This first generation investor relations app is a low cost entry-level product that is completely customizable with company colors, fonts and images. There is no content management requirement by the company to keep the app up to date, as it automatically pulls content from a company’s corporate website along with a broad array of social content including:  YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Slideshare and Twitter.

The new Q4 Investor Relations iPad apps give public companies the ability to easily deliver engaging mobile experiences to investors and stakeholders.

The Q4 investor relations app also includes an optional discussion capability, allowing anyone who has downloaded the app and the IR department an efficient channel to engage in discussions inside the app. Future releases will expand this discussion channel to the company’s website and other locations (if the company desires).

Check out the brief video below to see the app in action:

For anyone that has ever used an iPad for business, it is clear that tablets are here to stay. Mobile apps are an important aspect for public companies to engage all stakeholders, whether they are investors, analysts or activists.  The new Q4 investor relations apps offer a unique opportunity to create a close connection to these users and when combined with notification and commenting services, the app becomes a real-time two-way communication channel between the company and investors.

Introductory pricing of $7000 setup plus $500/month subscription is available through to March 31, 2012. Subscription fees include maintenance, support, app store management and regular upgrades.

Stanley Black & Decker and Avion Gold Corporation are among the first companies to sign up for the app. Keep an eye open for these and more apps in the Apple app store in the very near future!

You can learn more by visiting the Q4 website: http://www.q4websystems.com/Tour/iPadApps/default.aspx.

Related posts:

1. Q4 Launches iPad App for Stanley Black & Decker Following on our recent announcement of our Investor Relations...
2. SlideShare Partners with Q4 Web Systems to help Bring Social Media to Investor Relations Yesterday, a press release was issued announcing that SlideShare and...
3. Q4 Whitepaper: Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations – Part 1 Twitter & StockTwits Q4’s fourth whitepaper on social media shows an enormous ramp-up...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This is the second year in a row, that Agnico-Eagle has been recognized at the CRA for their best practice IR website, securing an Honorable Mention in the electronic disclosure category in 2010 – with first place awarded to Potash Corp., a winner in the electronic disclosure category multiple times.

Companies eligible for the electronic disclosure award were judged on specific content relevant to investors, navigation and usability, innovation, overall effectiveness and IR website best practices. This year, companies were also evaluated on how well they integrated social media into their sites.

Agnico’s long-standing commitment to continually improve the investor experience on their IR website is focused on achieving a global standard in best practices. An additional goal is to limit the effort required to update site content.

The strategy for the site evolved from a comprehensive IR website best practice audit of the Agnico site conducted by Q4 and provided to both the client and their design firm, The Works. This document detailed key recommendations, which were adapted in the redesign. A strong collaboration between Q4, The Works and Agnico-Eagle throughout the design and development of the site helped ensure that all key communications objectives were met.

What follows are some of the features that make Agnico’s site exemplar of best practices:

The Design

The talented team at The Works created a clean, progressive design that provides numerous ways for investors to easily navigate the site to not only find the information they are looking for, but to also ensure that they encounter the information Agnico wants them to see. For example, right from the home page the rotating images in the masthead highlight key content and events, and the drop-down main navigation prominently singles out one specific piece of content in addition to providing links to all sub-section information. The navigation also makes it easy for users to see where they are, where they want to go and how to make their way back. The site also brings key content forward by prominently displaying frequently sought information such as news releases and presentations, as well as providing lots of quick links:

Integrated Social Media Galleries

Agnico was interested in making their information more interactive and easily accessible – not just on their site, but in alternate channels as well. The multimedia galleries offer an extensive collection of Vimeo videos and Flickr photos, which Q4’s platform automatically pulls in from the social channels and integrates into their site. Some of these assets are also displayed elsewhere on the site in context with specific information:

Follow Us Page

The ‘Follow Us’ page on the site provides a number of ways to stay connected to the company such as email alerts, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo. In today’s multi-channel world, public companies must ’be where their investors are’ to stay connected. Prominently featuring ‘Follow Us’ as a universal link in the site header makes it easy for investors to find this information:

