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August 19th, 2008

PitchEngine revs up public beta, puts the social in PR

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 8:10 am

Categories: Social Media, Corporate Social Networking, Cool Tools, Financial, Marketing, Public Relations

Tags: Brand, Public Beta, Media, Social Media, PitchEngine, SMR, PitchEngine SMR, Newsroom, Public Relations, Marketing

Last week I wrote about how bloggers could better work with public relations folks. While I won’t to get into the habit of writing about PR I think we’d all agree that, like it or not, there’s a direct correlation between it and social media, especially when we’re talking about business strategies. Before I silence myself on the matter, let me introduce PitchEngine. It’s the first service I’ve seen that provides simplicity for social media savvy PR people need and potential relief for media who need to reduce their inundation of unsolicited pitches.

PitchEngine, which already has more than 300 brands in its alpha, opens up for public beta and introduces its Social Media Newsroom, both this week. What does it do? There are three key features thus far:

• Social Media Release Builder — PR pros can build SMRs with a very quick tool that allows for publishing via the PitchEngine site as well as in an iframe on a corporate site. These releases can be posted directly to Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook from within the actual SMR and can include multimedia.
• Social Media Newsroom — Automates the corporate newsroom development and maintenance process.
• PitchFeed — Allows bloggers / reporters to choose which pitches they will receive based on a customized RSS (it even allows the media to block brands that might be spamming them).

Admittedly, I have been skeptical in the past regarding SMRs as I worried that, if mishandled, they would further the divide between media and PR (and, let’s face it, nothing beats relationships). But PitchEngine is doing just the opposite by bridging the gap with its innovative approach to SMR distribution and pitch management. Wanting to dig a little bit more into the service, I interviewed founder Jason Kintzler.

Q. [Jennifer] How do you see this competing with the offerings of PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire, etc. Or is it complementary?
A. [Jason] Since we don’t provide distribution (at least not the same form), I don’t see us as competing. While those services offer varying forms of social media integration, our goal is to be more of a tool for PR firms and brands. The social aspects are superior already — direct tweets from within the SMRs, and the ability to “follow” a brand on Twitter from the release is pretty innovative. I’m also guessing that “free” is a bit cheaper than those services as well.

Q. How do you plan to monetize this as a PR tool?
A. People think it’s crazy, but the Social Media Release Builder aspect of PitchEngine is a free service and I plan it to keep it that way. This week, as we roll out public beta, we’ll be offering a customizable newsroom feature. Since PitchEngine SMRs are active for 30-days once created, users who subscribe to the service will be able to host and archive their SMRs in these newsrooms. Each newsroom is hosted by us, but mapped from your corporate Web site for a more seamless feel for journalists and consumers visiting your site. The subscription fee will start out at $600/yr per brand.

Q. How about as a tool for media?
A. This side of PitchEngine will be a free service as well. Media are inundated with “spam” pitches sent via traditional methods. Everyone keeps telling me there is NO way to cut out spam. They may be right, but we’re sure going to put a huge dent in it. Media users will set up a personalized page within the site by simply answering a couple questions — they will then be provided with a PitchFeed (RSS/SMR feed) specific to their industry, news beat, etc. Media users will be able to filter content in their custom PitchFeed, even be able to accept/deny pitches from specific brands outside of their feed. If a blogger is using this service, it becomes increasingly harder for them to get spammed.

Q. With Reg FD requirements now satisfied with corporate blogs, do you think companies will pay for SMRs when they can simply post content in their blog? Or is there a connection between what you are doing and the corporate blog?
A. Posting press content to a blog doesn’t necessarily make it easier for a PR person to deliver all the content and assets for media to do their job well. It’s definitely easier for bloggers (no need for high res images), but that’s still just a piece of the puzzle. I believe having a consistent format will be an advantage for PitchEngine. Media want, and perhaps more importantly, need this to be easy. Stepping into a more social form of media relations will take some coaxing, the majority of media and PR aren’t there yet. I think this will be an easier, more friendly transition for the industry. It’s not going to solve everyone’s problems, but it can certainly take some of the guesswork and out of it.

