After the Social Media Press Release, the Twitter Release...

Social Media Press Releases or SMPRs have still a long way to go but already some are taking the next steps...

Muck Rack, a Twitter aggregator site which publishes the latest tweets from (mainly US based) reporters is now launching the "Twitter press release"; a 130 character long pitch.

The one line press releases which are published through their service are then displayed prominently on Muck Rack's Twitter feed and MuckRack.com, the website.

The cost ?: 1 USD/character with a minimum of 50$. Up till now I can only see 6 "twitter releases" from several organisations.

The latest release entitled "American Freestyle Motocross Association @ X Games next week http://bit.ly/9myUrp" & published 2 hours ago got 31 clicks on its bit.ly link.

Ok so this is a novel idea but at the same time I doubt that reporters on Muck Rack will be helped with a deluge of one liners in Twitter format...

At the minimum the system should allow to filter releases just as it assigns reporters a certain beat. I understand that this is a potential feature they will add...

Till then, reporters will have to search through the releases on the search page.

European Communications Summit - July 2 & 3, 2009

This week I'll be speaking at the European Communications Summit organised by the European Association of Communications Directors (EACD) of which I am member since the start a couple of years ago.

The agenda is full with top keynote speakers like my ex-colleague Mike Wing, Vice President, Strategic and Executive Communications & the man behind the latest and very successful "Smarter Planet" communications campaign of IBM.

Mike Wing, IBMThe funny thing is that Mike and I have been colleagues at IBM for about 10 years and never really met in person. This will be the occasion to catch up in real life...

I'll be talking about how we're taking the first moves at Van Marcke Group to implement social media both for internal and external communications. I'll also touch upon the differences and/or similarities between a B2B and B2C approach/market.

Next to the interesting sessions with top communicators it is always nice to catch up with other colleagues from the profession. I am looking forward to meet again with Médard Schoenmaeckers, Head of Media Relations, Syngenta and Dirk de Muynck from Volvo Group among many others.

From a more personal angle I'll definitely be at the session by Jon Worth from the Atheist Bus Campaign, one of the most successful and daring NGO campaigns ever.

I also set up a TweetUp during the conference. You can find the invitation here and if you're on Twitter and coming at the conference, please sign up and let's meet.

The conference will be covered on Twitter, not only by myself but by several other people present. You can follow the updates by searching for the hash tag #ecs or right on the conference's Twitter page here.

If you come, looking forward to see you there !

"Transparency" by Image & Text - Politicians start to play.

In a move to use yet another social medium next to YouTube & Twitter, the White House has opened up a Flickr stream.

President Barack Obama is briefed about the H1N1 flu in the Situation Room 4/24/09.Official White House Photo by Pete Souzas

The pictures, posted at regular intervals, show us the "daily life" of President Obama and at the look of the comments the photos are receiving people really like it.

Some pictures are serious and really reflect what probably are though meetings and difficult decisions, others are on their way to become classics and yet others show a President trying to relax the best he can.

Another interesting development in social media and politics is the use of Twitter...

In an article on Mashable, entitled "How Should President Obama Use Twitter ?", Ari Herzog (@ariherzog) gives a very good overview of how politicians use this medium.

He mentions several US politicians using Twitter as well as the official twitter channel for the British Prime Minister's Office based at 10 Downing Street.

From my end here in Brussels I had a really nice lunch recently with the founder of Europatweets, a referencing site for all European Members of Parliament who use Twitter.

Xavier Damman is really doing a nice job here but the awareness creation towards other MEPs is still very much needed.

The question is; are all these initiatives giving us a false sense of transparency or are they really going to change the way we perceive and communicate with the people we voted for...?

I do hope that here in Belgium we can do more than the "year with Verhofstadt", which is, by all means was a very good PR stunt...