Quarterly Report Summary Page

Agnico’s quarterly summary page provides an aggregate view of all quarterly related materials in a single page. It includes the press release, conference call, webcast, report and financials. Agnico also provides a brief video of their CEO, Sean Boyd who provides commentary on the quarter. (Much of the information in this video is scripted in advance of the earnings call and Agnico’s video production company Silverpoint is able to shoot and produce the video to ensure that this information is on the site on the day of their earnings call.) The right rail in this section is entirely driven by tags. So each time the company reports their quarterly results, the tag on this page (for example Q22011) is updated to the next quarter i.e. Q32011. To address Agnico’s goal of minimizing manual updates, Agnico touches the content once and the information automatically aggregates on the quarterly page (and other pages, such as the Investor Briefcase, Presentations etc.).

Interactive Financial Data

The interactive financial data also called the ‘operational database’ on the Agnico site, is an innovative investor service that gives analysts a full set of interactive quarterly financials and fundamentals. Provided by our partner, Virtua Research the financial database permits customized charts, excel downloads and the ability to share content from the model through email and social networks:

This award underscores the commitment and effort Agnico puts into continually making their IR website an integral part of communicating their story to investors. Congratulations from the team at Q4 to everyone involved!

Related posts:

1. Q4 Client, Agnico-Eagle Wins Prestigious IR Website Award Today I’m happy to announce, Agnico-Eagle Mines (a long-time Q4...
2. Agnico-Eagle Chooses Q4′s Disclosure Products After a few short development weeks Q4 has rolled out...
3. Q4 Client, Ryder System Wins Three Awards for their IR Website We are pleased to announce that Ryder System, a client...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Thanks to the fine folks at Aimia for their tremendous work and their agency, Interbrand for the fantastic design. We look forward to helping evolve the site over time. Have a look at the video below or visit the site at http://www.aimia.com/ and let us know what you think!

Related posts:

1. New Goldcorp Corporate Website – Powered by Q4 Darrell walks viewers through the new Goldcorp.com website that leverages...
2. Q4 Announces Financial Content & Social Media Widgets for Corporate Websites We are pleased to announce the launch of Q4 Widgets,...
3. Which vendors help integrate social media into the corporate website? Back in January of this year a question was posted...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There are several actions that companies can take to address negative news such as issuing a press release, having a press conference and reaching out to their larger shareholders to answer questions.  In addition, (if a company is using social networks) steps should also be taken to ensure these channels are populated with the same information, with links provided to all of the materials posted on the company’s website.

Another useful tactic that companies can use to address negative news is having a member of the C-Suite do an interview on a credible financial news program.  Recently on April 4, 2011, Romarco Minerals*, a Canadian gold development company had their CEO Diane Garrett appear on BNN, an all-business and financial news television channel in Canada to address a 17% drop in their share price. The share price decline was due to a statement issued by the Environmental Protection Agency that opposed plans for a permit the company made for operating a Gold Mine in South Carolina.

The company subsequently posted the interview prominently on the homepage of their website to ensure that investors would be able to easily find and view at their leisure:

As you will see by viewing the interview, Diane Garrett is a very elegant and well-spoken businesswoman.  As she addresses every question in an informed manner that gives her credibility and instills confidence she knows what she is talking about.   She sticks to key messages and reinforces that the company has established a good rapport and is committed to working with all commenting agencies to address any issues.

I’m not privy to whether the number of calls to Romarco’s IR department decreased but it seems that the company’s stock is slowly rebounding:

What I do know is that Romarco effectively used a media outlet to help reinforce key messages and provide more context on a situation relevant to the success of the business.

