Social media newsrooms - it’s time to stand up and be counted
December 14, 2007 by Chris Norton
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Whilst trawling the Internet doing some research for a high profile consumer technology client - who shall remain nameless - I noticed that hardly any of the big consumer brands around the world have dedicated social media newsrooms to share their news content with journalists and bloggers.
A social media newsroom, enables rich media content such as podcasts, vlogs and social media news releases to be properly shared and signposted, making a company’s news stories more accessible.
To be honest, there are precious few examples to highlight but GM and Electrolux, are two which immediately spring to mind. Stuart recently made a few interesting comments about Electrolux’s on his blog.
Last week, PR Week dedicated an entire 24-page supplement to the importance of digital and social media with opinions from several people across our industry. They were all (roughly) providing a similar message, which was that PR companies, clients and marketers must all sit-up and take notice of the social media revolution or risk being left behind.
It’s true that a lot of brands do need to wake up to what’s happening in public relations, so I am disappointed to see just how many of them still don’t have an actual working social media newsroom.
OK, here comes a Homer Simpson ‘Doh’ moment, as amazingly we (Wolfstar) don’t have a fully interactive social media newsroom yet either. I can hear the phrases ‘cobbler’s children’ and ‘practice what you preach’ ringing in my ears already.
Hmm, sorry about that and you do have a point but the only response I can give to this is that we have been so busy advising and our clients with their content that we haven’t made our social media newsroom fully interactive - DOH! Don’t worry though it’s on its way - watch this space!
If brands and marketers really do want to differentiate themselves in 2008, they could indeed look into opening a social media newsroom at the very least, as this will mean more journalists and consumers alike will be able to share, comment and bookmark their all important news content.
Nice post Chris,
My firm is currently building social media newsrooms for a few prominent clients - but it is a hard sell. Some clients have surprised me by how well they “get it,” while others just don’t get many aspects of Web 2.0.
Like your firm, Chris, we don’t yet have our own sm newsroom up and running; best of luck to you all in building yours. Vince
Good post. Agencies and corporations alike have been slow to adopt the social media newsroom, but progress is being made. Both Virgin Megastores and Seagate Technology have also implemented social media newsrooms. I did a post on these at:
http://tinyurl.com/2swre6
Thanks Vince - I think over the next couple of years we will all be facing the same types of battles trying to assure new clients that Web 2.0 and social media are now here to stay.
Clients are going to have to take them seriously and to be honest they will do as more and more companies adopt social media newsrooms etc etc.