Next: What is the Social Media Newsroom? –>

August 14th, 2008

Bloggers vs. PR - the broken record continues to skip

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:42 am

Categories: Social Media, People, Analysis, Marketing, Blogging, Best Practices, Socialsphere, Public Relations

Tags: Blogger, PR People, Public Relations, Marketing, Corporate Communications, Jennifer Leggio

Yet another blogger vs. public relations brouhaha. Can you stand it?

Two days ago Steve Rubel set the industry chatter wild yet again when he posed the question, “Is PR becoming obsolete?” It’s a bit of a broken record but one worthy of an attempted listen. So my quick answer, of course, is no. And truthfully if one reads Rubel’s blog in depth he’s saying no as well. What he’s done is made the exceptional point that traditional pitching efforts are being perceived as spam and that the current model needs to change. With this I wholeheartedly agree. I do not think he’s ready to grab a pitchfork and run PR out of town — as if he’s going to viciously bite the hand that feeds him?

At the heart of it I think the piece of Rubel’s post that ruffled so many PR feathers was his reference to Robert Scoble’s blog lauding a “PR-less launch.” Rubel doesn’t necessarily agree with Scoble but he does call out the point that some bloggers may not want PR’s help anymore. In his post, Scoble wrote:

There’s no reason to go crazy with a PR firm if you build something that people want.

The broken record soon after made the noise of a screeching halt; soon followed by screaming and even some bandwagon jumping from Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. Some of the PR types with the loudest megaphones — such as Todd Defren and Brian Solis — immediately responded to the issues posed by Rubel, Arrington and Scoble, making yesterday the day that the PR industry went into crisis management mode for itself.

I happened to be talking last night with George Hulme, former InformationWeek senior editor and now primary security blogger, who has been a tech journalist since 1992. It occurred to me mid-conversation that he would be a good person to ask about whether or not tech bloggers need PR (having rejected my pitches many moons ago, I knew he was very discerning). I asked him, is PR obsolete?

“It’s complete bunk. The more bloggers the greater the need for PR,” Hulme said.

In fairness of full disclosure I do not practice traditional PR any longer but it’s still a craft close to my heart and one that is terminally misunderstood. I don’t claim expert status but I’ve been on all sides of this issue from daily news journalist to copy editor to PR agency professional to in-house PR professional to independent blogger to where I am now.

That said, I am not going to spend the next 600 words or so defending PR. Mike Volpe of HubSpot already wrote a fantastic primer on how PR agencies should be used and Jeremy Pepper, the oh-so-soft-spoken blogger that he is, published a fiery and spot-on piece about the craft itself. What I want to do is put some of the onus the bloggers.

Scoble did publish a second post yesterday that attempts to explain his position on PR and what he thinks tech bloggers really want out of it. Unfortunately, while he made some great statements about the need for true innovation and gave due credit to a couple of good PR folks, he only further muddies the issue at hand.

A couple snippets:

If we just go to press conferences, or only deal with embargoed news, and report on the same news everyone else is reporting on, well, then, just what reason is there for our business to exist?

PR people are doing themselves a disservice when they just treat journalists and bloggers like cattle. Every time I get an email pitch it reminds me that I’m being treated like cattle.

I wouldn’t take issue with this if he had kept it to solely what he wants from a PR professional but he spoke for all tech bloggers. Which made me think, “Maybe Scoble doesn’t know how PR people can really benefit him?”

Next: A short primer on how to use PR people –>

August 12th, 2008

Lijit secures $7.1 million series C round

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 12:02 am

Categories: Social Media, Life Streaming, Funding, Financial, Search

Tags: Network, Analytics, Blog, C, Lijit, Blogging, Internet, Jennifer Leggio

Lijit Networks, which provides search and analytics engines that benefit both bloggers and their readers, announced today that it has closed a $7.1 million series C funding round. Foundry Group, which was a late investor after Lijit closed its $3.3 million series B round last year, led this round. Existing investors, Boulder Ventures and Colorado Fund 1, managed by High Country Venture, participated in the series C as well.

