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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I have been to many trade shows over the years, from the glitzy (CES) to the dorky (WinHEC) to the niche (Webmaster World). I have managed booth-duty, staffed press briefings, and tracked down press and analysts on-the-fly. And at each of these shows, I typically avoided the lame-ass schwag bags handed out to attendees.

But then, I attended my fourth BlogHer, which I now refer to the Shangri-La of Schwag. Quite honestly, no other show compares when it comes to sponsors handing out goodies, offering samples and trials, and tugging at heartstrings. Here are my highlights from last week’s BlogHer 08 in San Francisco:

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We told you we were living large in Manhattan at the BlogHer Business Conference and New York City Moms Blog launch party last month.

We knew the Today Show producers were interviewing a few of the mom bloggers at the party and the crew was filming conference panels. But we when we watched this morning’s “Today’s Woman” segment on the growing popularity of momblogging, we were stoked to see that our friends at Silicon Valley Moms Group, Graco and client Yahoo! got air time. Check out the eco-friendly Yahoo! taxis that chauffeured the moms to the party!

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Stephen Baker and Heather Green have been working on revising their 2005 cover story on blogs. They’ve wisely expanded from blogs to social media. They’re asking their readers ‘how’ social media is changing business. I have some more in-depth thoughts on this which I’ll post shortly, but for now how about these for starters:

1. How a company that created a flog and alienated its customers, bounced back and is rebuilding trust with social media.

2. How one employee is taking it upon himself to use a blog to chronicle and relay his observations inside a company.

3. How a company is using a blog to add insight/perspective on its business at a time when its business is at its most vulnerable.

We’re living large at the Affinia hotel in Manhattan, talking about social media and making real-life friends (not just the virtual ones). We’re representing Voce at this week’s BlogHer Business Conference, and it’s been a great week so far. Here’s a quick recap:

Festivities started at a launch party for the New York City Moms Blog on Wednesday night. Graco and client Yahoo! sponsored the launch party; check out the Flickr stream. I’m a contributing writer for the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, and was excited to meet some of my fellow writers on the “other” coast.

One highlight of the evening was a special guest appearance by the producers from the Today show! Yes, Today is working on a “mommy blogger” segment to air later this month, and three of my fellow bloggers were interviewed. Very cool!

BlogHer Business started the next day (yesterday, actually), with some great speakers (including Method, HP and Graco) and included several interesting topics (SEO, podcasting, community-building, etc.). One thing is for certain: there are a lot of women blogging, and lots of companies marketing to them. More to come as the conference continues…

I fell in love with the blogosphere a few years ago. Here was a place, an environment, where it seemed that people freely shared and exchanged opinions and ideas, and in many ways was like a free-for-all graduate school program – lots of passion, lots of idealism tempered by a healthy dose of reality, and a no-holds barred approach.

Sometimes the ideas expressed were outrageous, intentionally so, and that was ok, as long as no one got hurt. And to a certain degree, considering blogging and other online communication tools’ relative newness in comparison to older, more traditional communication outlets, the desire to shock and gain attention was not unexpected.

But when it’s shock value without a positive purpose it becomes both just plain boring and potentially detrimental to everyone else who inevitably gets lumped in with the perpetrators.

Why am I writing about this? Well, it’s something I think about quite a bit – where should the line be drawn, and by whom, and does that line change over time and depending on the circumstances? There is also that little incident that happened at CES this week that many people are talking about and that brought the whole topic of “online shock” back into the forefront.

This isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last, that an individual blogger or a site will do something that many feel pushes the envelope. I see it on a regular basis and most of the time just shrug my shoulders and move on.

But I’m also looking forward to the day when, in response to saying I’m a blogger, I no longer hear even the occasional “you’re one of those?”

The Word of Mouth Marketing Summit kicked-off earlier today in Las Vegas. As you would expect, the speaker lineup is just stacked, so there’s all sorts of insightful juice to squeeze out of this event — and that’s exactly what our own Andrea Weckerle is doing as one of two guest bloggers invited in to report and record this year’s event on the Summit Blog.

Already today, Andrea has covered multiple sessions, including Peter Waldheim’s “State of the Word of Mouth Marketing Industry,” and two panels on Social Networking and one on Influence vs. Network Size. Lastly, at least for today, she covered Lionel Menchaca’s discussion on Dell’s WOM and social media development work.