*Romarco is a Q4 client

Related posts:

1. Case Study: How NovaGold Uses Social Media to Augment Their Quarterly Reporting NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSE-AMEX, TSX:NG) is a precious metals company...
2. G&S Minerals Selects Q4 Web Systems Q4 WEB Platform We are pleased to announce G&S Minerals (GSML.PK) as our...
3. Northgate Minerals (TSX:NGX) goes live on Q4 Web and reduces disclosure risk Northgate Mineral (TSX:NGX and AMEX:NGX) is one of the recent...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The founders of Agoracom are set to appear in front of the OSC at the end of April, where we assume we will all hear more details of the allegations and the defense of Agoracom. I, like many others, await more details before passing judgment on what really happened and to what degree fraud was committed (if at all).

In light of this recent situation, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about the problems with message boards and the importance of transparency and trust and being successful online.

Similar to Yahoo!Finance message boards, Agoracom uses alias for all members. As you can see from the screenshot below, there no real names listed and there is no further information available on the site on who these people are.

The BIG problem here is the complete lack of transparency. Who are these people? What are their backgrounds, their day jobs, etc? In their current format message boards like this can’t be trusted if anyone can create an alias and “pretend” to be an investor.

The reason why social media works, is because of the trust that is built up over time between real people. This would never work if everyone used an alias and you didn’t know who they were. The best practice across all social media channels is to use your full name in your profile and/or links to further details about yourself.

What would Facebook be like if everyone used an alias? It only works because it’s real people connecting with real people. A great example of this can be seen in some of the Facebook pages used by companies to connect with investors. See TVI’s Facebook page (disclosure: TVI is a Q4 client)

Seeking Alpha is a great example of transparency, a part of their success has come from how transparent the community is, people connecting with people.

On Twitter there are many users that have an alias for the account name, however most people provide their real name within their profile. There are certainly many automated accounts and many fake accounts, however the people with the most influence and benefit to the company are those that are real people being transparent. I know in my own work with social media, being transparent and authentic is absolutely critical to connecting with people online and building trust.

Sure there are Twitter accounts today that are based on aliases and stock promoters are using them to create “fake awareness”. I hope the actions from the OSC sets a precedence that other regulators can use as an example to control this type of fraud.

Social media is about connecting real people. This is true across every line of business using social media, including marketing, public relations and investor relations. Transparency and trust are required to be successful.

I don’t think that these allegations apply to any PR or IR firm tweeting on behalf of a client, as tweeting for a client is very different than pretending to be an investor:

• When posting for a client it is being done under the company account and is being used to assist in the distribution of content and to build a following through engagement with stakeholders. There is nothing underhanded in this approach and this is within regulations and ethics.

• If an IR firm creates an alias account and then pretends to be an investor engaging in discussions with the company and other investors then this is simply lying and is not ethical in any way. Perhaps a case can be made that this is not securities fraud, but it certainly is business fraud and should not be tolerated by companies, regulators or investors.

On a related note, in 2007 Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey was caught posting messages on Yahoo! Under the name “rahodeb”:

Investigations were launched by the FTC (to block an acquisition) and by the SEC. Ultimately both agencies did not pursue the issue and Mr. Mackey got off. In his own defense Mackey said that he had the right to post under an alias because everyone else did on the message board. Mackey also said that he thought the posts of one man under an alias would never be able to move to the stock and that this was not his intention. However, with posts such as this one posted in Jan 2005, it’s hard to believe his intentions were ethical:

“13 years from now Whole Foods will be an $800+ stock before splits”
John Mackay, CEO of Whole Foods posting as “Rahodeb”.

There are other stories about the CEO of overstock.com using aliases on message boards to spread misinformation, attack his critics and even leak information.

Neither the CEO of Whole Foods or Overstock.com was charged by the SEC for these types of postings. However, it seems the SEC wasn’t doing much enforcement during this period (too many stories to mention here) and I have to wonder if these events happened today would the current SEC react in the same way? Their recent increased judgments related to Reg FD seem to suggest they would react differently.

If the OSC needs to set the precedent that companies and by extension IR agencies can’t create fake investor accounts, then I think this is good for all companies and investors.

As I said early in this post, we’ll all know much more about Agoracom and OSC at the end of this month. Until then I reiterate, I am waiting to get all the details before passing judgment.

