The difference between journalists and bloggers

Do you know the difference between a traditional press release and a social media press release, or do you think it’s just a matter of adding a video and a twitter handle to your story? This sounds like a very basic question – social media press releases incorporate video and social media, whereas traditional releases don’t… right? Not exactly. The primary difference between traditional and social media releases isn’t about features like video, Twitter and Facebook. It’s about audience.

A traditional press release should tell a good news story. It makes the lives of busy journalists easier by providing them with a compelling piece of news and an interesting angle. A social media press release should still tell a good story, but it must be geared to bloggers, not journalists and newspapers. Yes, there’s a difference, and it’s a subtle but important one.

Journalists answer to their editors. Bloggers answer to their readers.

This is why social media press releases were created in the first place. They’re media-rich, shareable and interactive, all qualities that appeal to bloggers, not on their own merits, but because multimedia content is more engaging to their readers. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a video is worth 1,000 pictures, so to speak.

But let’s not lose the forest for the trees. As we made clear at the beginning of this post, adding a slick video and a Facebook icon doesn’t mean that you magically have a social media press release. It goes without saying that first and foremost, you have to have a story worth telling. And you have to tell it in different ways for different audiences. Your story must provide value not only to your target audiences, but to the people they answer to.