It has been a long time—November 1, 2007, to be precise—since I’ve been able to point to an investor relations effort that has embraced social media. That was when I posted an excerpt of an interview Neville Hobson and I conducted with Lynn Tyson, Dell’s VP of investor relations, who had launched the Dell Shares blog. In the interview, Tyson told us there weren’t many blogs to which we could compare Dell Shares; most IR types were too concerned about regulatory issues to even consider blogging about investor issues.

That’s why I was delighted to read a post on Dominic Jones’ IR Web Report that another company—a much smaller one than Dell—has not only launched an investor-focused blog but is using it in a practical manner that promotes transparency.

What’s more, it turns out I had a hand in it.

I referred Tiffany Bradford to Dominic after she contacted me looking for advice on introducing a social media component to her company’s IR efforts. My own IR experience is limited (although I once was a member of the National Investor Relations Institute for a whole year), and I wasn’t comfortable speaking authoritatively with her, so I put her in touch with Dominic, knowing her time would be better spent with him. I’ve never met anybody with as comprehensive an understanding of IR in the current business environment as Dominic has.

Today, Dominic posted the outcome of his conversations with Tiffany. It turns out that, on Dominic’s advice, she she launched a multi-author blog for investor relations and marketing. The blog, Displayground, launched as Microvision‘s official blog at the end of last year.

It’s what Tiffany did with the blog recently, though, that was worthy of Dominic’s praise. “She called for investors to submit questions on the blog so that she could address them on the company’s upcoming earnings conference call,” Dominic wrote. “Even I was surprised by the response from investors. They loved it, and have submitted a total of seventeen comments as I write this, the most comments of any post on the company???s blog to date.” (The emphasis is Dominic’s.) Dominic also points out that investors love being solicited for their input.

During the conference call, which occurred earlier today, various company representatives fielded all the questions that had come in via the blog.

Dominic sums up the history-making event better than I could:

When I suggested recently that companies open up their earnings calls to bloggers there were grumblings from the old school IR pros about it not being their jobs to talk to ???the masses??? and that it would lead to a degradation of the discourse on the calls.

Microvision shows that there are ways to be more open and inclusive in IR and that it doesn???t have to be a free-for-all. Tiffany Bradford isn???t one to seek the limelight, but she deserves a lot of credit for taking the lead in the IR profession to use a blog to open up the lines of communication between management and retail investors.

Hat tip to Bryan Person, who pointed me to Dominic’s post.