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Case Studies & Events & New Media & Social Media Press Release & Web Strategy Melvin Yuan on 24 Mar 2007 04:38 am

The Community Press Release [An Experiment]

Like Shift Communications and Edelman, I’m attempting to change the way a Press Release is developed. Yes, it may end up looking conceptually the same as Shift’s Social Media News Release (SMNR) or Edelman’s StoryCrafter, but the approach is entirely different.


Enter the Community Press Release.

I’m testing this on a technology conference that’s taking place tomorrow – Nexus 2007 – organized by The Digital Movement, a non-profit organization that I am a part of.

In the actual implementation, I’ve labeled it The Committeeunity Press Release. Because that’s what it is… I’m scratching out the “Committee-dictated”, top-down approach to writing the event press release, and instead, handing the task over to the Community of conference participants.

They can write the release, link their blog posts (about the event) to it, share their best photos and Podcasts of the conference, and do just about anything that they feel will best present the conference to reporters and the rest of the world. In fact, they’ll probably be more thorough in reporting on the incidental (but significant) news that my team may have missed out in the process of running the event! PLUS, there is an added layer of authenticity in a piece that’s written and checked by a Community of participants. (Think Wikipedia.)

Here’s a step-by-step guide I developed along the way (note that all this is still work in progress):

A. Set it up

  1. Start the Community Press Release on a public wiki
  2. Ensure that it has a short and intuitive URL (domain forwarding helps)
  3. Consider password and registration requirements for participants

B. Create a framework

  1. Provide a structure for the press release (because not all bloggers know what a press release looks like); and include sections like:
    1. Headline/s
    2. Facts (5W1H)
    3. Quotes
    4. Interesting events
  2. Provide links to:
    1. Official website/s
    2. Blog posts on conference segments (consider categorizing the blog posts according to day/session/theme)
    3. Photo-sharing sites where participants upload their best photos
    4. Podcasts
    5. Conference coverage in mainstream media (perhaps more relevant after the event)
  1. Appoint a facilitator to ensure that participants are making meaningful contributions, and that technical issues are quickly resolved

C. Provide guidance

  1. Provide background and essential information to start with
  2. Give clear instructions on how conference attendees can participate in the Community Press Release, and how to get help/further guidance (Give them the phone number or an the IM details of the facilitator)
  3. Under each section header, provide annotations

D. Call to action

  1. Announce it at the start of the event and/or place signboards of the announcement
  2. Encourage each attendee to be a participant in sharing their experience with the “Invisible Crowd”.
  3. Some people learn more when they participate, and this will be a good incentive for participants wanting to get more out of an event!
  4. Offer prizes?

E. Putting the results to use

  1. Send it to reporters who ask for a press release
  2. Make the URL available to everyone

Note: The Community Press Release is probably only suitable for conferences at this point of time.

What are your thoughts on the concept of a Community Press Release? Apart from events, how else do you think a Community Press Release can work?

Nexus 2007 will start in about five hours; and by the end of the day, I hope to have a Community Press Release that is succinct enough to hold a reporter’s attention at first glance. Yet it should also be comprehensive enough – with links to other sources of information and rich media – for reporters and the rest of the world out there!

Look out for the Nexus 2007 Community Press Release

Wish me luck!

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4 Responses to “The Community Press Release [An Experiment]”

  1. on 27 Mar 2007 at 1:53 pm 1.Ivan Chew said …

    Hi Melvin, how’s the experiment going? From my perspective, there are quite a few steps the person has to take, so that’s a kind of barrier in itself. Call me “old skool” but the idea of a Community Press Release just seems like a very elaborate “word of mouth” strategy that’s already prevalent in the blogosphere. I understand a “press release” to besomething written for the press, before the event. As a potential participant, I won’t know a lot about the event, and to the press, I’m not going to be as authorative as the main organiser. Just my 2-cents. :)

  2. on 28 Mar 2007 at 11:29 pm 2.melvinyuan said …

    Hi Ivan,

    Like all experiments, this has been a valuable learning experience; and it has given me a much better idea on how to engage “the invisible crowds” in future.

    We initially hoped that there would be more than a hundred contributors from amongst the crowd at Nexus, but this didn’t happen. Instead, there were just over ten contributors.

    Despite this, I find myself believing more in this experiment. There were some things that could have been done better (for lack of time and prior planning) had the idea occurred to me earlier than 24 hours before the actual event! And I think the community press release has more potential than what we’re seeing now. Just look at the volume of “participant-generated” content at Nexus - the blog posts (such as your’s); the photos on Flickr and the podcasts…

    I’ll post an update on this experiment soon, with some of the lessons learnt. And I hope to tinker around with this model (of a community-developed press release) a little more…

    To address your other queries:

    • “there are quite a few steps the person has to take” - I’m surprised at this because I thought it was quite a straight-forward process: access page, log in to edit, and save changes when you’re done. Care to share what the difficulties were?
    • “just seems like a very elaborate “word of mouth” strategy” - I’m not sure exactly how to respond to this, except that this strategy was based on the assumption that there would be “word of mouth activity”. And what I intended to do, was aggregate them on “one landing page” to make it easier to find these sources of information. I’m sure that reporters, bloggers and other members of “the invisible crowd” would appreciate the authentic records and collective report of the event. [My friend, Wilson Tan, sums up the strategy much better than I could have, in his comment on my “Invisible Crowds” post.]
    • As for the source and timing of this press release – it’s really alright. This “community press release” serves as a post-event record of what happened. To inform the mass media ahead of time, and to invite them to the event, I sent a media advisory (that I wrote) before the Nexus.

    Thanks again for your feedback. :)

  3. on 31 Mar 2007 at 3:56 pm 3.Ivan Chew said …

    >>>
    “there are quite a few steps the person has to take”
    >>>
    OK, that was me shooting my mouth off again! :)
    Well it’s like this, from my point of view. I know there’s something about us plugging the event. But somehow got the impression I had to write something to be posted at Nexus2007… I guess I based it on my assumptions and didn’t do anything about it. I only learnt about this “community press release” from your blog post. I guess you need a different strategy for lazy people like me, LOL.

    One more thing though — I guess my apathy towards Nexus2007 was bec. I didn’t really know what it would be like. Didn’t want to plug something that might turn out to be uh, crappy (thankfully it wasn’t!) Now that I’ve attended it, I’m more inclined to give it a plug.

  4. on 31 Mar 2007 at 4:22 pm 4.Melvin Yuan said …

    It’s all about the execution… the idea was dreamt up late into the game; we had too many other priorities to attend to, and we didn’t get a chance to get the whole Nexus team involved in it.

    As with most tactics, this should be worked into the overall event plan from the start.

    So, this experiment didn’t work out well, but I’m more confident of the concept now. Waiting for a second chance to test it.

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