That is the finding of an analysis done by Adam Parker over at Show Me Numbers (via Shel Holtz). He believes that SMNRs double the chance of your getting editorial coverage and triple your chance of blog coverage. Very cool.
However, and as much as it pains me to disagree, could it not be that the sort of content worthy of an SMNR is more news worthy?
SMNRs are more expensive and time consuming to put together than a traditional release. There is all the content development and asset gathering to do, the style guides and design to consider – which means (in my mind) that an organization would only put this sort of effort behind it if it really believed in it.
This likely doesn’t take into account the presumably vast number of releases issued for compliance, legal or even SEO reasons. Releases that aren’t meant for the media any way.
It is an interesting thesis and one that deserves further thought. But right now, SMNRs are still new and fresh. If everyone starts using them, will that mean editorial coverage of news releases (which are now all SMNRs) double as well?
What do you think?
Ed Lee's Blogging Me Blogging You | @edlee 
Hi Ed
Thanks for covering the analysis. Despite being an accountant by training the spreadsheets I had to pull together to produce it still gave me a bit of a headache!
Your point about selection of SMNRs is well made, in fact I said as much in my post 🙂
“I would suggest that the most likely reason for the improvement in performance of SMNRs is that the additional investment needed to produce a SMNR means that clients are more likely to use them for the most interesting stories. It is this investment in quality that then pays dividends with the features of the SMNR allowing the user to enhance that storytelling and so produce the improved results.”
With regards to whether we all just need to switch to SMNRs and suddenly coverage will rocket, again I agreed with your circumspection in the post. For me the implication of the analysis was less stories, more creatively told, to the right people.
As much as I completely accept your point that some releases can have other purposes, can the industry really say hand on heart that it couldn’t improve on a situation where over half the releases sent across the big wires http://bit.ly/2C35 apparently don’t get editorial coverage?
Thanks again.
Adam
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Ed,
As you note, the newness of SMNRs and the fact they tend to be very targeted in format for their audience I’m sure plays a huge part in looking at their effectiveness.
There are a lot more traditional news releases, with enough of them not really intended for a lot of media.
Overall, SMNRs are good they do a good job of trying to be customized for the end-user media’s needs. Still, it’s only a format.
What makes any release good is the news judgment in planning, the development (quality writing, images, etc.) and if it goes to the correct targeted media. These are tried and true basics in media relations.
-Mike
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