Todd Vernon, founder and CEO of Lijit, said that the company will use this financing to further enhance its search and analytics offerings as well as launch its search-powered advertising network. The company — which currently has 22 employees — hopes to ramp its head count to 40 in 18 months, with a focus on building its engineering, operations, marketing and publisher recruitment teams.

Chris Wand, managing director of Foundry Group, said in a statement that the firm re-invested in Lijit due to the company’s rapid growth:

“Publishers leverage Lijit’s services to capture more page views and increase reader engagement. Our investment in Lijit comes on the heels of an impressive growth trajectory in 2008. Over the past six months the company has tripled the reach of its network, doubled its average publisher size, and provided measurable value back to those publishers.”

Lijit differentiates itself as a “social aggregator with intent,” giving blog owners a way to provide readers with customized searches, which in turn gives the reader more quality content and helps reduce bounce rates. The entry point for Lijit is a widget the blog owner posts on his or her site, which can be loaded up with the author’s social network pages, blog roll and other trusted content. The widget also provides a search box — but it’s not a Google search box or a built-in blog search tool. The important differentiator is that the readers will be able to search all of the author’s trusted content.

For example, I am an avid reader of Chris Brogan and I often visit his site to take in his views on social media. Sometimes, however, I want more than just his opinion if I am really researching a topic. Since he is a Lijit user, I can search for a keyword in the Lijit search box, which will give me more content options from his blog, content options from his preferred social networks or content options from his broader trusted network. Now, for me the reader, Brogan’s blog has turned from a destination for only his blog content into a go-to resource whenever I want the views of his trusted network. I will have also spent more time on his site.

Return blog visits and reader retention are not the only benefit for blog publishers; the Lijit widget includes an analytics tool that allows authors to view trend reports on what searches are being done on the blog as well as the click-through rates. This helps them better analyze what readers are truly seeking and can potentially help them better tailor their content accordingly, thus growing readership.

“We provide a lot of data on the search,” said Micah Baldwin, vice president of business development for Lijit. “We can help publishers learn the behavior of their readers, where they are coming from, and so on. And for readers, they can go to a blog that they trust and find a social stream directly connected to their interests.”

For more reading about Lijit and its history view the Techmeme discussion.

August 8th, 2008

Facebook’s (futile) malware exorcism - can social networks fight back?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 12:06 pm

Categories: Social Media, Privacy, Facebook, Reputation, Analysis, Security, Networking, Blogging, Best Practices, Socialsphere

Tags: facebook, network, malware, site, kelly, social networking, security, online communications, marketing, advertising & promotion

In the wake of two recent worm attacks on Facebook, the popular social networking site responded last night with a statement about its security practices. Regarding the attacks, Max Kelly, head of security at Facebook, wrote this in a blog post:

…we spent most of last night working on a fix for a worm, which was targeting people on Facebook and placing messages on Walls urging users to view a video that pretends to be hosted on a Google or YouTube website. We’ve identified and blocked the ability to link to the malicious websites from anywhere on Facebook.

Have they now? Kelly writes that he and his team are soon headed to Defcon 16 this weekend in Las Vegas to learn how to make the site safer. Perhaps he and his team plan to attend “Satan Is On My Friends List” about securing social networks. But, really, is there a solution for Facebook waiting at Defcon? Probably not, and here’s why:

• Making a social network secure is darn near impossible. As fast as Facebook (or any other social network) blocks those known malicious site hackers will come up with new ones. There’s no “patch” or “fix” for these issues.
• Why? The major flaw with social networks comes down to user awareness and user responsibility. Kelly correctly states that many people use the Internet without any knowledge of security threats posed by hackers. Which makes these users…
• …primary targets for online social engineering scams, similar to what was presented with the “Court Jester” malware attack. If users are unaware as to the threats presented by clicking on outside links, they are easily going to be spoofed. Facebook cannot keep its users from clicking off the site and downloading files.

