60% of Financial Advisors in North America are Using Social Networks to Drive New Business: Study

September 2nd, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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SocialwareAccording to a survey by Socialware, over 60% of financial advisors in North America are using social networks to drive new business and build better relationships with customers. The survey consisted of over 30 questions and was completed by a total of 196 financial advisors; 44% of the respondents have an average account size of $300K and more than 53% of them have over 100 clients.

KEY FINDINGS:

Usage:

  • In addition to the 60% who are already using social networks for business, 11% more plan on using them in the future.
  • Of the 29% with no plans to use social media in the future, 85% of them are prohibited by their firms.
  • The average number of social networks employed is 1.8.
  • Linkedin is the most popular social network used.

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“Return on Interaction” Measure of Success for Newport’s Social Media Program

August 26th, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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npdt_logoIn a press release issued earlier this week, Newport Digital Technologies, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: NPDT) announced the “formal launch of its Digital Strategy and Social Media program”.  The program was developed by the company’s Digital Strategy team “to leverage the ever-evolving social business networks, bringing NPDT brand awareness to shareholders, investors, potential clients, and industry partners.”

Newport is a technology solutions driven company organized to focus on serving five of the fastest-emerging businesses in the technology space – RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), WiMax, eLearning, and LED Digital Signage and LED Lighting solutions.

Newport has embraced several social channels including Twitter, YouTube, Posterous and FlickR to broaden the company’s audience.  They also have a Facebook account which we highlighted in our recent whitepaper for their exceptional use of the channel.  For example, the information is current and up-to-date with a good balance of material including recent press releases, links to shareholder conference calls and videos that all help to provide a better context about their business.

So based on Newport’s inclusion in our whitepaper and the “formal launch” of their Social Media program, I contacted Isaac Cruz, the company’s Digital Strategy Manager, to gather some more background information about how this all came to be.

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How Polycom’s Social Media Strategy has evolved to incorporate Investor Relations

August 18th, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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Polycom has whole-heartedly jumped into the social media pool.  They incorporate Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs and LinkedIn into their communications strategy and have several accounts for each channel.  The company prominently displays this information on their website via a dedicated “Connect with Polycom using Social Media” in the newsroom section.

Polycom_connect with us

A review of how Polycom uses each channel revealed consistent messaging and current and up-to date information.  Some of the senior management team also regularly tweet and are active bloggers providing additional commentary on an industry-related topic or company specific news. With it increasingly difficult to attract and retain investors in this economy, this sends a very clear message in terms of their transparency and their personal interest in listening to their stakeholders.

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Best Practices for Organizing an Investor Day

August 13th, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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InvestordayWhenever my good friend Dan Dykens aka @meetthestreet is unable to host #irchat, I get the pleasure of stepping in for him.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, #irchat is a weekly one-hour event held every Thursday at 1:00 p.m. EST on Twitter for IR professionals.

Each week, we tackle three-four questions that address IR-related issues, trends and to generally exchange ideas. The session has garnered quite the following and has become a popular hashtag on Twitter.

Recently, @IR_practice one of the regulars and a great IR resource in general put out an open call to #irchat asking if anyone could share a link on best practices for organizing an investor day.  With experience as both an in-house IRO and IR consultant, I began to look through my files to see if I had anything to offer.  I also put in a few requests to friends and ex-colleagues in the IR profession and was surprised that no one had anything written down.

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Effective Uses of Hashtags on Twitter to Help Attract Investors

August 5th, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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Twitterhashtag_smallOur latest whitepaper has revealed that Twitter is the most widely used channel for investor-related material. Although in spite of this, the channel is not being used for direct dialogue between investors and companies but rather more like an efficient channel to disseminate information and to provide context to investors interested in their market and business.

This may change in the future, as more investors begin to engage companies through Twitter. So in anticipation of this, there are some effective ways that companies can use hashtags to help get the attention of potential investors on Twitter.

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INFOGRAPHIC – Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations

July 30th, 2010 by Darrell Heaps
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The following infographic contains most of the charts from the latest whitepaper. Public Company Use of Social Media for IR. This research is based on 362 public companies that have Twitter accounts and how they use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, YouTube and SlideShare for investor relations.