Related posts:

1. Leveraging Technology: Online Communications and the Role of Social Media Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at Deutsche...
2. Trends and Best Practices in Online Communications and Social Media in Corporate IR Earlier this month, Dave Hogan, presented his paper “Reaching Shareholders...
3. My Top 3 “How to” Q&A for Social Media and Investor Relations [caption id="attachment_2652" align="alignright" width="250" caption="High atop the Time Warner Center...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

During the session participants were provided with an interactive demonstration of how social media is helping other public companies mitigate share value erosion, dramatically increase their website traffic and broaden their reach to potential investors.  As part of his guided tour he also revealed:

• Which social networks are being adopted by companies for IR first and why.
• How these companies are using social networks and deriving value from them.
• Tips to enhance engagement and streamline quarterly reporting.

Darrell’s presentation was loaded with over 50 examples and case studies of how public companies are using social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and blogs to enhance their IR program.

If you’re thinking about if, when and how to integrate social media with your investor relations program, you should watch the video version of the presentation.

I’ll also be providing an overview of the session with lots of links in an upcoming blog post…stay tuned!

Sheryl

Related posts:

1. The Current State of Social Media and Investor Relations – FREE Webinar Join us on Thursday, February 11th from 4:00 – 5:00...
2. Q4 Whitepaper: The Current State of Social Media & Investor Relations In a continuing effort to share how public companies are...
3. Webinar Replay – Social Media and Investor Relations Trends Darrell Heaps, Co-founder and CEO of Q4 discusses the current...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

CANADA GAS CORP.

Canada Gas Corp. is listed on the TSX-venture exchange, The Frankfurt exchange and the OTC Bulletin Board. The company has two natural gas projects located in the foothills region of the prolific petroleum and natural gas bearing Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in northeastern British Columbia, and has just acquired two opportunities to explore for Bakken oil in Saskatchewan.

The above is the company’s standard boilerplate.  However, CEO, Chad McMillan paraphrases a little and states Canada Gas is a small, venture company currently rebounding from the economic turndown, looking to build out and grow through innovative ways of engaging people and expand their overall following.   This philosophy carries over into their use of social media.

WHY AND HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS USED WITHIN CANADA GAS

Canada Gas’s adoption of social media stems from Chad’s personal use of facebook (FB) – he was a late user but followed the development of web tools and the evolution of different social networking sites which he felt were very efficient and engaging in many respects.  Once he signed on and had been using it for a while, he realized FB was evolving towards the corporate side of things.  He also gained a huge network of associates following Canada Gas and while he felt the corporate aspect was not quite complete yet, companies were gradually signing on, so he thought he would give it a try and in the early part of 2009 also began using it for the company.

While it helped that other companies were gravitating towards using FB, one of the main attractions for  Chad was that all web 2.0 concepts are user generated and Canada Gas’s  main strategy is connecting with people looking for energy investments, attracting star talent and potential partner opportunities.

Also, in addition to working with Canada Gas, Chad (and his colleagues) works with several other smaller companies.  As you may assume they have limited budgets and he was looking for ways to leverage their capital although the forefathers of these companies were somewhat skeptical of new methods.  So with his communications background he helped bridge the gap with not only key investor tools such as the core presentation and the IR Website, but also social media.

Currently, Canada Gas uses Twitter, facebook, linkedin and encourages forum participation – Chad has re-tweeted press releases and interesting things happening in their sector thus far and has even advertised for an annual report designer.  As the company continues to evolve, so will the social tools they use – Chad foresees using video blogging or some kind of shareholder forum but for now he is experimenting one step at a time.  Among venture-listed companies using social media, Chad and Canada Gas are one of the early adopters and so he has been helping others understand and realize their potential.

For those of you from smaller companies, you are likely thinking I don’t have the time to do all of this and Chad doesn’t want to lead anyone into thinking that things will happen overnight.  He has a lot on his plate and there are only so many things you can do as a small company.  So the initial priority for them is building a better foundation for the company and as the markets come back, it will provide more opportunity to work the tools better.  He also feels there is a lot of research about the benefits and things are evolving so rapidly that for now they are taking “baby steps”.

