Before we asked you to Vote for Voce, now we’re asking you to vote for our clients as they take part in the South by Southwest Panel Picker selection process.

After passing an initial round of reviews, three Voce clients - Digital Fountain, Kontiki and Predictify - are up for community votes in one of the most democratic selection processes around. SXSW will push panels with the most votes onto a final round of reviews, before adding them to the 2009 SXSW schedule.

So take a look, and vote for your favorites. Hopefully we’ll see you at SXSW 2009!

• How to Thrive in a Digital World: Economics of Online Video
• Monetizing the Wisdom of Crowds
• Indie Rock Bands: Building Brand Beyond YouTube and MySpace
• Advancing Online Video: The Game is Changing
• User Incentive Systems: All Carrot and No Stick?

Aarti Shah with PRWeek pens this week’s cover story on client Sony PlayStation. (Full PDF Version) The piece is a bit of a case study that recounts some of the company’s fairly well-known missteps over the years, but more importantly, it digs into PlayStation’s rebound and recovery efforts the last 18 months — and how their social media strategy is leading the way.

“After a huge misstep in the blogosphere, Sony PlayStation has come back with a plan to engage consumers and win back trust.”

If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you’ll know I’m a big believer that our industry *desperately* needs more case studies. I started to talk about this program for the first time earlier this year at the NewComm Forum. This cover story peels back another layer, and we’ll continue to share more leading into the fall at a handful of industry speaking gigs including the PRSA International Conference in October.

And yes, before you ask, that’s exactly how I sit in all my client meetings. Enjoy.

Related Links:
Submit Now! 2008 SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards

[Photo credit: PRWeek - Cross Posted to Media Guerrilla]

Alright, so here’s the deal, we need your help readers: PRWeek has selected 32 of the industry’s leading PR blogs, including (of course) the Voce Nation, to compete in a tournament over the next several weeks which will determine upon its end “The Best PR Blog,” or at least the most popular. The Voce Nation will advance in the tournament based entirely on the number of votes we receive and, well, our ability to beg, plea and pander for your clicks. So without further ado….

Please take 5 seconds to click here and vote for the Voce Nation before end of day Tuesday, Aug. 5th. UPDATE: Voting has closed. This first round contest was very competitive, but it looks like we’re now advancing to round two! Thanks everyone for your support. Ice those fingers, we’ll need them again soon.

For this first round, we’re competing against the Bad PR Pitch Blog — a blog that all of us normally admire, respect and read regularly. However, given the competitive situation, it’s only fair to point out that Richard and Kevin still don’t believe in recycling, are unfriendly to domestic animals, frown frequently at children, and generally speaking, are very, very ill-tempered people. And yes, I’m kidding. I wish you guys luck.

The SEC announced that they are approving under certain circumstances company websites and blogs as meeting public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD.

Cause and Effect
This announcement will spur a fresh round of innovation. There’s a mini-boom on its way just like what happened with companies touting Sarbanes-Oxley solutions. Instead of automating checks and balances, it will be focused around community building as well as automating and streamlining communication over the web. You’ll see a lot of companies that are currently focused on building generic online communities start touting their IR portal/community building expertise.

We will have to watch for exactly what the “certain circumstances” are that qualify a website or blog as meeting Reg FD, but I suspect that the final definition will amount to requiring an online community. The challenge will then become attracting people to the company IR community. Why would investors go there when Yahoo! Finance or a similar portal fits their needs already? Ironically, this announcement comes on the heels of a recent survey from Deloitte showing that most online communities fail because they’re too self-serving.

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So I was talking with a peer recently about his online community work, and in that conversation I asked him what his company’s social media monitoring and response strategy entailed. His reply:

“Oh, you know, we’re using Radian6….”

Frankly, his reply didn’t surprise me. Radian6 *is* a kick-butt service that a lot of companies are using, ours included, however, the more I think about his response and continue talking with other folks about conversation discovery, tracking, analysis, and the like, the more gaps I find….

And, well, the more it seems that very few companies actually have a fully baked social media monitoring and “engagement” strategy.

I think part of the problem is that for too long now, too many companies, like my colleague’s above, have just wanted to get their arms around the conversation discovery challenge, and things like analyzing, acting, and archiving those conversations were secondary concerns. And, you know, that’s fair enough, but by no means is that a complete plan.

It’s with this in mind, that I thought it might be interesting to outline, at a really basic level, what a social media monitoring and engagement program looks like in its entirety (if you take a sec and extend it past the obvious tasks). And note, I’m looking at this more from a general internal infrastructure perspective, so yeah, beware, your mileage may vary.

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