Social PR and Shiftcomm

ByLaurel Papworth

… do as we say, don’t do as we do. Shiftcomm have a couple of great files including a social media press release and a social media newsroom layout.Part of their Social Media Press Release Template. Which SHOULD be about making content accessible and linkable and bloggable. But I can’t link to them because they…

… do as we say, don’t do as we do.

Shiftcomm have a couple of great files including a social media press release and a social media newsroom layout.
Part of their Social Media Press Release Template. Which SHOULD be about making content accessible and linkable and bloggable.

But I can’t link to them because they don’t follow their own advice. Wierd huh?

Go to the main page Shiftcomm then click on Shift Search (you don’t get a search but a fake tag cloud) then click through one of those frustrating but oh-so-cutesy flash hard-to-navigate widgets when you see SMNewsRelease. Dear Shiftcomm, I’d rather have the link than those friggin’ clouds floating by in a Web 1.0 world….

I wonder who really wrote it? Cos they sure as heck aren’t following their own advice about making content available and blogg-able. You have to download a PDF, which (once again, cos I can’t believe it) is not easily linkable.

Complete nutters.

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6 Comments

  3. Let me give an independent endorsement of the Shift folk Laurel – I know many of their employees well including their principal Todd Defren – they're a very smart crew and are one of the better traditional PR agencies adapting to social media work in the US.

    While the pdf's may be a little clumsy, at least they're putting them out there. And as an agency guy myself I understand all to well that if you're doing very good work your client load will far outweigh your ability to update and perfect your site!

    PS: Congrats on the B&T blog list nod!

  4. Hi Laurel –
    Thanks for the feedback. “Snark” is welcome.

    My name is Todd Defren, a principal at SHIFT and blogger at PR-Squared. I’m also responsible for creating the original SMR template.

    A couple of quick points: the “fake” tag cloud at shiftcomm.com is real. Click on any of the links, including “SMNewsRelease” and it will take you somewhere (including to the PDF of the template).

    The template is a PDF for the simple reason that folks like to print it out and show it to their colleagues. Not sure why it would be a big deal to link to the PDF doc (beyond the fact that folks don’t always appreciate a PDF opening up on ’em).

    Here’s the direct link to the Social Media News Release template:

    http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smprtemplate.pdf

    In any case, fwiw, we’re working on a site re-design right now, actually, and I’ll absolutely forward on your issues to our designers.

    Having said all that, I am not even sure I’ve addressed your core complaint? If I didn’t please do me the favor of reaching out by email so I can respond directly and quickly: tdefren (at) shiftcomm.com.

    Thanks!

  5. Hey guys, I don’t have a problem with it being in a PDF format. I have a problem with it being not linkable.

    My instructions to the client were: go to the main page, you’ll see a search option, it’s not really search it’s a list made to look like folksonomy but is actually taxonomy, click and you’ll find a file to download that will explain to you how to create content that bloggers will find easy to talk about and link to”.

    My instructions should’ve been “go here (link) and download PDF).

    Thank you for the link, but why not put a proper list on the front page. I still think you don’t want deep linking – which is crazy, imho.

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