The WSJ just posted a piece on clients Intel and eBay, but with a focus on eBay and the story behind its use of Twitter for corporate news. This was actually something I pointed to here a few weeks ago that kicked-up quite a bit of discussion (check out “How to Tweet Material News”). I’ve known Richard Brewer-Hay for years now, he works hard and has the support of some very smart people inside eBay. It’s good to see he and the team leading the way on things and getting a little bit of recognition in the process. It’s well deserved. RBH will be sharing his story inside eBay at two upcoming events, including the NewComm Forum and TWTRCON.
Updates from April, 2009
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Corporate Social Media Must Keep SEC in Mind
mike manuel
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How to Tweet Material News
mike manuel
So here’s the deal: if you work for a public company and are interested in extending the application and use of Twitter for corporate news — this post is for you.
So late last week, our (Voce’s) client at eBay, Richard Brewer-Hay, decided to share the backstory on something eBay’s PR and legal teams have been chewing on for a few months now — and that’s the development of guidelines and a set of SEC disclosure best practices that outline how eBay (well, any public company, really) can successfully (err, legally) use Twitter to share material news.
If you read Richard’s post, you’ll see these guidelines were born out of his desire (and his history) of using eBay’s corporate Twitter account to “live tweet” the company’s quarterly earnings calls — something that’s been increasingly catching the attention of industry influencers, media, enthusiasts, etc, who wouldn’t otherwise have participated or tuned in to the actual earnings calls. And yes, as Richard indicates, this activity also, for better or worse, caught the attention of eBay’s corporate IR, PR and legal teams.
It turns out, this was for the better…
The easy, protectionist response would have been to just stop doing this, shut down the account and move on. But thankfully it didn’t, instead, the IR/PR/Legal groups within eBay all came together to figure out a way that concerns regarding disclosure and cautionary statements — especially pertaining to quarterly earnings calls — could all be addressed with the development of this simple legal page (which is now a permanant extension of eBay’s corporate blog, eBay Ink), and maybe more interesting, I think, are the ‘twitter sized’ (140-character) disclosure statements they co-developed. You can read them here.
While we all wait for the SEC to further bake its guidance for disclosure on the web, something it introduced at a surface-level last July, I believe what eBay’s done here might help shape and inform the SEC’s thinking in the interim, as well as provide other public companies with a good working model for material disclosure via emerging practices, like microblogging, livestreaming and the like…
Update: Domnic Jones of IR Web has some sound counter points regarding the archival of earnings information, be it in a company’s Twitter stream or otherwise. Shel Holtz also captures both eBay’s and IR Web’s perspectives on this news in episode #429 of For Immediate Release (show notes here).
Update 2: PRWeek just posted this short piece on the news.
Update 3: Man, this one’s evolving quickly. Yesterday, eBay put its new Twitter disclosure guidelines to work as part of its Analyst Day. IR Web has a great recap of that effort. As does PRWeek (again).
Update 4: The WSJ makes mention of eBay’s use of the web and Twitter.
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The Perception Warp of Customer Chatter Online
mike manuel
Alright, so there’s all sorts of assumptions companies make about social media these days, one of the most dangerous of which is the assumption that the feedback, opinions and insights people share online are absolutely representative of their customer base.
Be careful about walking into this particular perception warp, it’s very easy to fall into and terribly difficult to escape.
Yeah, there’s a ton of valuable customer feedback to be gathered and analyzed on the web, however, more often than not, that feedback is coming from what’s best described as, well, a vocal minority. The perception warp is believing this group of customers online reflects the opinions, attitudes and experiences of *all* your customers (e.g., the much, much larger silent majority).
I was reminded of this recently on a client project where we were analyzing commenter registrations on the company’s blog. Our WordPress admin page showed thousands of comments and thousands of registrants, but as we chopped up the user data, we found that about *40* commenters accounted for nearly a third of the total comments.
I’ve seen very similar patterns on other projects, and generally speaking, I think there’s plenty of evidence to support the fact that the ratio of writers to readers online is wildly disproportionate. And unfortunately, once again, it’s one of those unique challenges that falls onto the laps of those who manage social media programs to determine just how much weight to put on the collective customer feedback culled from the web; also I suppose, how influential (or not) your vocal minority of customers are to your silent majority of customers.
