One of the fastest ways to elicit an eye-rolling from a public relations practicioner is to bring up the dreaded “new hire” press release. Nobody wants to read them. Even less want to write them. And certainly nobody ever ever would write about them (Unless you’re an Apple or a Microsoft). Yet clients still ask for them. They still clog up the wires.
And now, today, at this moment, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them.
From the PR side of things, they seem pretty pointless. If you boneheadedly send them out to enough people, your pitches will probably get you the wrong type of coverage. Mediocre press releases also won’t make for good portfolio material. Usually, the writing style employed in these types of releases doesn’t even leave room for any creative Oomph.
On the management side of things, however, the ever-so-boring “Vice President of _____ hired to re-energize _____” releases start making a lot of sense. They’re good for morale. They make the new hire feel like part of the team while letting all the non-newbies get a feel for who the new guy (or gal) is. Finally, they’re a piece of the company’s history.
One of the wonders of social media is that it molds to so many uses. With a social media release, we can share our company news with pretty much the exact people (and amount of people) who would be interested in it, without personally alienating the rest. Easy online newsroom technology takes care of the chronicling, so we can easily look back and see what happened when.
This concept is not limited to public relations. On the Tonight Show, Conan O’ Brien has been running a great segment called Twitter Tracker (see it on Hulu) where he makes fun of how mundane and boring a lot of the “best” tweets are.
One of the tweets “tracked” and read for the benefit of the Tonight Show viewership is Ashton Kutcher tweeting about getting groceries. As mundane as it is, it works in social media simply because somebody will be interested. And most of those somebodies are the people subscribed to Ashton Kutcher. I won’t report the number here, because by the time you read this it will be off by tens of thousands. That’s a lot of mediocre.
So go ahead and publish that news release in a social media setting. Some might make fun of you “getting groceries” but they’re probably missing the point– and also probably not subscribed to your newsroom.
