On February 14, Darrell Heaps, our co-founder and CEO, and one of North America’s leading authorities on social media for IR hosted a guided tour of “The Current State of Social Media” webinar in which he walked through a current snapshot of what’s happening in the use of social media for IR and why it’s important to your investor relations program. Here is the full replay of the session and the Q&A, it’s 1hr15mins long:
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!
Join us on Thursday, September 17th at 4:00 p.m. ET for an interactive discussion on social media monitoring with Richard Brewer-Hay, Manager of Social Media Strategy and Chief Blogger at eBay and Serena Ehrlich, VP Social Media, Startup Army and past president of the NIRI L.A. and Dallas*Fort Worth Chapters.
Register now and reserve your spot to hear our experts provide insights into:
How to sift through the volume of online conversations and help determine which ones you should pay particular attention to.
Identifying objectives and how that information can be used to improve your investor relations strategy.
Both free and paid-for monitoring tools to help you get started.
If you have any questions that you’d like us to address please leave a comment below and we’ll be sure to answer during the webinar.
Darrell Heaps, Co-founder and CEO of Q4 discusses the current trends in social media and investor relations in the following presentation and video versions of our webinar held on Thursday, July 16, 2009.
I have spoken to many IROs about their use of social media. Some are exploring their options (and even have their own personal Facebook or Twitter account) to help them decipher what will fit in best with their company’s communications and overall business strategy. If they decide to move forward with some kind of social network, they are taking it slowly to see what evolves and how much of their time it will actually take up (see my recent blog about two companies who have gradually integrated Twitter and Facebook into their corporate strategy).
Others are sitting on the sidelines waiting for a RegFD violation from those who are using it or direction from the SEC on specific guidelines for its use (I wouldn’t hold my breath).
On June 10 I attended a panel discussion at the NIRI annual conference in Hollywood Florida entitled The Evolution of Financial Communication, which centred on social media. Michael Nowlan, President & CEO of Marketwire, the event sponsor, did an excellent job of moderating the discussion.
Panelists were: Timothy Carey, Managing Director, Digital Media, ICR, Inc; Ruth Cotter, Director, IR and Treasurer, Advanced Micro Devices; Eileen Cassidy Rivera, Vice President, Communications & Investor Relations, Vangent, Inc., and Darrell Heaps, President, CEO & Co-founder, Q4 Web Systems.
Michael opened the session by asking each panelist to introduce themselves and to describe their involvement /perspective on social media.
This one hour presentation touches on all the big stories: the financial crisis; Siemens bribery; Mark Cuban and a host of other litigations (both successful and not); the Madoff scandal (could you have scripted it better – that the pronunciation of his name is: Made-off ?); the liability exposure of the major accounting firms; the culpability of the SEC in some of the year’s financial disasters and its need for a makeover…
Kudos to Securities Docket for assembling such an impressive speaker panel, all of whom have very worthwhile blogs – which inspired me to write this post: Read more…
General Electric, parent of NBC Universal, has gained attention in the blogosphere over the last few weeks since the October 22 launch of its corporate blog, ‘GE reports – Your source for what’s happening at GE.’
The response has been both positive and negative. Criticism has primarily focused on the accessibility of information disclosed in this way – although anyone can receive automatic updates through RSS feeds, which take all of 2 minutes to set up. And North America enjoys the highest penetration of internet usage in the world.
What’s important to note is that GE executives say the blog permits them to disclose more information and on a more frequent basis, which translates into greater transparency regarding issues that would otherwise remain internal. “This is a tough environment, a lot of misinformation in the marketplace,” GE spokesman Gary Sheffer said. “This is just a fast and simple way to punch through it and to make sure that you tell your story in a simple and engaging way.”
This immediacy is one of the many positive outcomes of the new Reg. FD governing corporate web sites and blogs. In terms of engagement, I love the fact that GE incorporates video to support many of their blog stories. (Jason’s post on the Q4 blog yesterday sited another great example of this tactic, as employed by Overstock.com.)
I’ve been reading quite a few great and not-so-great posts over the last few weeks about the hub-bub with the new SEC guidelines surrounding Reg FD. These discussions have ranged from the ‘death of the press release’ (a topic for another day) to investors thinking this means they will have to visit several company websites to get investor information. Most folks seem to be focusing on the vehicle and not the controls, the way information is distributed on the internet has changed drastically over the last several years so the vehicle is the easy part, the controls behind how content is created is what matters. Read more after the break. Read more…
CIRI Ontario opened the fall season at the Albany Club yesterday with a presentation on ‘Using Advanced Technologies Effectively. Speakers included Michael O’Connor Clarke, VP of Thornley Fallis Communications; Natalie Johnson, Manager of Social Media with General Motors and Parker Mason, Web Content Specialist with the CNW Group. (More info on event/presenters . Michael O’Connor also blogs about this event)
Attended by approximately 60 people, the topic was focused specifically on blogging and so the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube were largely omitted.
For the uninitiated, the presentation provided an introduction on how to start using corporate blogs as an effective communications channel. Here’s a brief synopsis of the presentation with a few other helpful bits added:
Welcome to the company blog of Q4 Web Systems. Here we talk about Q4, Investor Relations websites, web disclosure, IR 2.0, online reporting, xbrl and our products. Subscribe to our RSS feed or email alerts.
I have spoken to many IROs about their use of social media. Some are exploring their options (and even have their own personal Facebook or Twitter account) to help them decipher what will fit in best with their company’s communications and overall business strategy. If they decide to move forward with some kind of social network, they are taking it slowly to see what evolves and how much of their time it will actually take up (see my 
On June 10 I attended a panel discussion at the NIRI annual conference in Hollywood Florida entitled The Evolution of Financial Communication, which centred on social media. Michael Nowlan, President & CEO of 
January always inspires retrospectives on the good, the bad and the ugly of the previous year could you ever run out of content for 2008?
General Electric, parent of NBC Universal, has gained attention in the blogosphere over the last few weeks since the October 22 launch of its corporate blog, ‘
CIRI Ontario