[cross-posted on Voce Nation]
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PlayStation Shares “Lessons Learned” Blogging
mike manuel
The case study chat with the new media team behind Sony PlayStation’s blog went well yesterday afternoon at the NewComm Forum, we actually covered a lot of ground - everything from content development and technical design to community management tactics and measurement. By the end of our session, the PlayStation guys had shared 15 “lessons learned” over the last year. I won’t re-hash all those here, I think some of them were fairly obvious and well documented, but there were a few lesser known/lesser discussed tips that shook out that are worth mentioning, here are three:
Sorry, Your Clever Blog Name Doesn’t Matter
Well, it matters less than you think, especially for big brands, big companies like PlayStation. Fact of the matter is that most people are typing “playstation blog” or a simple variation thereof in the search engines to find the blog. A lot of referral sites are also attributing/linking to the blog with the same simple terms, so, you know, if you’re working on a blog right now, don’t kill yourself over-thinking the name. There’s a good chance people won’t remember it or use it anyway…
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Sharing the PlayStation Story at NewComm Forum
mike manuel
Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be heading north to participate in another New Communications Forum, one of only a very few must-attend events for me each year. At this year’s conference, I’ll be co-presenting a case study on corporate blogging with clients from Sony PlayStation. The PlayStation guys have a very interesting and colorful story to tell and this will be the first time it has really been shared, at least in its entirety, so I’m looking forward to the discussion. We’ll be speaking on Thursday at 11AM, hope to see you then…
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Blog Policies: Focus on the People, Not the Platform
mike manuel
Last week at Web 2.0 I sat in on a workshop that the law firm Fenwick & West was hosting on corporate blogging. In short, it was a good discussion and it reiterated what a lot of the sticky legal issues are around corporate and employee blogs and what ultimately companies can (and should) be doing to address them. It occurred to me, however, after the second or third “dooced blogger study” that blog policies are, generally speaking, really shortsighted — which got me thinking…
Why are we creating corporate policies that are based on platforms, when we should be creating policies that are based on behaviors?
Don’t get me wrong, I think blog policies are useful and for now they serve a purpose, but if you strip the best blog policy down to its core, it’s nothing more than a company guide for self expression and a basic set of expectations for “good corporate behavior.” It shouldn’t matter what platform an employee’s using for expression, who cares? Yesterday it was message boards and email, today it’s blogs and podcasts, tomorrow’s it’s who knows what. The platforms will change, but the underlying principles that guide sensable employee behavior probably won’t.
That said, it seems to me that companies should be exploring ways they can broaden the scope of their policy-thinking or at very least broaden the definition of their exisiting guidelines. Perhaps a corporate Social Media policy is one way of moving things in that direction…
Also see:
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The Week That Was
mike manuel
Insane. That’s probably the best word I can use to describe this week.
The second annual Web 2.0 conference has reached its close and while hanging out at the conference and “related events” the last few days has been very cool, I have to admit blogger frustration set in pretty quickly as a slew of juicy info bits and bytes fell on my lap and flew across the blogosphere and I just didn’t have the wherewithal (or the time) to add my own two cents to the conversation. That said, I’m using this post to scratch an itch on all sorts of subjects and observations that shook out of this week — some related to the conference, some not.
I’ll aim to share a little more substance on some of these when I can resurface from my Web 2.0 stupor.
Technorati/Edelman Blogger Survey – Phil takes an initial stab at analyzing the results and shares some highlights. It sounds like he’ll be digging deeper on the data and sharing more shortly. IMO, I think the results are interesting and insightful and “trust” is obviously the big underlying theme here – one that has huge implications for how PR will successfully fit in the blogosphere in the long run. Steve’s right to argue that we need to balance analysis like this with training and application, but the industry needs some guideposts too and I think this survey is providing that.
Yahoo RSS White Paper – This was presented last night at an after-hours party here in SF. It’s a good read with some interesting stats, download it here (PDF). Surprisingly, while RSS adoption is growing rather steadily, the average consumer doesn’t know they’re using it. It’s hard to say what the implications of these stats are for companies that are dabbling with syndicated content, although I suppose if nothing else, the stats show RSS is finding its way into people’s info consumption patterns – whether they know it or not. And some would argue that’s enough to justify further experimentation.
