Howard Linzdon, co-founder and ceo of StockTwits had this to say about the collaboration:

Public companies are trying to find ways to connect directly with investors, analysts and other key constituencies as the number of potential communications channels expand dramatically. IR professionals at public companies are increasingly facing challenges in reaching all their key audiences in the most effective way, with limited resources. Our partnership with Q4 provides simple, time saving access to our solutions to public companies using Q4 products.

Darrell Heaps, Q4′s ceo added:

By integrating StockTwits Investor Communications Solutions, we help IR professionals build stronger relationships with their stakeholders across the financial web. We are a leader in optimizing investor relations websites and social media strategies for effective communication, and using StockTwits products has become a critical ‘best practice’ in helping companies attract and engage investors.

Companies such as Teekay Corporation, Ryder System, Inc., Shuffle Master Inc, and Vical Inc., all utilize Q4’s customizable IR website system, as well as StockTwits’ Investor Communications Solutions to optimize investor relations activities.

The video below shows how Q4′s platform integrates with StockTwits:

Q4 Web StockTwits Integration from Q4 Web Systems Inc. on Vimeo.

You can read the release in its entirety here:
http://mwne.ws/zHVzvq

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Six Social Media Trends for 2012

Facebook Timeline Review: This Is the Greatest Thing Facebook’s Ever Done: http://awe.sm/5btZ5

New Twitter: 25 Tips and Tricks for Savvy Tweeters: http://on.mash.to/sY2BBf

Adults Now Spend More Time With Mobile Devices than with Print Media: http://bit.ly/uVtHCG

Twitter Reloaded: What it Means for Corporate Communications: http://bit.ly/vNi2uL

Coca-Cola, Best Buy Shareholder Votes Get Social Twist: http://bit.ly/t7uyFg

Bill Miller bows out: investors reconsider risk, returns, and consistency: http://tinyurl.com/7dsmsug

How Social Media Is Changing The Stock Market:  http://rww.to/tOCP1a

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8 ways to humanize your business on social media: http://wind.mn/rpubIC

Why Americans Use Social Media: http://6sen.se/vHeyH2

Online Annual Meetings Begin to Click: http://ow.ly/7uGY6

Companies to integrate social media on Black Friday: http://bit.ly/rM3kJc

Will Facebook Go Public?: http://bit.ly/tClEW1

5 Tips: Avoid Being A Social Media Turkey: http://bit.ly/sqe43c

Groupon plunges below IPO price: http://cnnmon.ie/sSRpNy

The importance of managing investors’ expectations: http://post.ly/3zcqF

Fake forum comments are ‘eroding’ trust in web: http://bbc.in/sV5cIO

StockTwits: Why You Should Care: http://bit.ly/twIhku

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Measuring Social Media ROI: 3 Things to Consider

Media companies and Twitter – still mostly doing it wrong: http://bit.ly/srsKZj

Reporters Use Twitter to Promote, Not Report [STUDY]: http://on.mash.to/tBtS1F

Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think: http://stks.co/17ga

Over 48 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute: http://post.ly/3tLJD

Social Readiness: Architecting a Connected Enterprise: web-strategist.com/blog/2011/11/1

Paving a way for women in Brazil: http://j.mp/vOxSyG

Investor videos: Success Tips from a Producer: http://bit.ly/tpUzkc

Bringing you insights into LinkedIn Groups with our new statistics dashboard: http://zite.to/sYnFwp

5 Must Read Investor Relations Articles and Blog Posts: http://bit.ly/vJrT5P

We are having a conversation without you (The WHY of Social Media): http://bit.ly/u78rTw

#ShiftNYC shows you Social IR: http://stks.co/18kh

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Mary Meeker on 2011 Internet Trends [VIDEO]: http://youtu.be/Xdx0ezyUTTo

Perspective on Occupy Wall Street: SUZANNE: http://stks.co/dvA

Mobile Social Networking App Audience Grows 126% In Past Year: http://zite.to/n1cYt0

