on one to carry the weight of their marketing effort. In short, if you have a “Facebook strategy” or a “Twitter strategy” and that’s all you use, you’re selling yourself short.

Stage Three – Go In Guns A’Blazin’

Posting something to Digg or sending out a Tweet does not a Social Media release make. In order for you to get into the hearts and minds of a fickle public think in terms of Total War. Saturate every channel. For the breath of time you need to promote your idea be everywhere, use everything. You’re trying to make your little product stand out amongst a thousand other applications that do nearly the same thing, the only way to do this effectively is fire every cannon, to beat every plow into a sword.

Don’t be shy.

You only get one opportunity to get people to care — it’s not worth wasting it.

What do you think the best use cases of a social media release are? Do you think they could be used for more “traditional” industries?

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