“If a site allows any kind of links at all, then what a user does after they follow that link is really out of control of the social networking site,” said Wesley McGrew, who operates McGrew Security. “They can keep blocking the links to malicious sites as they pop up and they can try to educate their user base but that’s about it. Facebook is likely at the mercy of the security of each user’s home computer.”

If a user’s home PC gets owned, the malware can navigate the social network much in the same way that a legitimate user can. That could be tough for the Facebook security team to detect as the malware would have similar attributes to the user. While attacks on Facebook applications are not new the hackers’ ability to penetrate the Facebook wall is a big deal — and it’s these types of attacks that had a terribly negative effect on MySpace’s perceived viability when its pages began to get compromised on a regular basis.

Next: What should social networks do? –>

August 7th, 2008

Social giving for charity begets social giving for community

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 2:02 pm

Categories: Social Media, Corporate Social Networking, People, Case Studies, Community, Branding, Marketing

Tags: social media, greg verdino, inbound marketing summit, jennifer leggio

Normally I don’t write about specific events but I’m making an exception as this is almost a mini overview for how charity in social media can turn into a benefit for the social Web community.

In May I launched a Social Media Charity Auction that raised about $6,500 for Team in Training, the fundraising arm of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. How? I auctioned off the services of some of the big social media guns: Chris Brogan, Joseph Jaffe, Geoff Livingston, Aaron Strout and Greg Verdino.

One of the auction winners was HubSpot, an Internet marketing software firm, which paid a nice reduced price for the speaking services of Brogan and Verdino. Little did we all know (well, maybe Hubspot knew) that they would be put to such great use.

Brogan and Verdino are now two of the speakers at next month’s Inbound Marketing Summit in Cambridge, Mass. They are in great company, with Seth Godin, David Meerman Scott, Christopher S. Penn and many others. So suddenly my little auction has put these guys right along side some of the other better known names in the business (I’m not taking credit for this — credit goes to the guys for being names in the first place).

So what, right? It’s a cool event like many other cool events. But what made me smile about it is that the folks at Inbound Marketing Summit have provided free event passes for some of their speakers to give away to their fans and readers. Verdino is doing his giveaway via his blog right now (contest ends August 11). I haven’t seen yet what the other speakers intend to do with their free passes.

Some might say that this is a promotion tactic and not one to be lauded. I don’t think that’s the case. The Inbound Marketing Summit has already reached near capacity (I think there might be some spots left) and the giveaways seem to be geared toward extending the experience and education around inbound marketing to more users who otherwise might not have been able to register for the event.

“Since we promoted this event primarily with social media and inbound marketing, we took the cost savings from not having to do direct mail, telemarketing and list rentals and put that into giving away some free passes via social media folks,” said Mike Volpe, vice president of marketing for Hubspot.

It’s not saving the world. It’s not curing a disease. But it’s a good example of how to take a charity win and continue to give back in a small way.

[Update 8-10-2008 7:39 a.m.] MarketingProfs and Christopher S. Penn are now doing their own giveaways for Inbound Marketing Summit passes.

August 7th, 2008

‘Conversation Prism’ helps corporations visualize social media strategies

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:55 am

Categories: Social Media, FriendFeed, Twitter, Life Streaming, Microblogging, LinkedIn, MySpace, Social Video, Corporate Social Networking, Facebook, Community, Podcast, Plurk, Search, Mobile, Social Bookmarking, Social Browsing, Blogging, Best Practices, Socialsphere

Tags: social networking, strategy, conversation, network, social media, jennifer leggio

Every day I stumble across yet another company jumping into the uncertain waters of social media “because others are doing it.” Public relations agencies are pushing social media practices as a “must have” for clients are part of the capabilities presentations. But, contrary to what many social media pundits say, social media is not a silver bullet nor is it ideal for every company. It’s a strategy that should be carefully considered and its tools are designed to take companies to where their customers are already conversing.

