Top 5 Principles of the Social Media News Release

I've continued to think about the Social Media News Release, and I think I've pinpointed 5 core principles required for these new media versions of the 100-year old document.

• Democratize "Access" - The content (words, multimedia, links) need to be available to all comers. We cannot set up artificial barriers (i.e., "thou shalt present journalist credentials in order to download official jpegs of our logo").

• Ensure "Accuracy" - First off, given the electronic (and thus easily transfigured) nature of the Social Media News Release, we need to be thinking about some sort of "trustmark" scheme. Just as importantly, corporations need to see the benefit of providing "official" versions of their logos, graphics, and other multimedia, for use and re-use by all media types.

• Embrace "Context" - In the old days, you'd never clue a reporter to the assorted articles that had already been written about a client. Nowadays, you're a clod if you think they won't find these articles via a quick Google search, so, why not make the reporter's job easier by proactively providing links to industry-related research and yes, even to "competitive" articles (via del.icio.us, for example, where you can also append your own notes about each article)?

• Build "Community" - We need to make it easy for anyone who views the Social Media News Release to: comment on its content; re-mix its multimedia elements for use in blogs, on YouTube, and in the online versions of traditional print publications; bookmark it using Social Media tools, etc. We also need to track this response (T'rati tags, Sphere, etc.) and show a willingness to respond --- openly, and, as appropriate.

• Be "Findable" - Borrowing from Bhargava's ideas for Social Media Optimization and with a hat-tip to the wire services' increasing understanding of the importance of "search optimized" news, all I need to add here is the reminder that even the NY TIMES has considered how to run headlines that would make their content more readily "found" by the search engines. If the Gray Lady worries about Google, so should we all.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Anything I've forgotten? Anything else I ought to incorporate into my thinking about the "core principles" of the next-gen news release?

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