Can watching Twitter trends help predict the future?: http://zite.to/qfvcb4

Web savvy boosts client trust level: http://bit.ly/pqcVpX

The State of Social Media 2011: Social is the new normal: http://bit.ly/o3lcMW

The Missed Red Flags on Groupon: http://nyti.ms/r3LTIU

Report: Social media drives sales—especially when combined with PR: http://bit.ly/paFKnI

European Crisis Competence Barometer: http://bit.ly/pbPtBK

Is there a legal obligation to produce a paper copy of your Annual Report?: http://bit.ly/oBYTdc

The savvy executive’s guide to buying back shares: http://tinyurl.com/44ehpuh

7 Tips for being awesome on StockTwits: http://stks.co/ifx

The strategic application of Web 2.0 in the mining industry: bit.ly/qWuFiP

Contacts in an Online Newsroom: http://ow.ly/73JRw

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Mobile Ad Spending In The U.S. Expected To Grow 65 Percent In 2011 To $1.2 Billion: http://tcrn.ch/nCou7f

Three Myths about Online Annual Reports: bit.ly/qtWKXd

Pitney Bowes Investor Relations Joins the Social Media Community: http://t.co/tdyUnLNS

MarketBrief Delivers Exclusive SEC Content on StockTwits: http://stks.co/azJ

Should you integrate your company’s social presence?: http://ow.ly/6W5dA

Say-on-Pay votes May Lead Boards to Revisit Pay, Survey Finds: http://buswk.co/owh8KF

Mobile digital gadgets are overshadowing the personal computer: http://t.co/KxwF56tv

For the First Time in 29 Months, Not a Single IPO: http://t.co/MUeJ8Ywv

RIM founder endures a week of frustration: http://on.ft.com/qV18Iu

SEC asks public companies to disclose cyber attacks: http://reut.rs/oWRNgV

Sharon Merrill starts weekly roundup: Hot Investor Relations News: http://t.co/3yNc1ZpR

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• What percentage of advisors use social media for business purposes?
• Are firms taking the necessary steps to support this activity and remain compliant?
• Are financial advisors getting value from their investment in social media?
• Are the myths around social media true? For example, the sites are only used by the younger generation, it takes too much time, etc.

Based on the executive summary that can be downloaded here, 144 financial advisors were asked 35 questions that found:

• More than 84% (up from 60% in 2010) of the 2011 respondents use social networks for business purposes.
• 80% of respondents (up from 57% in 2010) said their firm had a social media policy, 16% did not and 4% were unsure whether there was a policy or not.
• 35% said the policy was detrimental to their business practices, and only 39% shared that the firm policy supports their business efforts.
• Of the 42% that are using social media for business purposes, 42% have no archiving process in place (with 17% using manual approaches to archive).
• 38% cited inability to archive data, compliance issues and time constraints as major hurdles for adopting social media for their business.
• 65% of respondents said they use social media every day, spending between 5-60 minutes daily on social networking.
• More than 30% of the respondents using social media for business have received referrals,and 35% have generated new prospects (with many converting to new clients).

Socialware’s research is important as it highlights key findings that can be used to benchmark the use of social media in such a highly regulated industry.

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C: Often I hold your site up as a best practice example for other companies but the response I get from some IROs is, “We don’t have the same size team as a company like Potash – we don’t have that kind of budget.” What’s your response to that?

T: People think we have a much bigger team than we actually do. We have only just recently hired someone specifically for the web and we’ve been a two-person department up to that point.

The reality is that you can have a good site, regardless of your budget by addressing some of the things we talked about before: navigation, architecture, usability and a good story. These things are not expensive, they just require thinking and strategy – it’s a necessary investment of time upfront in ‘thinking’.

PotashCorp makes it easy for analysts to immediately access data they would normally have to spend hours building models in order to view using the datatool as shown below:

With our site the majority of the cost was in the backend development, but 70% of the effort went into the thinking, planning and strategy.

The big question is, “Have you thought about your story? Have you thought about how to communicate it and the assets you already have in terms of telling the story (photos, presentations etc.)?”

If you do the proper strategic planning to ensure that you achieve your communications objectives and then build the site so it’s easier and more cost effective to maintain and evolve, the time and money you spend will give you a significant payback.