We hope you enjoy it!

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Q4 Whitepaper: Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations – Summer 2010

July 29th, 2010 by Darrell Heaps
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Download the latest Q4 Whitepaper on social media for public companies.

Download the latest Q4 Whitepaper on social media for public companies.

We’re thrilled to announce our latest report on the use of social media by public companies for investor relations.  If you’d like to get right to the report you can download it here.
Last year we released two research reports on Twitter for investor relations.  At that point, our sample told us that 35% were using Twitter for IR, in the current report you’ll see this number is now 65%.
However, it’s not all about Twitter. So we expanded our research to include Facebook, Linked, Blogs, YouTube and SlideShare.  Their respective adoption rates for IR came in at:
37% Facebook
29% YouTube
10% Corporate blog
10% SlideShare

We’re thrilled to announce our latest report on the use of social media by public companies for investor relations.  If you’d like to get right to the report you can download it here.

Last year we released two research reports on Twitter for investor relations.  At that point, our sample of 350 companies told us that 35% were using Twitter for IR, in the current report you’ll see this adoption is now at 65%.

However, it’s not all about Twitter. So we expanded our research to include Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, YouTube and SlideShare.  Their respective adoption rates for IR came in at:

  • 37% Facebook
  • 29% YouTube
  • 10% Corporate blog
  • 10% SlideShare
  • 93% LinkedIn
Social Media Used by Public Companies for IR

Social Media Used by Public Companies for IR

We included LinkedIn because company pages are created automatically and now anyone can “Follow” any company.

What impresses me the most about the state of the market is just how many companies are using social media . We’ve included hundreds of examples in this report and we’ve literally just scratched the surface.

The complete report is 96 pages and has tons of stats, charts and web links.

Register on the landing page and we’ll email you the whitepaper right away.

We hope you enjoy it.

Let us know what you think in the comments below! Is social media for IR reaching a tipping point?


The Real Life Social Network

July 9th, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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This is such an excellent presentation from Paul Adams a User Experience Researcher at Google, that we have decided to share it on our blog.

It is quite long but gives some great insights into lessons learned from increased adoption of social networking.  The presentation is grouped into the following six ideas:

  1. The shift from the web to the social web.
  2. The real life social network. How people are connected offline, and what that behavior means for their behavior online.
  3. Relationships. We all have very different relationships with the people in our life and designing for them is very different.
  4. Influence. How people influence each other, and how that is driven by the structure of our social network.
  5. Identity. Why identity is a cornerstone of the web.
  6. Privacy. Why it’s critical to give people control over their data.
The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Investor Relations and Corporate Blog Trends

July 8th, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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blogAs we have said in the past, there is limited concrete research on companies with blogs strictly dedicated to IR, but it seems to be far less than those who are using Twitter for the same purpose. After analyzing the 350 + companies in our current study, we continue to see this trend with few companies using their blog strictly for IR.

Instead we are seeing quite a few companies who have one company blog where marketing, product or research staff comment on new products and provide their viewpoint on industry developments and some IR-related material, such as a significant milestone or event that has happened in the company. Specifically, companies are providing insight and commentary on peer/sector related news such as scientific publications that impact or pertain to the company’s work, a discussion of project developments (oftentimes with an accompanying presentation or graphics to help tell the story), and material company news such as a merger or financing.

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Corporate Social Media Best Practice: List Social Networks on Your Website

June 30th, 2010 by Sheryl Joyce
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social_media_rubiks_cubeWe are currently working on our next research report on how public companies are using social media. This research is based on our analysis of over 350 companies and their uses of social media from a corporate and investor relations perspective. We have recently completed the primary research and have decided to share our findings as we go, through a series of blog posts that will highlight various aspects of the report.

To kick things off I thought we’d take a quick look at how companies are promoting their social media channels on their corporate website.

We are only just beginning to scratch the surface on our new research, but are seeing an increase in the number of companies who are providing links to all of the social networks they have adopted as part of their broader communications strategy via a “Stay Connected”, “Connect With Us”, or “Follow Us” approach.

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