It looks like Edelman has released push-button web-tool that will allow their clients to automagically create social media press releases. Is this a good idea? I think the answer is a little more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no”. The real answer lies in what the nature of Social Media really is — and how misunderstanding it or ignoring it can lead to the opposite effect of what your press release was really supposed to do.

Where do I get off on talking about social press releases?

Since the whole Edelman-Walmart thing broke a few months ago, the idea of PR and social media is an intriguing issue for me. Afterwards, for example, I had a chance to blog about a PR firm AND web2.0 issues with how Shift communications had counseled Mothersclick, prior to their hissy fit at TechCrunch (message was “don’t do it” — but they seemed to be obsessed with TechCrunch as their big white whale). It all ended amicably, but at the time (which was about a month ago or more), I noticed that Shift Communications had already released one of the first “Social Media Press Release” templates earlier in the spring (May, to be precise).

You can download it over here (caution: pdf!). Basically, its a template so that companies can break up their press release into specific areas that are easy to read; there is a ‘boilerplate’ section, an ‘text approved by CEO section’, but what is also interesting (which, I suppose, makes it a “social media” press release), is that there are areas where the press release is meant to include areas which include links to Digg, Reddit and so on. And, there are areas where the release is meant to link to a potential podcasts and so on as well, in addition, to a customized del.icio.us bookmark.

Now this template seems like a great cheat sheet if you were a PR guy who doesn’t know a thing about social media. Having said that, I think that the template, like all cheet sheets, are dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Quite frankly, it could be a disaster.

Is disaster too strong word? Well, ask Richard Edelman.

At the risk of flogging a dead horse (pun intended), I think its worthwhile examining in a quick post portem on what transpired a few months ago.

In spite of having the resources of a world wide PR firm behind him and the biggest of A+ clients underneath his gilded wings, Mr. Edelman made a huge blunder (some would say “disastrous”) in the social media realm that got tons of negative coverage for weeks; it even got covered in the mainstream press and trade journals. At the end of the day, it resulted in a review of Edelman by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and it will probably be the fodder of case studies and textbooks for years to come.

There are probably lots of lessons to be learned out of that whole PR mess — but clearly one of the biggest ones is that social media is a very powerful and new tool; companies are trying to harness “viral marketing” with tools so new, that very few in the industry can say with confidence they can use them effectively all (or most) of the time.

Unfortunately, the tool is a double edged weapon — while there are home runs (the Dove YouTube compaign, also done by Edelman, I think), there are also some spectacular disasters (Walmart Flog).

The very long winded point is this: cheat sheets are only any good when you’ve already got the knowledge to use them as a shortcut.

Using shortcuts without knowing much (anything) about social media is potentially useless, and worse, it might not just be “not effective”, but it might generate bad PR (if bad PR is indeed “bad”) … and a helluva lot of it.

Consider this example: How a company, giddy with the thought of how much traffic Digg brings, designing social media press releases with abandon, hitting Digg up every day with hyperinflated hyperbole traditional press releases disguised as “news” about a “product” or “service”. However, if you knew anything about Digg, and the culture of people who inhabitat Digg, you would realize how futile, and potentially dangerous this would be. Not only could your site (which, presumably, the Press release was hosted on) get a mountain of negative publicity within Digg (and those comments are not pretty), and be called an outright spammer, you could potentially get your URL banned FOREVER.

Wha — ? Banned from Digg? Being called a spammer?

Without knowing what you’re doing, its possible.

And it all leads into the web tool that was released yesterday by Edelman, called “StoryCrafter”, which automates this practice. Unfortunately, both Edelman and Steve Reubel’s own “press releases” were quite vague on the details; thankfully, there’s some details over here. Its going to be a propriety client-only remotely-hosted webtool, so its only going to be available to Edelman-clients.

A few points regarding THIS development: push-button social media releases are a potentially bad thing. They need to be exercised with caution and circumspect and with the knowledge that they could back fire. Marketing in social media requires a different set of skills than, perhaps, what most traditional PR folks are used to, where carefully crafted news releases were simply broadcast to an audience. And for traditional PR folks, the nature of the social web may hold truths they might have a hard time grappling with.

1. The social web talks back: its a participatory medium; you have to get used to hearing what people really think (and be prepared for it — consider the kind of people who actually write back, or who blog)
2. The social web talks amongst itself: people will talk around you, and there’s a chance you won’t even know what a huge percentage of people are secretly thinking, and what thoughts and memes are fomenting.
3. The social web talks quickly and reacts even quicker: internet time works in minutes and hours — not business days or weeks. That means you’ve got to be able to react in the same fashion; silence means that the audience can control the conversation, and it might mean you don’t care what they think.

While I think there’s a tremendous amount of power that the social media marketing has, because of its participatory nature, it is, by necessity, dangerous to think you can create the same old messages and expect them to work. The presumption that people don’t mind being bombarded with the same old bombastic marketing talk is a cardinal falsehood in this framework — and its penalties are not just a failure of the message to create the impact you want … but creating a negative backlasth that PR firms and clients may not be prepared for.