To that end, Brian Solis, principal of Future Works and author of PR 2.0, has introduced the Conversation Prism — a tool that he says “helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web.” Designed with Jesse Thomas of JESS3, the Conversation Prism was created to help companies visualize the immense landscape that is social media and to be used as a tool to help these companies truly consider where they need - or need not - to be. This morning I spoke with Solis for a bit about why he developed the Conversation Prism, its purpose and its use. Oh, and he’s giving it all away for free.

Q. [Jennifer] Why did you develop the Conversation Prism — and how is this a step beyond Robert Scoble’s Social Media Starfish?

A. [Brian] The Starfish got the conversation started visually. There’s nothing wrong with the Social Media Starfish, but we wanted to come up with something more representative of what is out there beyond some of the more popular social networks. It’s one thing to have a lot of discussions about participating in social media or why you need to be on Twitter or Facebook, but it’s much more extensive than most people think. Social media is not just about being on the popular networks; it’s about knowing which networks apply to your world. I wanted to give a graphical representation of just how big this landscape really is and even this version still needs some work. The next one will include international networks and a few other channels we haven’t yet hit.

Q. Why is it important for companies to be able to visualize all of these networks?

A. Because the Conversation Prism is both a little dose of reality and an education tool. What the prism does is give you an idea, a beautiful representation of where conversations are taking place around you and its intended to make sure everyone understands that the social networking landscape is so much bigger - and just as important - as some of the more popular tools. It’s basically showing that if you are thinking of jumping on the social media bandwagon — stop. Evaluate. The landscape is massive. Each company’s participation is going to be different. The goal of this is to give companies a good place to start in finding the conversations that are relevant to them.

Next: How to use the Conversation Prism –>

August 6th, 2008

The social media corporate identity crisis

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 12:21 pm

Categories: Social Media, Twitter, Microblogging, Corporate Social Networking, Reputation, Case Studies, Community, Q&A, Branding, Best Practices, Socialsphere

Tags: brand, social media, twitter, joel postman, popeyes chicken, q., branding, social networking, marketing, online communications

The recent “hijacking” of the ExxonMobil brand for Twitter use made a whoosh as the news traveled around the socialsphere. It also brought into view a lot of questions around brand validity and responsibility in terms of social networking. Joel Postman, principal of Socialized, authored this guest piece on the social media corporate identity crisis, which includes a Q&A with one of the newest brands to join Twitter — Popeyes Chicken.

Call it “brandjacking”. Or call it “an open brand” managed through online consumer conversations. Either way, social media, with its often loose standards regarding user identity, has opened up a Pandora’s Box of opportunities for confusion about who is, and isn’t, an authorized company spokesperson.

Last week Exxon Mobil confirmed that Janet, who called herself ExxonMobilCorp on the microblogging service Twitter, was not an authorized representative of the company. The announcement spurred a flurry of reactions, including observations that social media is inherently untrustworthy, and that companies, like Twitter, that run these networks don’t do enough to police the usage of company and personal identities.

To reaffirm my faith in social media, I decided to contact Popeyes Chicken to find out a little more about one of my favorite company representatives, @PopeyesChicken, on Twitter. I did an e-mail Q&A with Alicia Thompson, vice president, communications & PR for Popeyes, and I am pleased to report, in keeping with Popeyes’ brand, their Twitter presence is “Bonafide.”

Q. [Joel] How was the decision arrived at within Popeyes Chicken to develop a presence on Twitter?

A. [Alicia] When we launched our Popeyes BonafideTM campaign in the spring, we knew that we wanted to reach younger demographics, so we included a number of social media tools in our marketing efforts including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Q. How many people “staff” the Twitter handle?

A. One person “staffs” the handle…surprisingly NOT from the marketing group, but from the technology team.

Q. Have they been given guidelines as to what they can and cannot say?

A. No, however, he always aligns his tweets along our core brand messaging.

Q. The Popeyes Chicken person/people I have encountered on Twitter seem to be very friendly, and have a great sense of humor. Is this intentional?

A. He’s naturally a friendly, humorous person, so the tweets are in no way contrived. What you “read” is truly who he is.

