Tag Archives: web disclosure

4 Reasons Brands Shouldn’t Rely Solely on Social Media to Communicate

Posted on April 4, 2013 by | 8 Comments

I wasn’t the only social media denizen who scratched their head and said “Really?” in response to the SEC’s ruling a few days ago that cleared the way for public companies to disclose material news via social networks. It turns out I was in good company, as many others looked in askance at the ruling too, including Fortune’s Dan Primack (“SEC’s new social media policy falls short.”)

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Fundamentally,  I support brands using social channels to communicate.  I am completely and utterly convinced of the efficacy and utility of social networks as a means to communicate with key audiences.

twitter tos textBut I also know from my experiences in managing several of PR Newswire’s social media presences for the last couple years that social networks are not perfect communications channels.  For a variety of reasons, I’ll never rely solely upon them as key communications channels.  Here’s why.

  • Reliability – If you’ve ever used Twitter, you’ve probably seen the Fail Whale that appears when Twitter is over-capacity.  Facebook users experience problems with their API and delays in getting content to post all the time. Simply put, you never know when your social network will slow down – or even grind to a halt. Call me cynical, but Murphy’s Law dictates that at some point, you’ll encounter a service problem right at the moment you absolutely, positively need to post something.
  • Service & platform changes – The social networks all reserve the right to make changes to their services and their platforms, without any prior warning to users, and change they do.  Over the last several years, we’ve seen the networks start and end relationships with search engines and each other, change how user content is displayed and an increase in the commingling of ads within streams of user-generated content.  All of these changes have affected (in some cases significantly) how and when social content is shared and viewed.
  • Feed management algorithms — It may come as a surprise to some, most social networks employ manage what content their users see.  Using algorithms, they bias news feeds, tweet streams and the updates they display to users, surfacing content that’s proven popular and/or is from those closes to the users’ social graphs.  More mundane posts are buried. Point is, just because a company posts content to a social network, there is no guarantee that all their friends, followers and fans will see it.  In fact, one can be fairly certain that relatively few members of your social audience will see your message at the moment it’s posted.
  • Security – Social networks can be hacked, and while they obviously try to protect themselves, it’s not at all uncommon to see spammy messages spewing forth from hacked accounts.  Company accounts are not immune, and the stakes go up if you’ve cultivated a particularly influential and well-connected audience populated with analysts, bloggers and journalists.

facebook tosIf this post has you sweating a bit, it might be a good idea to take a quick look at the various terms of service the social networks require us to agree to in order to establish accounts.  None contain service level agreements and guarantees that you get from a paid vendor.  (Note:  PR Newswire is a paid vendor.  We build security and redundancy into what we do, and we consider uptime a requirement, not a nice-to-have.)

So, while I don’t consider myself to be a Chicken Little, and indeed, I think it’s great that companies can safely add communicating via social networks to their communications mix, I do believe that brands need to be cautious about becoming over-reliant on social networks, from which they have no guarantees and over which they can wield no real control.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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Setting the Record Straight Regarding Web Disclosure

Posted on June 13, 2011 by | 4 Comments

A recent blog post on the IR Web Report asserted “STATISTICS from trackable links in company press releases suggest that even small companies’ websites are the most heavily used sources for financial disclosure information, and that dissemination via PR wire services is mostly ignored by investors.”  This statement simply couldn’t be further from the truth, and we believe it’s our duty to set the record straight.

Of course, both sides of the discussion have their biases and business agendas.  The author of the IR Web Report provides IR website consulting services to companies and has a vested interest in seeing more public companies embrace web disclosure. And press release distribution is PR Newswire’s core business, though we too have a thriving IR web site services division.

But agendas notwithstanding, the facts tell a different story, and reveal why fewer than a dozen public companies have made the switch to web disclosure.

A misguided characterization of press release stats

IR Web Report’s use of tracking clicks from the press release on the PR Newswire site to the issuing company site as the sole measure of traffic driven by a press release gives a very incomplete picture of the traffic generated by the message, and is, in fact, a very poor measure of how well a press release distribution worked.  Why?  The answer lies in syndication.   When you send a press release out over PR Newswire, it will appear – in full text and in many cases with the links you embedded in the copy – on thousands of web sites, ranging from financial powerhouses like Yahoo! Finance and CNN Money to a huge network of personal finance and investing sites, media web sites and blogs.   The version of your press release appearing on these sites will drive traffic to the URLs and links you included in the copy.  One needs to look at the total effect of the syndicated press release – not just the traffic referred from the newswire web site.

Don’t forget social sharing
Social sharing is another important component of press release visibility, and PR Newswire content is shared on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn at an astonishing rate – thousands of times each day.  Social sharing provides important and credible third party promotion and redistribution of news among audiences eagerly pursuing equities news.

In reality, a handful of companies are using web disclosure

The PR wires – PR Newswire included – remain the easiest and fastest way to comprehensively and simultaneously reach the spot news desks at Dow Jones, Reuters, Bloomberg, the AP and other financial news services, other relevant media and online audiences.

Many companies that have explored web disclosure find it’s difficult for them to make a sudden shift and begin to rely on an IT department or web staff that may or may not understand the complexities and vagaries of Reg FD the way that the wire services do.  As a result, a number of well-documented mishaps have resulted in early and uneven disclosure of financial news from companies large and small.

For these reasons, the number of companies that have switched from using press releases to relying solely on web disclosure remains so small.