Don’t get discouraged by this – he strongly feels Canada Gas is at an advantage because they are smaller.  For example, they can easily integrate an accounting system or any other tool to enhance their business in a shorter period of time.  While they don’t necessarily have the resources, they have less layers to peel back to get buy-in.  He compares this to larger companies who have internal processes and many different departments that need to collaborate which makes it hard to get things done in a timely fashion or implement change at all.

WORDS OF WISDOM

When asked some words of wisdom he states that you can’t forget the basics of what you are doing in your core IR program, but you shouldn’t let that stop you from being an entrepreneur and try new things out.

You need to look at the bigger picture and instead of just pushing your releases out using the same avenues, social media empowers people to engage with your company and in the process gain a better understanding of your business model.  Those that don’t participate will be left behind and as communication tools continue to evolve, companies need to keep apprised of them and use what works to achieve their underlying goals.

BARRICK GOLD

Barrick Gold Corporation is listed on the TSX and NYSE.  Barrick is the gold industry leader, with a portfolio of operating mines and projects located across five continents, as well as large land positions on some of the most prolific mineral trends.

WHY AND HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS USED WITHIN BARRICK

Barrick’s use of social media began in October 2008 with Twitter to increase the level of interaction between the company and its stakeholders.  Subsequent to this, in April of this year they established another Twitter feed (@barrickgoldjobs) as well as an official facebook page for recruiting activities.

Their initial use of Twitter entailed circulating press release headlines by providing a link to the full release. Over time, they began receiving questions and comments in @replies and direct messages, and responded to them as they arose.   After gaining some comfort with the medium, they began to be more broad with posts and interacted with their followers more.  They also followed related media outlets, and other sources of information to stay up-to-date.

They now Tweet about upcoming events, new content posted on their website, and issue reminders of quarterly earnings and conference calls. As mentioned, in April of this year, they launched a Twitter feed specifically for recruiting purposes (@barrickgoldjobs) – in which they post employment opportunities, link followers to the Career section of their website, and respond to questions from potential candidates.

WORDS OF WISDOM

Social media is a great way to make your organization more accessible to your stakeholders.   In the case of Twitter, you can be sure that your followers want information from you. Watch how other companies use social media and develop a vision of how it might help your organization. This type of ongoing assessment is a good way to develop and update your strategy.

However, they would like to point out that before they adopted Twitter and Facebook, there were  internal discussions to ensure that any related social media activities were in full compliance with the company’s disclosure policy and recommend you do the same.

Related posts:

1. Social Media and Investor Relations – Trends, Stats and Examples On April 8th, 2010 I presented to a group of...
2. Webinar Replay – The Current State of Social Media and Investor Relations On February 14, Darrell Heaps, our co-founder and CEO, and...
3. Q4’s CEO Discusses all things Twitter, Social Media and Investor Relations An article in IR Alert featuring an interview with Q4’s...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

One of the questions that stood out to me from yesterday’s webinar was when an attendee asked if we had any samples to show how small cap companies are leveraging the IR website best practices Catherine was speaking about.  Catherine had shown great examples from some larger companies, namely, Nexen and Potash and explained how they have done a great job of conveying their messaging as well as making it easy for their audience to find information quickly.

Although I can’t share some of the examples from the projects we haven’t launched yet, I can say that part of our project process at Q4 is to help clients realize these best practices through using our modules which have been designed with IR best practices in mind.  Throughout our implementation process, we work with our clients to help them improve their IR websites and apply best practices to their site.   In the past we have primarily focused on migrating our client’s websites to our platform when they join the family and applying these best practices is now an additional service included with our implementation process.

Since our Spring 09 release, we’ve added Full-Text RSS feeds for news, presentations and events, Share This social sharing which allows any page to be shared through all the social networks, Investor Briefcase, Page-specific meta data and host of of other improvements to our IR website product – that all our clients receive automatically!