Pushing Forward the PR Meme – I need to grok this and share something more substantial later, but generally speaking I think the spirit of what Steve, Jeremy and others are considering is good and where I and those I work with can share our insight and experience – in the interest of pushing industry know-how a little further forward — we should and I’m game. Period.
Following On-Line Conversations is Hard Work! – When I first read this, my reaction was something like, “yeah, no shit.” Jeremy captures a pain that cuts to the very core of present day social media monitoring and participation, especially for corporations. This is the very messy and very *real* part of PR 2.0 that I and many others deal with every day. Workarounds exist, but man, it could all be so much more efficient..
DIY PR — I’m going to post something separate on this topic, I need some distance from this week’s discussions to get a clearer take on this one, but the question goes: in a Web 2.0 era, where a DIY business mentality has permeated across a crop of new companies, is the importance and need for a dedicated PR program disappearing?
Social Media Policies — I’ve been toying with this one for a while now, but I think companies need to broaden their thinking when it comes to employee policy making. An industry push toward "blog policies" is moving awareness in the right direction, but it’s tragically shortsighted too. I’ll have to drivel more on this later.
The Flock Has Landed – Lastly (at least for this post), I want to simply say congrats to my Voce cohorts on the launch of Flock this week. The coverage, the buzz and the party was amazing. A few of us are toying with the idea of podcasting some Voce case studies in the near future, this will hopefully be one of them. Flock on guys…
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Novell PR Team Opens Blog
mike manuel
This is interesting, the Novell PR team is using a blog to augment their media program. This approach, by virtue of the fact that it’s authored by a PR team comes with a unique set of challenges — not least among them is the team’s willingness to truely cultivate an "open dialogue" that addresses both the good issues and the bad.
Regardless, my hat’s off to the Novell folks for taking a chance and doing something I think (and have said) will eventually become a best practice for corporate communications. An excerpt from their opening post:
What we hope to achieve with this site is a more open, more regular dialogue with the media on issues of relevance to Novell, the industry, and the open source community. Press releases will remain an important vehicle for communicating Novell news. Here, we hope to have more regular conversations about developments and issues that may not get into press releases, but are still of interest to those who follow Novell. We encourage active participation and feedback on the site.
The primary posters to the blog from Novell will be the Novell PR team. However, we also plan to include guest bloggers from the ranks of executives, product management, engineering, and more. We hope to make this a site where you can find good, interesting information, opinions and insights into what’s happening with Novell and the industry. We commit to being open, although we ask folks to stay on topic. We are a public company, so don’t expect us to pronounce on things financial.
[via Andy Lark]
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What *Not* to Blog About…
mike manuel
Via Anil Dash in reference to Google’s recent blog post about Dr. Lee:
Straight from the handbook of "what not to blog about" on a company
site comes a single post that discusses (1) a currently-pending
lawsuit, (2) a judge’s decision in a case that hasn’t yet gone to
trial, (3) a personnel issue regarding a current employee, and (4)
their relationship with Microsoft, their biggest competitor. I guess
the moral of the story is that it’s good to be a lawyer, but don’t try
this one at home, kids. Congrats to Google for being way more open with their personal business than they are about their products. I wonder if their intranet has a page that says "Google HR (Beta)". -
Corporate and Employee Blog Policies - Unplugged
mike manuel
Cross-posting (yes, again) to a recap of last week’s Voce/Cooley panel on corporate blogging policies. While I realize this post is painfully long, I think it captures some of the best feedback and practical advice I’ve heard from companies to date. Enjoy!
Last Thursday, Voce was pleased to co-host a panel discussion with Cooley Godward on corporate and employee blog policies: “How Companies are Adapting to a New Communications Frontier” (more here).
We would like to extend a big THANK YOU to all the panelists for
taking the time to share their insights, advice and anecdotes on how
they’re each thinking about and tackling some of the sticky issues
around corporate and employee blogs. We would also like to thank Forrester’s Charlene Li for sharing her research and leading a great discussion.While last week’s event covered a lot of ground and addressed most
of the core policy problems companies are grappling with right now,
best practices are still largely in development across corporate
America — so the conversation must continue. With this in mind, we
wanted to share a few of the highlights and learnings from the panel in
hopes that those who couldn’t attend might still benefit from the
discussion and ultimately build on this moving forward.What’s the value of a corporate blog?
