Edelemn announced their Social Media Press Release tool called StoryCrafter this week. there were a couple of comments in the Google discussion group that it looked just like the Shift format. I thought that was the point of the tool - so PR people could actually use the format Shift proposed. You can use PRESSfeed to do it too - have been able to since August actually. It's not quite as 'paint by numbers' - it doesn't have a separate field for each category, but we figured PR folk are certainly capable of writing Headline and Quotes on their own. It will add the release to your news page on your site immediately. You can add images and MP3 files. You can make bullet points. It has the tags, feeds and a nice drop down feature for the social media bookmarking for digg, del.icio.us, newsvine and reddit. While most social media formats push digg and del.icio.us, and making it to the top of the digg list can bring you thousands of visitors, bear in mind that digg has a mainly tech-focused audience. The votes on digg are controlled by a small number of 'power users.' Subscribe to the feed of the top stories on digg for a month and you'll soon see what makes the grade there. Reddit is a much better social media outlet for non-tech news stories. Read my post on the session on Social Media Optimization at SES Chicago - speakers offered some great ideas and information. More PR people should go to these events. Or at least hold sessions like that at their conferences. | 
