TechWag

Image via WikipediaIt is not often that you see something that actually worked out the way that it should work out, but in looking at the last article, Social Median actually did something right. Well besides embargoing their new election widget news on Saturday and letting me know it existed, they followed up this morning with a quick release to let me know that it had gone live.

The good part (and please all PR folks follow along here) was the conversation that ensued over the weekend, where before I forgot about the whole thing (busy life, must blog something now) we basically hashed out an agreement that if someone else posted first, and I noticed (which was likely) then I would go ahead and post ahead of the embargo. Social Median’s representative was ok with that, and was a real person who kept up with the conversation. Of course this happened over the weekend, and in the rush to press, completely forgot about social median, the conversation this weekend, and went on to do the other things that I needed to do.

What was cool was the follow up, we were supposed to post this puppy on Monday, and we didn’t. So a nice note from Social Median to let me know that hey we went live, meaning oh yeah, forgot to do that post. It was a nice reminder of something we discussed over the weekend. Not only that the e-mail was personalized, it was to me, not to everyone and their brother on the planet PR marketing stuff. There were no attachments, just a link to the site.

Sometimes what bloggers need is a gentle reminder to go check it out. I have no idea how many other things like this are buried in e-mail, I know there are some, blog entries I was supposed to write but never got around to it because the information was initially embargoed, meaning it went right off the stove, it didn’t hit the back burner. I am not a fan of embargoed information, but the way that social median approached it this morning was very good, something that PR folks should follow along and read, if not implement.

The cool part about social networking is that it is social, we are more likely to respond to our friends, the people we respect or the people we follow. Rarely do we agree to be a mouth piece for a group or a company to ladle out predigested marketing hype. The approach that social median used shows that they get this, let the writer make their own mind up on the usefulness of the web site or the product. Just prod them along sometimes so that they remember they were going to do something. Very nice, and thank you Social Median, that was a nice way to approach this blogger.

Tags: pr, hack, flunky, marketing, social median, good, bad, ugly, blogger, blogging, blog