C: Potash tends to put more content on its site than most organizations do about the company, market opportunity, investment proposition – information that provides a broader context. Where did the idea come from to do this? Did you find that investors were asking questions about this kind of information?

T: Absolutely. We struggled for many years because we are in an industry that not many people are familiar with. If nobody understands your business, it’s not going to be easy to get people to invest. So we’ve focused a lot of energy on how we tell our story and how we’ve evolved it.

Potash provides good context and background on their company, their markets and their investment proposition via the “Why Invest” as shown below:

C: Your story is really tight now – it’s very compelling.

T: And it continues to evolve and improve. That’s the great thing about the web. If you go out to a conference and you’re telling the story and you feel that something is not quite where it should be, you can go back and tweak it. It’s easy to evolve your story online – you don’t have to wait for the next annual report to come out in order to do this.

C: Prior to doing the things you’re doing now, before investors understood your story, did you find that conversations were taking place at a much more basic level? Were the calls more repetitive than they are now? In other words, do you find that now your conversations with investors are more enhanced, because they understand your company better based on the information they are able to access on your website?

T: Absolutely. This is the payback. We have a very small team relative to other companies. We had two people, so when the interest in agriculture exploded in 2007, (and with it the interest in PotashCorp as a major play), we were under water with the demands for information. And approximately 70% of the questions we were being asked were all the same. So if you build your site in such a way that the information users are looking for is easy to access, people are willing to do their own work to find it. So by the time we’re talking with them, much of the basic information has already been dealt with – and if these same questions do come up, you can direct them to your site.

C: We have a client who used to get 50 calls a week from individuals in the early stage of the investor life cycle, who asked the same questions in call after call. After structuring the website to better tell their story, the number of repetitive 101-type calls reduced to just 2 per week. Now the calls she is getting are with investors who already have a basic understanding of their company and value proposition.

T: That again speaks to the payback. People make excuses as to why they can’t do a more effective job of the web – but look what they’re missing!

C: I like the way that you don’t try to cover everything in an FAQ. Instead, you thoughtfully layer your story so the user gets more and more information as they move through the site. It’s very engaging and it makes a big difference to the experience.

T: That’s what we set out to do. One of the biggest changes we made with the new site was not to cut and paste content from documents like the annual report, but instead to specifically write content for the web. Doing this allows us to layer the information more effectively and in a way that makes it easier for users to digest the information.

C: What about your analytics – are they telling you that site users are looking at the context you provide around your organization? Or are they just looking at the filings and press releases?

T: We use Google analytics and it shows us that people are doing their research – they’re reading the background on the company and the industry. Of course people that come back time and time again are mostly looking for the new updates. That comes back to addressing all phases of the investor life cycle. Overall we get a broad use of content across our site.

C: Is there anything that you think companies consistently miss in planning the strategy for their website?

T: Most companies don’t take enough time to think about their stakeholder groups in terms of ‘what do they want?’ and importantly, ‘what do you want from them?

C: It’s interesting that you should say this. I’ve been saying this a lot lately, especially in consideration of the template providers. It’s not just about making it easy to find things, it’s also about, what does your company want to say? What content do you want your users to see? And how do you present that information to move your users through your priority content?

T: Not addressing that aspect is a fundamental flaw. Companies have a communications opportunity and if they don’t use it, that’s a missed opportunity. Companies have to think about the web that way – it’s a part of a communications strategy. You have people coming to your site, but you’re also outreaching and you have to be telling your story, you have to reflect your brand. There are CEOs and CFOs that don’t understand that there is a payback for doing this right and doing it well happens over time.

You can’t establish the web channel quickly. You have to make the website a good experience – so users don’t have to think that hard and so they regularly come back for more information. This helps establish your channel.

Our strategy really worked for us in the BHP situation. Our stakeholders were already used to going to our website for information and so it made it easier for us to address this situation. We had the ‘go’ (issues) website up and ready in no time. We had the story. We had video of our CEO discussing the takeover on YouTube, and we had a good experience already established. The web was essential to addressing BHP’s acquisition efforts. That’s the type of payback that you get – when a crisis hits, you’re ready.

