The Importance of Social Media Press Releases for Dance -- Dancing into the Future

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January 23, 2008

The Importance of Social Media Press Releases for Dance

I've always been intrigued by "Social Media Press Releases" (SMPR) and how they can be used to enhance publicity within the dance world.

In a nutshell, a SMPR is a relatively new press release format that aggregates 1) summaries of key information, 2) multimedia content and 3) relevant links while removing the extended editorializing that bogs down traditional press releases. (By "bogs down," I mean overwhelms or is irrelevant to non-traditional writers and journalists). Finally, anybody can subscribe to a SMPR feed to be automatically notified about any updates.

A key advantage with SMPR is that they can be used to reach a much larger number of content creators--not just traditional journalists. Dance and presenter SMPR, for example, could be used to reach both dance and non-dance audiences and appeal to anybody with a blog or social networking page--a potentially huge audience.

In this post, I'd like to offer some suggestions of how dance companies could create SMPR for their upcoming dance performances. But first some background:

Background About Social Media Press Releases

Maggie Fox (no relationship) of the Social Media Group wrote a post on Monday "The Social Media Press Release - Digital Snippets." In her post, she includes links to SMPR that her company has created for Ford (here are more Ford SMPR), and a Social Media Press Release Template (PDF).

Multimedia section from Ford SMPR

If you browse through the Ford SMPR, you'll quickly get an idea of how this new take on press releases is constructed and how easy it is to find the types of content you're looking for.

My Posts About SMPR and Dance Publicity

I've written a number of posts since 2006 about new approaches to publicity and how to transform the publicity function in order to increase the number of content creators who are covering and discussing your work and performances:

May 2006: Revamping Press Releases for the Arts

December 2006: Increase Dance Coverage with Multimedia Releases and Open Rehearsals

March 2007: What Strategy Should Drive Dance Publicity?

July 2007: Multimedia Press Kits for the Internet Age

Thinking About Dance and SMPR

There are two important trends to keep in mind when it comes to dance publicity:

1) Dance is now back and part of American popular culture. Just consider the popularity of on-going and new dance shows (Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, Dance War and more), viral dance videos (Evolution of Dance, Soulja Boy and others) and the number of upcoming Super Bowl promotions that feature dancing, including the inane KFC Chicken Dance contest.

2) A huge number of people, especially young people, have social networking pages and profiles--which means that just about everybody can and does create content.

So in light of a huge dance audience and the huge number of content creators it does not make sense to keep producing traditional press releases that only appeal to a small sliver of your potential audience.

What Do Dance SMPR look like?

I think that Dance SMPR would look very similar to the one created for Ford and more or less follow the SMPR PDF template I linked to above. You'd essentially be including videos, pictures, facts, interview quotes, links and recommended tags. ("Recommended tags" would be tags that you recommend content creators use when writing about your dance rehearsals, performances, workshops and similar programs.

In the end, an SMPR is very similar to a blog except that you'd really be creating and aggregating content so that other people could cover what you're doing and the emphasis wouldn't be as much on telling your own story directly to your audience--although you could do that to.

Finally, as with any blog, anybody who wished to could subscribe to your SMPR feed. As things stand now, if a dance company does not have a blog, I have no way of following what they're doing on a regular basis. By creating a SMPR with a feed, I would always be in the loop and so would thousands of other people be as well.

Posted by Doug Fox on January 23, 2008 11:59 AM

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6 Comments

Michelle said:

I'm not a lawyer but what Ford and others are doing may well violate the terms of service for websites like Yahoo (who own Flickr), Facebook, GoooTube and others. The Yahoo ToS states:

"You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion of the Service (including your Yahoo! ID), use of the Service, or access to the Service."

If too many companies start putting what are essentially smuggled ads into these sites they might start clamping down. Social network are just that "social" if they start getting overtly commercial so people don't know the difference between a person and a corporation (or dance company for that matter) then there could be trouble.

Added: January 23, 2008 5:11 PM | Permalink

matthew gough said:

hi michelle,

it seems that the companies on myspace & face book etc have a different arrangement from normal users. - http://tinyurl.com/ywse95

also i can't see the social networks cracking down on commercial usage, that is what myspace is about for indie bands. the same for freelance photographers on flickr.

most of the big social networks are geared towards making a profit. the money has to come from somewhere, so i can see why they let companies network sell.

but there should be a clear indication about where content is coming from.

Added: January 23, 2008 7:39 PM | Permalink

Doug Fox said:

I can't see social media sites cracking down on advertisers using their services either - they're happy to get the traffic.

And, Michelle, I really don't see a dance company falling in the same category as a company when it comes to posting videos, pictures and other content to these sites.

Added: January 24, 2008 8:18 AM | Permalink

Michelle said:

commercial exploitation is commercial exploitation and the owners of the sites may see it differently. Social media sites may ignore low volume promotional material from dance companies but they will take notice if anybody starts making significant revenue from their platforms and they don't get a cut.

Buying ad space is not the same as running commercial content inside their platform like a normal user would do.

Added: January 24, 2008 1:02 PM | Permalink

Nishka Manglani said:

Doug,

It has been such a pleasure reading your articles and point of views expressed. It will surely change the way I wil work towards promoting my clients in the future but reading this has made me realise how outdated we lots are in this part of the world (I am from Dubai) or may be just the company I work for :)

Added: January 28, 2008 1:41 PM | Permalink

Doug Fox said:

Hi Nishka,

Thanks for your comment!

The truth is that not that many arts and cultural organizations in US are using social media as part of their publicity efforts - although I think that's beginning to change.

Added: January 29, 2008 1:18 PM | Permalink

About

Since 2005, Doug Fox's blog has covered the intersection of dance and the Internet. A primary focus is to help dancers and dance companies use the Internet and their dance videos for marketing, educational, creative and revenue-generation purposes.

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Dancing into the Future

January 23, 2008