Over the past 20 years organizations have been exposed to more new communications tools and technologies than they have in the previous half-century. This has challenged both managers and scholars to keep abreast of these changes, and to better understand their relevance to effective corporate communications.

SFU’s Leyland Pitt and Michael Parent, working with colleagues Pierre Berthon (Bentley University), Peter Steyn (Lulea University of Technology), and Arthur Money (Leeds University consider one such new tool, the Social Media Release (SMR), and its effect on bloggers, in an article accepted for publicaiton in the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. The Social Media Release (SMR) is best conceived of as a blend of the traditional press release, and digital social media. There are already a number of websites devoted to the SMR (e.g. http://www.socialmediarelease.org/; http://www.briansolis.com/2007/05/social-media-releases-everything-you.html; http://risetothetop.techwyse.com/internet-marketing/social-media-releases-smr-the-new-internet-marketing-buzzword/).

Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as their theoretical base, they seek to determine what factors will influence bloggers’ intents to use SMRs or their components in blogs. A survey of 332 bloggers from around the world supports their research model, which posits that bloggers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the SMR, and the use of SMRs by companies positively affects their decision to use SMRs now and in the future. Moreover, they also find that current use of SMR elements in their blogs influences decisions to continue using SMRs in the future. Implications on the use of SMRs as corporate communications tools are drawn.