I’m still pondering about how to make the Social Media News Release work for governmental and public affairs. It seems many of the journalists I meet still don’t get how to use an aggregator or don’t know much about IM. They understand media portals and really appreciate the links to relevant information. The SMNR format suggested by Todd Defren attempts to fill many of these needs, however when journalists give you a blank stare after receiving one, then you wonder how effective the technique is for a moment.

It might be tempting to say, “Well, those folks are a bunch of ninnies who just don’t get it.” No, it wouldn’t. One of the guys I pitched spends his time wardriving looking for WiFi hotspots and fought to get the news truck wired. So, I think he makes for a good test subject. The SNMR doesn’t work for him. He tells me 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. (If any of you pioneers can explain what went wrong, I’d appreciate some insight.) In the end, he may have just wanted to cut-and-paste a run-of-the-mill news release and this format made him actually have to work.

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. Or maybe journalists want something else. Communication Overtone’s Kami Huyse suggests that focus groups are needed to engage journalists and see what they really want and need from a social media format news release. That’s a good idea. Now who’s going to go out and do it?