(please note responses are paraphrased)*Chris Shipley/Guidewire Group: Blogging removes the distance
people sometimes feel with big monolithic corporations – there’s an
inability to relate. Blogging counters this and can help humanize a
company.*Jeremy Zawodny/Yahoo!: A corporate blog can shape (or reshape)
people’s perceptions of a company. It provides a window into the
people and culture and in some cases it provides a better understanding
of their products. He also mentioned that an ancillary benefit of his personal blog and the Yahoo! Search Blog has been its help with recruiting.*Catherine Peterson/Business Objects: From an investment
perspective, corporate blogs have the potential to serve as great
sources for incremental information on a company. She also commented
that the humanizing effect that Shipley referred to can also influence
a growing population of people who are seeking that type of connection
with the companies they invest in.What’s the downside of a corporate blog?
*Zawodny: The time commitment typically surprises people – in terms of creating content and actively monitoring things.
*Peterson: Quoted Warren Buffett: “It’s easier to not get in trouble then to get yourself out of trouble.”
Point being that companies are doing business in an increasingly
regulated environment and that for some it may be easier (read safer)
to remain conservative with external communication than to take a risk
with a company blog.Do you have an employee blog policy? How was it created?
*Peterson: Yes, it was born out of corp. comm., but several
departments were involved in its development. Also, Business Objects’
developer community played an important role in its creation.*Zawodny: Yes, and he shared some of the thinking behind Yahoo!’s policy.
Yahoo!’s focus was less on setting limitations and more on sharing best
practices. Zawodny, speaking from his own experience, explained that
there are a lot of gray areas when it comes to blogging about company
and industry issues and that Yahoo’s guidelines were designed to help
people navigate through the lessons he and other Yahoo bloggers have
learned.*Jodi Baumann/NetApp: Yes, although after further research, her
team decided not to create a separate blogging policy and to instead
incorporate a few additional guidelines into the standard employee
agreement.*Charlene Li/Forrester: Profiled IBM and how it created its corporate blogging policy over the course of 10 days through the use of an employee wiki for soliciting input and edits.
What are the legal risks of blogging?
*Chuck Schwab/Cooley
Godward: New technologies can be problematic for businesses because
it’s not always clear how (or if) existing laws will apply to them.
But with respect to blogs, the three biggest areas of legal risk are:1). Protecting the company’s intellectual property
2). Slander and invasion of privacy
3). Security lawEmployees haven’t really been in a position (historically speaking)
where they can make risky public statements that can spread globally.
Now they can, so there’s a greater need for companies to be proactive
with their thinking around policy. Its’ not enough to say, “Just use
common sense” because there are too many gray areas.Is a policy enough? What happens when it’s broken?
*Schwab: Establishing some sort of blogging policy or at least
adding some language into employee agreements should suffice for most
companies. Each organization will need to decide what the appropriate
recourse is for not abiding by the ground rules (referenced Mark Jen). NOT having a policy in place will certainly make this more problematic for companies.Can a company regulate an employee’s blog?
*Schwab: Legally, there’s no basis for telling employees what
they can and cannot blog about, as long as they’re not sharing company
IP, breaking security law, etc.*Baumann: Shared that there are instances were an employee can blog and
stay within the boundaries of the corporate policy, but still say
things that are harmful and damaging to the reputation of the company.*Schwab: Companies can’t do anything to prohibit basic constitutional
freedoms, however in instances where the employee is associating the
employer’s brand with his or her own personal interests, then the
company has grounds for taking action.What’s IR’s biggest concern with a corporate blog?
*Peterson: Materiality is the biggest issue. Hints to product
release timing, forward-looking statements, speculation on deals,
customer relationships, partnerships, etc., are what IR departments are
most concerned with. The other concern/question is “will this
[corporate blog] really benefit the business and offer value to the
investors?” Every company needs to do its own cost/benefit analysis.Who’s involved in content approval for your corporate blog?
