I'm hoping my colleagues will chime in here, but some of my take-aways include:

• News moves in a matter of hours, not days or weeks, and a company can affect the news cycle and the story by responding quickly to what's being said online. A story can start to break online on Saturday and be above the fold of a major newspaper Monday, leaving the company behind in the dust. "The word of mouth network is hyper-efficient," Scoble said. Companies must monitor what's being said about them and, via their own company blog, acknowledge what's being said about them, even if it's only, "We have just become aware of this and are formulating a response to this at this time." Then the company must follow through and, at an executive level, respond. Scoble again: "The longer time you wait, the more that story is being written without your guidance."
• The panel stressed a need to maintain relationships with the bloggers most likely to talk about your company. This is done by correspondence or through events that include these bloggers. A company blog is one good way of maintaining these relationships; include these bloggers in your blogroll or link to what they are saying to demonstrate that you are listening.
• It's important to include not just A-list bloggers in your relations but also bloggers of all audience sizes. One mistake traditional PR makes is to worry only about those news outlets with large audiences; this won't work with the blogosphere, in which news can grow virally and bleed into mainstream media. McClure said: "A blogger that has a very small audience can have a very large impact."

The panel took questions and offered several actionable ideas and best practices. I'd recommend a Bulldog Reporter seminar to anyone after this. For us, the seminar was a real affirmation.

But we also differed with the panelists on a few points. For one thing, we're normally trying to be proactive, not reactive, in our blog-relations practices, and the logistics are quite different. Want to know more? Give us a call, we'll discuss it. *smiley*