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February 16, 2008
Social Media News Room by GM Europe is Classic Library
A hammer and chisel does not make one a sculptor. Social media news rooms are catching on and they'll soon be standard fare, but let's not get so enamored with the tools that we forget our craft of storytelling. Here's one from GM Europe. It has all the bells and whistles: sharing links, a tag cloud, photos parked on Flickr, videos planted in YouTube, a blogroll, etc. But stand back and squint at it and it's still a library. That's the classic limitation of online news rooms. They tell the site visitor "Here you'll find stacks and stacks of stuff. Now, you piece together our story." PR folks all too often miss the point that they're story tellers, not document distribution services. So why leave the drama to the marketing sections of the Web site? In the online world, you have to pull people into your story. Your online press room is like a 3D press kit. Use some graphics and grabber copy to get attention. Sure, not every news release is a big event, but any organization has a few main story lines. Think about approaching your news room in a way that you OWN those stories. For example, GM Europe did a cool Hummer-as-a-giant-toy marketing stunt outside a Toys R Us. Why not serve up that story right from the home page of the news room? Walk down the hall and talk to the direct marketers or interactive folks in your office and have them help you deliver the news in a more compelling way. Bring the exciting stuff to the surface, not clicks away on YouTube.
Posted by Bob Brin at February 16, 2008 9:49 AM
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