*Baumann: Corp. comm., and no one else. As needed, some
content may get “escalated” up the food chain to IR or legal for
review, but that’s on an as-needed basis. The discretion lies with
PR. The reason being that too many hands in the approval process would
inevitably affect the content and hinder the frequency of posts.*Zawodny: PR is involved in the approval process, although as time
passes and comfort levels increase, the PR team is beginning to step
back and only intercede as needed.*Peterson: Every company should have at least two people reviewing
content – if for nothing else but an extra set of eyes. It’s too easy
to mistakenly share info that could prove problematic if no one else is
checking the copy.Are there any legal liabilities with enabling comments and/or trackbacks?
*Schwab: The Communications Decency Act should protect companies from the comments readers may leave on a corporate blog. Also, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
should protect companies where copyright infringement is concerned
(e.g., a commenter leaves a link to a copyrighted video or music file).*Zawodny: Most of the comments the Yahoo Search blog receives are
positive and neutral. A small percentage are negative and are typically
dealt with on a case-by-case, depending on the sensitivity of the issue
among other things. He also mentioned that the Search team would
rather see dissenting opinions being shared in a forum where they can
be seen and acted upon, verses festering on a message board or blog in
a distant corner of the Web. -
FT: Rise of the Corporate Blogger
mike manuel
A great update piece on the state of corporate blogging appears in today’s Financial Times.
For all the hype, the corporate blogosphere remains uncharted territory
as executives, public relations staff and legal experts are just
beginning to work out how they might harness the potential of web logs
without putting themselves or their companies at risk….The advent of blogging is starting to make companies think about how
they will be expected to engage their customers and employees in
two-way conversations in real time - whether they like it or not.This is *exactly* why we’re teaming up with Cooley on next week’s panel discussion. There’s no lack of information or experts on corporate blogging these days, but we need to start seperating the wheat from the chaff, move past the conceptual to the practical, seperate myth from fact, and all that good stuff, you get the gist…the best way to do this is to hear first-hand how companies are addressing the issues behind corporate blogging (the good and the bad) right now, directly.
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Voce, Cooley Co-Hosting Panel on Corp Blogs
mike manuel
I’m *really* fired up about an event Voce has in the works for next week so I’m cross-posting a piece here that I recently scribbled for the Voce Nation.
In short, we’re teaming up with the law firm Cooley Godward on a panel discussion that will dissect some of the policy/legal issues organizations should consider as they move forward with corporate blogging initiatives. As I’ve said before, I think one of the biggest hurdles to larger scale adoption of corporate blogging resides with a lack of education and understanding of what the real and perceived risks are of corporate and employee blogs. This, plus a dearth of good corporate blogging models and best practices to mirror – or at least a lack of open access to the people behind these efforts – is more than enough to deter most organizations from pushing forward with their plans.
That said, I think we’ve assembled a great panel of speakers – all of which can talk directly to these issues and more important, really arm the attendees with some practical advice and best practices that they can take back and share with their organizations. The original post follows below. If you’re interested in receiving an invite, leave a comment here or drop me a note and I’ll see what I can do.
As corporate America continues to examine the impact of social media on business, particularly blogging, it’s clear that some significant challenges remain, not least among them are legal and communication issues involving fair disclosure, corporate policy and to a greater extent, freedom of speech. While a growing number of companies recognize the need for transparency in their communication with customers, partners, investors, and the media — and see social media as a means for helping with this important
goal — transparency must be balanced with purpose and responsibility.With this in mind, Voce’s teaming up with Cooley Godward and co-hosting a roundtable discussion on corporate blogging next Wednesday evening, July 20th in Palo Alto. The purpose of the discussion is to examine and hear first-hand how some of today’s leading corporations and decision makers are approaching the new opportunities and challenges of business blogging.
A select group of panelists will lead the discussion and share their views on corporate, executive and employee blogs and how they are deploying them, or not, within their organizations.
The panel includes:
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Jodi Baumann, Senior Manager, Corporate Public Relations, Network Appliance
- Chuck Schwab, Attorney, Cooley Godward
- Chris Shipley, Technology Analyst and Executive Producer of DEMO conferences
- Catherine Peterson, Vice President, Investor Relations, Business Objects
- Jeremy Zawodny, Technical Yahoo, Yahoo!
Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester Research will moderate the discussion.
Unfortunately seating is limited, so if you’re a corporate communicator, marketing practitioner or legal professional that’s grappling with these issues and would like to attend, please email John Welton or call 650/228-5183 and request an invitation.
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