The company web site really should be the financial communications hub

All that said, it’s important to note that PR Newswire is an avid proponent of delivering excellent, robust and up-to-the-second financial communications on corporate web sites.   It’s common knowledge that a company’s website is ultimately where audiences should go to find the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available related to that organization.  It’s also commonly understood that social media sites are important for broadening the reach of various types of content, but it’s the company website that should be the place where it all comes together.  On these points most IR pros – and the team here at PR Newswire – agree.

In fact, the example IR Web Report called out, Boeing, is a long-time user of PR Newswire’s MediaRoom service, which enables the Boeing communications team to manage their media site and incorporates a live XML feed of the press releases they issue via PR Newswire to ensure the news is available on their site within milliseconds of being disclosed via the wire.  This long-standing and tested solution fully satisfies the timing and accuracy requirements of Reg FD.  Multiple levels of security safeguard content until release.  PR Newswire has had thousands of companies engaged in this seamless process for many years.

For years PR Newswire has focused on automating communications processes where it makes sense to do so, enabling communicators to swiftly reach key audiences and update their web sites so they may devote their time to the higher-touch and more complex aspects of their jobs.  Along the way, we add quality control (our editors routinely catch and fix mistakes in almost 2/3 of press releases submitted for the wire) and rigorous authentication of sources that means media and web sites can trust – and immediately act upon – press releases they receive from PR Newswire.  We devote entire departments to developing audiences for investor news, and building the syndication network that delivers enormous online reach.  There’s more to press release distribution than meets the eye.  We’re very proud of the work we do and the services we provide, and we thank you for allowing us to set the record straight.

John Viglotti is PR Newswire’s vice president of investor relations products & services.

PR Newswire offers secures investor relations web sites that are easy to update, flexible and can incorporate an up-to-the-millisecond feed of your press releases.

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Best practices for securing undisclosed news on your IR web site

Posted on February 1, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Spiders from financial news organizations trawl web sites for news, and can find undisclosed material information that hasn't been properly secured.

A prematurely leaked earnings release is the scenario that keeps many IROs up at night, and some of the market’s biggest names have been surprised in recent months when material news they hadn’t yet disclosed showed up on the financial newswires.

In every case, the leaked press releases were posted to a public – but unpublished – section of the companies’ web sites, enabling savvy – and aggressive – news organizations to gain access to the news before its scheduled disclosure without hacking passwords, breeching any firewalls or breaking any laws.   The press releases were all posted to an unpublished web page, the URL of which was easily guessed by reporters.

Commenting on an incident in late 2010 for a Wall St. Journal blog, Bloomberg News issued the following explanation:  “We found the release posted on the company’s website without any required password or firewall. The company failed to respond to multiple calls from us to verify the information on their website before we published our story.”

“An unpublished URL doesn’t create secure environment,” said Chris Antoline, Product Manager of Web Engagement at PR Newswire.  “Posting a press release to a web page that is otherwise public is risky. People – and news spiders designed to hunt for content – don’t need URLs to find information.”

One shouldn’t rely solely upon the judgment of your company’s IT staff or a vendor – they may be unaware of how competitive the financial news reporting environment is, and the risks posed to the company.

Securing this content is not difficult, but many times your web team or vendor simply doesn’t understand the directives of IR Department or the importance of timing around announcements. A simple meeting or discussion to convey the concept of SEC guidelines around disclosure can guarantee that the web team is thinking in your best interests.

What’s NOT secure:

  • Unpublished URLs Draft or preview web pages that are not behind the firewall
  • Any URLs that might be dynamically-generated using some sort of numerical sequencing for database items, such as news releases. www.xyzcompany/about/news/1871 is NOT secure since a spider (or human) can easily add or remove a number to the URL, and pull up unpublished documents.
  • Any CMS which has security where you have not changed your password from “admin” or “login” or “password”

How to determine whether or not your practices are secure

Questions to ask your IT department or your vendor:

  • What are the security measures in place for protecting non-public content in our Content Management System (CMS)?
  • Is ‘dark’ content in our CMS able to be accessed publicly via a direct URL?
  • Does our CMS use sequential numbering for the database?
  • Can we password protect pages and content to prevent outsiders from accessing certain information which we only want a select group of people to access?

Another way to test the security of undisclosed documents is to try to access them yourself, from a home computer or smart phone that’s not attached to your company network.  If you can pull up the test document via an unpublished URL, that’s a red flag.  Others can do the same.

To secure your company’s undisclosed material information, PR Newswire suggests the following practices:

  • Be sure the proper security measures are adhered to by your CMS before publishing content that is not yet ready for the public to view.
  • Leveraging unpublished URLs can be an effective way to present content for the user experience you’re trying to accomplish on your website, but make sure all private, unpublished content is protected by a password.
  • Have your web team program the system to use non-sequential URL generators
  • Better yet, use a URL Editor, where not only do you make the system more secure but you help your SEO efforts as well.

Remember, as a publicly traded company it is ultimately your organization’s responsibility to ensure that yet-to-be-disclosed content is kept secure.  Asking a few simple yet critical questions of your internal IT team or website vendor can go a long way in saving your company time, money and even market share repairing damage that could have been prevented.

Authored by Chris Antoline, Product Manager, Web Engagement Products, PR Newswire.

Secure & Fully Featured IR Web Site Services

Looking for a secure and easy to use investor relations web site service?  PR Newswire’s web site creation and hosting tool, IR Room, helps your company organize and secure critical information for investors, analysts and media while maximizing your online presence.

Image courtesy of Flickr user The Itsy Bitsy Spider

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