Q. To what degree are they “empowered” to handle customer issues?

A. He acknowledges consumer issues and directs them to our Guest Relations team so that they can be handled appropriately.

Q. What did you expect to get out of being on Twitter, and what results (of any kind) have you achieved?

A. We are still experimenting with social media and have no real expectations. As for results, we have generated a good amount of interest (folks like you) and we are definitely being noticed.

Q. Any other thoughts you’d like to share on either Twitter or Popeyes Chicken’s social media strategy overall?

A. We will continue to explore social media where appropriate and hope to utilize it even more in the future as we continue our efforts to engage younger consumers.

Next: What are the ramifications of borrowing a brand? –>

August 5th, 2008

Copying + pasting + blogging = trouble

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 2:31 pm

Categories: Social Media, People, Reputation, Case Studies, Branding, Blogging, Best Practices, Socialsphere

Tags: Blog, Blogger, Blogging, Internet, Jennifer Leggio

A couple of weeks ago Al Krueger over at Comet Branding posted a short yet insightful blog called “Regurgitator or Originator”, in which he wrote:

I want to drive original, relevant and meaningful content and not simply offer some sort of regurgitation of other people’s or outlets’ content.

Krueger was addressing the notion of “copy paste blogging” in which the blog author does one of the following:

• Posts only snippets of another blog with a link to said blog, sometimes posing a question but rarely offering additional ideas
• Using a blog solely for research and referencing that blog without doing the background work on his or her own

(Note: If I wanted to merely “copy paste blog” myself I would stop here, maybe throw out a question or two, but I have points of my own that I want to illustrate.)

Are these approaches lazy? Depends on your perspective. Some blogs merely aim to start conversations among readers (which, if you ask me, is better served with FriendFeed).

Are these approaches unethical? No, but it does highlight the crevasse that still exists between blogger ethics and old school journalist ethics.

Are these approaches flawed? They can be. They can lead to errors or other kinds of embarrassment for both the blogger him- or herself or the subject of the blog.

Are all bloggers guilty of it? Absolutely, at least once. I did a lighter variation of it just the other day but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea (I will call out that I spoke with Ryan Naraine, the original blog author, before doing so).

Two specific incidents have recently put this issue top of mind. There are lessons here for corporate and independent bloggers alike.

1. HD Moore vs. The Blogosphere: HD Moore, creator of Metasploit, gained a lot of attention when he published an attack code for the DNS flaw that’s been dominating the news in the security industry over the last month. While many stories were written about this, one in particular by Robert McMillan caused an unnecessary amount of FUD when it misquoted Moore and wrongly claimed this his employer was “owned” by the exploit — when really the attack was on AT&T Internet Service’s servers in Austin. While PC World issued a correction it was too late; those IDG stories spread like wildfire. And while Moore immediately wrote a blog post of his own explaining the truth of the attack, bloggers had already started posting erroneous articles based on the PC World story and using sensationalized headlines, to boot. Though some of the articles have been amended to include pieces of Moore’s statement the incorrect headlines — and in some cases the wrong content — remain.
2. Cuil Coverage Not So Cool: The countdown to the Cuil launch created quite a socialsphere frenzy with some bloggers calling the new search engine a “Google killer”. People truly wanted to believe that Cuil would live up to the hype that it created but it just didn’t. And many of those first blog posts appeared to be written solely off of the writings of other bloggers (versus actual research or actual use of the tool). My own experience at the time of launch was unsatisfactory and I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t jumped on the pre-Cuil bandwagon. TechCrunch — which had five headlines about Cuil in three days — didn’t just hit Cuil, it pummeled the company for a perceivably failed launch. But some responsibility lies with the bloggers here. I think, while Cuil deserved criticism, a lot of the bloggers who lashed out at Cuil were embarrassed by letting their own fandom get in the way of research.

