Note: This is our last post of 2010.  We’ll resume the week of January 3, 2011.  Happy Holidays!
Part two of this series will focus on some tools that companies are using to help investors review, download and analyze their financial information.
Financial information is a key metric that investors use to decide whether they want to buy shares of your company.  So it is critical to take the time to ensure that all of the relevant information is in one place.   You should also consider how to make it easy for …

Technology can help to effectively aid communication and engage users. We are seeing so many great things on this front that I’ve decided to do a three-part post.
Customization – IR Index Page
A ‘Customization’ feature is not as common as other emerging trends (like an ‘Investor Briefcase which we’ll discuss later in this post), but we are seeing a few companies who do this well.
For example, ENI offers the ability to customize the investor index page by using a tool to move modules around on the page:

http://www.eni.com/en_IT/investor-relation/investor_relations.shtml

Recommend on Facebook Share …

In my last post, I only scratched the surface on some of the tools that companies are using on their IR website to make themselves more accessible to investors and increase awareness about their brands. Here are some more…….
IR CALENDAR
Another emerging best practice tool to help increase company awareness is an interactive IR calendar that provides more details and links to associated assets.
Some good ones include upcoming corporate actions, conference calls/webcasts, presentations and other related events and allowing users to add the event to their online …

Today we are going to talk about some best practice tools that companies are using on their IR website to make themselves more accessible to investors and increase awareness about their brands.
COMMUNICATING ACCESSIBILITY
It is not uncommon to find a generic email address such as info@investors on a company’s website.  Thankfully, this is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Instead we are seeing a surge in the use of ‘Contact Us’.
Quite a few companies are using the ‘Contact Us’ feature to its fullest, and I wanted to highlight some interesting …

Today I’m happy to announce, Agnico-Eagle Mines (a long-time Q4 client), has been awarded 2nd place for their investor website in CICA’s Corporate Reporting Awards. 1st prize went to Potash Corp, one of the best corporate sites in the world, and a winner in this category multiple times.
The redesign of Agnico’s investor website started late in 2009, when David Smith, VP of IR at Agnico, came to us with the goal of making their website a best practice award winner. Starting with an audit of their corporate website, we …

Today, we’ll reveal some best practice alternatives for presenting key content in different formats to the usual ways (read: pdf or long monotonous scrolls of text) on your IR website.
SNAPSHOT INFO/RELATIONAL LINKS
We are seeing a lot more companies use ‘Fast Facts’ to help provide a quick snapshot of the organization. This is a great feature to use on the Company index page or ‘About Us’ page. It is especially effective when used in conjunction with some relational links.
For example, Danisco uses the centre panel to provide fast facts …

Today, I’ll be sharing some more best practice examples of how companies are presenting their investment proposition including communicating a clear mission, sound strategy and taking the time to tell investors that the company has the right leadership team in place to execute the strategy.
MISSION
A mission statement is a brief written declaration of the purpose of a company or organization. Ideally, a mission statement guides the actions of the organization, spells out its overall goal, provides a sense of direction, and guides decision making at all levels of the organization.
For …

Last week, we began a blog series about IR website best practices. The first instalment shared ways to attract and keep investors engaged on your IR website. Today, we’ll be discussing some best practice examples to help communicate why a person should invest in your company.
WHY INVEST
More companies are incorporating a ‘Why Invest’ section on their IR website.  It is a very important section/page that should tie together key information and connect the dots on the market opportunity and how your company stands out as a good investment in …

The IR website is a dominant channel for investor communications and companies are looking for ways to do things better. We are seeing a lot of innovative things and this blog is the first in a series where we’ll share some Best Practices for your IR Website.
One of the first things companies should consider is how to make accessing site content easy for three investor audiences: potential, new and long-term.  Each audience is at a different point in their relationship with your company and they have different motivations for coming …

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.

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. …