Socially Regulated
As I prep for my presentation at this year’s Blog World Expo, I wanted to visit the topic I’m actually speaking on.
“Social Media and Blogging in Federally Regulated Industries” isn’t a really sexy title for a conference session, but it’s one that is absolutely necessary. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, firearms and liquor are trying to figure out how to not only participate on the conversations that are happening, but also how they can capitalize on them.
The challenge
For some companies, the challenge is the disclosure of certain material information, or Regulation Fair Disclosure. Any publicly traded company is subject to scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission and if a company were to publish a blog post committing to a new product and then not meet that commitment, it could be subjected to not only a costly shareholder law suit, but a costly SEC investigation.
Recently, the SEC relaxed its rules (or modernized them depending on your spin) to allow companies to disclose information through their blogs. This is a major step, but seems to be one companies are afraid of taking. I can not find any questionable uses so far, so it seems not many people are taking the risk. Companies such as Google regularly announce new products and Betas through blogs, but when was the last time a pharmaceutical company announced a new drug through it’s corporate blog?
The challenges aren’t specific to big business. Liquor companies need to check the age of their followers on Twitter, tobacco companies have to reign in their marketing practices. I’ve even had the Investor Relations person at a firearms company say they haven’t begun to use social media because they don’t know what’s allowed.
The solution
The solution is simply to take a risk and do something. I know this is a scary proposition for marketers and public relations companies, but by taking informed risks, you’ll find success.
I have advised companies to issue announcements through the blog only. An average distribution for one company I worked with would be nearly $1,000 based on the inclusion of a safe harbor statement and all the other knowledge. Customer wins, product updates and smaller announcements simply don’t need an expensive press release. A blog post with embedded multimedia provides the same value.
Molson-Coors is able to use Twitter to post stories about alcohol awareness and other positive stories, but the bio explicitly asks followers to be of legal drinking age. Ruger, Smith & Wesson and other firearms companies do not maintain corporate blogs. It looks like Ruger might have control of http://twitter.com/ruger, but it’s protected so it’s hard to tell.
Creative marketing and communications practices are important to the success of any campaign. In federally regulated industries, creativity is even more important. Do you work for a federally regulated company? Share some of your best practices in the comments!
Might be interesting to walk through the steps a company LIKE Molson (who’s very active in social media in canada) could take to go from A to Z. Where do they start? How do they deal with backlash? Who should they engage with so they can test out strategies without the world seeing?
That’s one of the inherent issues of Social Media is that you don’t know what works until you put something out there. A lot of these companies are not just regulated here in the States, which poses a whole separate set of issues.