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Cross-posted from Media Guerrilla.

“So, how do you know when to talk back?”

Yeah, I get this question a lot…

The upside of companies recognizing the importance of online conversations is that they’re, well, increasingly listening. And with listening comes the inevitable urge to act and respond to a whole bunch of things, but when do you do this? And how? Do you leave a comment? Do you send an email? It’s not like you have a field manual to reference for on-the-fly tact, so calculating what action to take (if any) is a challenge and unfortunately, a determination you have to make fairly quickly.

Here’s the thing: there’s no formula for how or when to talkback. You have to take each instance on a case-by-case, however, there are three baseline questions you should try to ask — and answer — before you do anything:

1. Is the post factually inaccurate?

If yes, congrats, you’re dealing with the top 10% of blogs. Kidding. Proceed to question two.

If no, okay then, a response may be necessary. I tend to weight the response tactics according to the severity of the inaccuracy. If it’s a simple mistake (e.g., a misspelling, a misquote, etc) then try contacting the author privately and directly. State your case and request the change, that’s all you can do. It’s no guarantee of a timely fix, but I think most folks will make an honest effort to correct their mistakes.

For those that don’t or who make more severe, err egregious errors, you have a reasonable case for leaving a public comment. Again, it’s no guarantee that the problem will be fixed or that the author will even allow your comment to be posted. In this instance, you may also want to consider contacting the author privately and directly too. And if you really want to escalate things, consider dragging the link out with your own blog post, bookmarks, tags and annotations - this is a response 202 tactic, proceed with caution.

2. Is the post a fair expression of opinion?

If yes, proceed to question three.

If not, you could consider talking back, but be careful, this is where most companies get tripped up because the only fair point-of-view is, well, the corporate one. I think this where you just have to be *really* honest about your company’s strengths and weaknesses. If, for example, a post is recounting a terrible experience with your product, there is very little you can do to change that person’s experience. Think about what purpose talking back with serve and what outcome you’re really looking for. Are you trying to appeal to the author or future readers who stumble on this post?

3. Is a relationship with the author important?

If yes, then you have to go one step further and ask yourself if talking back via comments or the back channel will augment and extend the relationship. Only you can answer that question.

If no, then you still have to go one step further and ask whether or not the blog post itself can impact and influence people’s perceptions. In most cases, if a relationship with the blog author isn’t a priority, neither is the blog’s readership, and therefor there’s no need to talkback. Case closed.

This is admittedly an incomplete post, there are nuances to all of this that I’m not digging into here, it’s response tactics 101, get off my back, but seriously, hopefully this provides some good starting points for reference for companies that want to talk back.

Also Read

The Purposeful Conversation

Social media strategy doesn’t always involve blogging or launching a social network. I always say, why start your own, when you can join an existing one? Social media/commuity initiatives can start out small and focussed….and use existing networks. A great example is the recent Flickr photogroup created by the Georgia Aquarium.

The Georgia Aquarium is fortunate that their location is often photographed, and the results are usually quite stunning. A number of amateur photographers and just regular users upload their aquarium photos to Flickr….why not join the party? Or at least help cultivate the interest? That’s what the Georgia Aquarium has done.

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In this Q&A, I asked two of our brightest “edge-workers” to share their insights and opinions on using social media tactics and tools for B2B and B2C clients and programs. Michael Moeschler (pictured left) talks about things from a B2B perspective; Ryan Lack (pictured right) from a B2C one. It’s interesting to see/read that the dichotomy of their day jobs really isn’t that great. Enjoy!

Question #1: Is blogger relations a must-have element in consumer communications programs?

Ryan (B2C): It can certainly depend on the company or product the program is designed for, but generally speaking, yes. What I’ve come to find over time, as have many, is that blogger relations provides great value as an addendum to traditional media relations. Today, many people get their news online and discussion is taking place there, in a number of forms, whether it be in comments sections of blogs or in forums, talk like this is happening online - the question then becomes: how do you insert your client into those conversations? Blogger relations is one tactic for achieving that, at reaching the new water cooler, the place where people are congregating online to talk about topics they care about.

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