Of course we’ve always had email alerts, stock quotes, press release feeds and all the basic IR required items but we’re taking a different approach and simply using these best practices to not only make the IR section better, but to make the overall website better.

Look for a follow-up in a week or so when we launch some before-and-after shots of what we’ve done for a couple of new clients that are in development.

Related posts:

1. IR Website Best Practices Webinar Wrap-Up We had a great turnout at our first ever webinar...
2. Q4 IR Website Best Practices Presentation and Video now available on Website As you may know, Q4 conducted a webinar a couple...
3. Notice-and-Access Press Releases; An interview with Jason McGruder, VP Investor Relations at BGC Partners On Feb 23, 2009 BGC Partners became one of the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Even though we only have 2 months of data and we’re in beta regarding our methods for aggregating, I wanted to share some initial observations that we thought were interesting. If you have any questions about this data or how we collect it please leave a comment or contact me.

During this past February we had 92,000 unique visitors who generated 740,000 sessions and 1.9 million page views. This means that on average each visitor returned 8 times during the month. This was up from 63,000 unique visitors and 420,000 sessions in January. This increase is mostly due a number of new clients coming online in Feb. :- )

The average length of each visit was 8mins 55secs, or roughly 1hr 14mins/visitor for the month. This was higher than I had expected. Even though the majority of visitors stay for less than a minute, the long-tail of the stats shows an impressive number staying beyond 5, 10 and even 30mins. We don’t have any data on hand to compare this with but will try and provide some benchmark comparisons in a future post.

The most popular time of day for people to visit is from 3pm to 9pm, with the least most popular time being 8am to 10am. This is also interesting as it goes against some traditional thinking that people like to visit sites with their morning coffee.

On an aggregate basis across all clients sites the top 5 sections (not including the homepage) were:

1. News
2. Corporate Responsibility
3. Investors
4. Careers
5. Company

No surprise with News, Investors and Company being in the top 5. The surprise, (although it makes complete sense in this market) are the corporate responsibility and careers sections being in the top 5.

Last but certainly not least, in terms of specific pages visits the third most popular page accessed was the RSS feed for Press Releases. This is significant because in 2008, RSS feeds didn’t register in the top 25. Although RSS has many uses and we don’t know specifically how these feeds are being used, we do know they have grown considerably in popularity, which is great to see.

In closing, what has this data told us that we didn’t already know? According to our records:

1. Investors and stakeholders are spending more time online with IR websites than ever before
2. The interest level in corporate responsibility and careers is on the rise
3. RSS adoption is growing rapidly across our network of sites

That’s all we have for now. If you have any questions or if there are other stats (browsers, OS, etc) that you’re interested in let me know and we’ll include in the next web stats post.

Related posts:

1. Increasing efficiency and reducing the risk of corporate disclosure With the over arching trend of corporate disclosure being transparency,...
2. Why Web Designers Will Love New JSON Feeds & Q4 Widgets Yesterday we announced the release of Q4 Widgets to our...
3. New Aimia.com corporate website showcases the power of Q4 and social media Aimia (previously Group Aeroplan) is a global leader in loyalty management...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

FNX Mining

FNX Mining Company Inc. (“FNX”), a Canadian Nickel Company, produces, develops and explores for nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium and gold in Canada’s prolific Sudbury Basin. FNX optioned five former producing mines from Vale Inco early in 2002 (McCreedy West, Levack, Podolsky, Victoria and Kirkwood). The properties contained extensive historic surface and underground infrastructure, including roads, head frames, declines, power facilities and buildings.

Related posts:

1. Inmet Mining (IMN:TSX) goes live on Q4 WEB Last week Inmet Mining went live on Q4 WEB, keep...
2. Baffinland (TSX:BIM) Goes Live on Q4 WEB Q4 is pleased to announce the latest addition to our...
3. New Sage Energy Goes Live on Q4 WEB We are pleased to announce our latest client, New Sage...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.