We've talked before about the great strides press releases have made over the past few years. It's no surprise, for example, that the search engine optimized (SEO) release has become a big deal.

Today, we look at the social media press release.

The social media release is a specific format of press release designed to take advantage of social media bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and a variety of other Web. 2.0 advances. It provides all the information an individual would need to fully understand the announcement -- including multimedia files and background materials -- whether for writing stories, posting to blogs or simply consuming the news.

My guest is Todd Defren, Principal at SHIFT Communications and a pioneer in the social media press release. We talk about just what the social media press release is and how it can be used. It is an important and interesting discussion.

Enjoy the podcast!

SHIFT's template for the social media press release can be found here.

Technorati tags: press release, pr, social media, defren, shift