While writers who adopt “old school journalism” practices still make their fair share of errors I do think some errors could easily be voided by adhering to those practices:

• Check your own sources — Sure, find ideas from other blogs, but go to the source yourself. In the HD Moore case going to the source would’ve saved a lot of trouble.
• Add your own angle to the story — repeating someone else’s news doesn’t make it news. When I read a blog it’s because I like the voice of the writer(s). I want to read what he or she or they have to say on the matter.
• Don’t be oversold by marketing hype — unless you have experienced it yourself and believe it to be true. Cuil. Need I say more?

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Have an answer beyond what is offered in the poll? Be sure to Talk Back.

[Update 8-6-2008 8:38 a.m.] Kyle Flaherty posted a great case study about the importance of social media communities and how those communities pulled together during his company’s battle last week to set HD Moore’s story straight.

July 31st, 2008

Twitter vulnerability forces auto-follow

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 2:20 pm

Categories: Social Media, Twitter, Microblogging, Security

Tags: Vulnerability, Twitter, Security, Jennifer Leggio

Ryan Naraine over at ZDNet’s Zero Day has the scoop on a new CSRF vulnerability in Twitter that forces users to follow a supposed attacker. While Naraine viewed the POC of this vulnerability no technical details were yet shared — and Twitter has been notified — but this is a must-read for Twitter users until the company issues a fix.

July 30th, 2008

SEC unanimously approves use of corporate blogs to meet Reg FD requirements

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 5:02 pm

Categories: Social Media, Corporate Social Networking, Financial, Legal, Analysis, Marketing

Tags: SEC, Blog, Social Media, Jennifer Leggio

The Securities and Exchange Commission today voted unanimously to provide new guidance that allows public companies to use their Web sites and corporate blogs to meet Regulation FD’s public disclosure requirements.

The guidance, which will be effective upon publication in the Federal Register, does imply that there are certain stipulations that public companies must meet in order to take full advantage of the guidance. And, as with any disclosure, the companies should tread carefully in determining what should be disclosed, where and how. No matter, this is definitely an advancement that positively impacts companies, investors and social media pundits.

According to the SEC’s official statement, the SEC last issued guidance on the use of Web sites and electronic media in 2000 — which is almost like decades ago in Internet years. The official statement from SEC chairman Christopher Cox said:

“The last time the SEC issued guidance in this area, the idea of ’social networks’ hadn’t yet been developed, and creating a social network where shareholders could meet and exchange views was barely imaginable,” said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. “Ongoing developments in technology have increased both the markets’ and investors’ demand for more timely company disclosure on the Web, and in turn, raised new securities law issues for public companies to consider. The guidance issued today clarifies the rules of the road so investors can gain — quickly and in a cost-effective manner — the benefits of Internet disclosure of the latest information on the companies they own or are considering buying.”

Dominic Jones of the IR Web Report calls out that companies will have to use extreme caution when considering whether or not to leverage Web site copy or blogs to try and meet disclosure requirements. However, with this move forward by the SEC this could mean even more advances in terms of how public corporations use social media.

Many companies have long recognized that pushing out a traditional news release via a wire service (such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire) is an almost antiquated approach to try to obtain news coverage. Simply, many have been forced to issue via news release only to meet Reg FD requirements. With the rising costs of commoditized basic news wire distribution (not to mention additional charges for public companies to meet Reg FD requirements) if leveraged cautiously public companies currently using this method could see some significant cost savings in their marketing budgets.

More than that, the social media news release (SMNR) that Brian Solis has spoken very publicly about has been caught in a bit of the crossfire between “old school” public relations and business professionals and the social media pushers who desire to make news releases more interactive. This guidance by the SEC could make the SNPR more relevant — especially since it can be issued solely via corporate blog — allowing marketing teams to even further cut back on spend via traditional wire services. As an aside, some of these wire services charge more for a SMNR than a traditional press release.

Bottom line? If used carefully, this new method of disclosure could be a boon for social media allies, as well as public company marketing budgets and Web presence alike. However, the wire services are likely going to suffer a bit of a loss.

Thanks to Shannon Whitley for alerting me to this news. For further reading, be sure to dig into the IR Web Report which includes current and ongoing in-depth analysis of the issue.