C: What are the top 4 things a company should do to have a great website?

1. Understand your stakeholder needs and your organizational objectives.
2. Start with an overall communications strategy to ensure consistent messaging across all communications and therefore, a better understanding of your story.
3. Build the site in a way that is easy to use – don’t make users have to think to find things.
4. Ensure that your site is easy to maintain and can evolve to keep pace with new advances in the way the web is being used.

C: My feeling is that a website is never finished – so how do you plan for continuous improvements?

T: You’re right – it’s the story that never ends. There’s two things that we do, one hard and one soft:

1. The hard one being the technology side – you need to use programming that can evolve. And we rely on Zu quite a bit for their advice on this. You don’t want to corner yourself with technology that doesn’t evolve.
2. In terms of the soft side – the content and the thinking behind what we do – we conduct research and we rely on our vendors in terms of what they see: Creative Fire, who handled the redesign and were the primary driver for assisting on the communication strategy; and Zu, who were essential in planning and technical  execution (bringing together the big outside box ideas). We talk to Q4 and read your information, we’re involved in the CICA, we’re involved in CIRI etc. The research aspect is about being out there and having your finger on the pulse and looking at what’s going on in the web world – and not just in the corporate world, because ultimately what’s happening beyond ‘corporate’ ends up leaking down. It’s looking at ideas that are working well in other areas (such as B2B and B2C) and then applying these in the corporate environment.

C: Anything else you’d want to add?

T: Just keep up the good work – the research you’re doing, the evolution of your product, it’s very important.

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A front row seat to Steve Jobs’ career:  http://tnw.co/pC9x4w

Twitter Is #1 social network for financial groups: http://bit.ly/ojpaO6

Investor Relations Atwitter Over New Technologies: http://t.co/08ElEHH

Bank of America Fires Back at Henry Blodget: http://t.co/j2uew0E

Mckinsey report predicts return to basics for investors: http://t.co/MjziXHY

Canadian Investor Relations Institute issues backgrounder on social media: http://t.co/i2q82g1

How baby boomers could depress stocks for decades: http://on-msn.com/rc9YCo

Financial Services Clamor for Social Media Guidance: http://bit.ly/prbkYl

B2B social media: Highlights from new benchmarking research: http://bit.ly/pL7dQ3

How to deal with the ongoing stock market turmoil from a financial communications perspective?: http://t.co/3eCQgPA

Despite Reg FD, study finds traders profit from private CEO meetings: http://t.co/pnqJxLs

Happy Reading!

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The audience spanned many countries such as China, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany, UK, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa and many more.  Knowing this I made sure that I included relevant information on what countries are using social media for investor relations.  I also thought the audience would appreciate some background on sector use as well.

I also wanted to adequately setup how online communications has evolved over the past few years and been impacted particularly by the increased use of social media to reach and engage with key audiences.  Here are some of the key points:

• Companies are adapting to changes in online communications by integrating their IR website and social media channels.
• Investors are using social media which is evidenced by research that supports this such as Rivel research that found 49% read financial blogs weekly and 63% agree that social media will increase in importance over the next year.
• Further evidence of whether investors are using social media is the emergence and increased use of popular financial blogs such as StockTwits and Seeking Alpha.
• Financial blogs are the ‘New Information FoodChain’ and investors are consuming blog posts being written about companies and sharing corporate assets such as presentations and quarterly releases.

I then walked the group through examples of what channels are being used to share investor-related material and the specific information they are sharing. You can see the examples by viewing the presentation below:

This was the first time I spoke to such a global group and to be honest I expected a lot of questions.  That said, I did provide a lot of information to take in and our research has found slower adoption of social media in countries outside of North America.

However, the group seemed to understand that they needed to stay apprised of what is happening with online communications, as I did get a question or two around the strategy behind using specific channels first such as Twitter.  Another asked if certain channels should be used to target retail or institutional investors.  As opposed to a typical discussion around ‘why’ companies are using social media for investor relations or concerns over regulatory issues.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

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