Over the course of 2009, I have connected with a lot of smart, seasoned IR professionals on Twitter. I have met IROs and IR consultants alike. One great contact I have made is Trevor Heisler, an IR consultant at TMX Equicom (a TMX Group company).
With experience as both an in-house IRO and IR consultant, I know the day-to-day challenges that IR professionals face. One newer challenge has been the question of whether to embrace social media as part of the broader communications strategy. Although I am not a practicing IR professional anymore, I was curious to hear how consultants were dealing with this rapidly emerging topic. With that, I asked Trevor to be interviewed with the goal of compiling tips that would help consultants handle client inquiries about social media.
Read more…
In early October, I had the honour of partaking in an IR Think Tank session “Spotlight on Social Media” (put on by IR Magazine) in Toronto. It was at this event that I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Liston an Equity Research Analyst and Director of Research at Versant Partners http://twitter.com/VersantPartners, a boutique investment dealer located in Toronto who was also sitting on the panel with me.
Since the think tank, I have had several conversations with Tom and learned how he leverages social media to gain a “first mover advantage” and how he (and other analysts) use Twitter, blogs, facebook and various other channels to gain a more detailed mosaic of the company. I found it quite interesting to learn that in a number of cases Tom has read information on a blog or social network that caused him to dig in further.
Seemed the best way to share Tom’s views was through an interview. Last week we spent about 25 minutes talking about the capital markets, research, investor relations and social media. I encourage you to listen or download the audio file:
Download MP3 File (11 MB)
During the interview you’ll hear Tom’s thoughts on:
- How his daily research activities have been affected by the social web
- How he manages risk when obtaining information on financial blogs and social networks
- Whether the use of social networks by a company influences his intent to cover them
- What kind of content companies should be sharing
- How financial blogs such as Seeking Alpha have changed the financial landscape
Hope you find it interesting. Please let me know what you think.
Earlier this week, Darrell Heaps, Q4’s Co-Founder and CEO participated in a panel discussion entitled “Best Practices for Using Social Media to Communicate Material Information”. The event was put on by the Twin Cities NIRI Chapter in downtown Minneapolis and was co-sponsored by the Dorsey & Whitney Law Firm. Other panelists included Jonathan B. Abram and Melissa Krasnow both Partners with Dorsey & Whitney LLP and was moderated by Barbara Doyle, Vice President, Investor Relations at Lawson Software, Inc.
We had intended to write a follow up post that summarized the event, but IR Magazine beat us to the punch with “IR in the age of social media” . Rather than duplicate the post we thought we’d just point you to their blog.
Here’s a quick quote by Darrell:
‘The risk posed by social media for your company … exists whether you participate or not,’ observed Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4 Web Systems, an IR website and communications firm out of Toronto. ‘If you’ve ignored social media and said there are too many risks, we‘re not going to get involved, then you are putting your company at higher risk … than if you know how to use the tools. The market doesn’t care whether or not you’re there. They’re going to use the channels that are most readily available to them to put their message out.’
Read the full post on IR Mag’s blog “IR in the age of social media”. Thanks to Brad Allen for the great write up.
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?
The 2008 Year in Review � Securities Litigation and Enforcement, is the first of a regular webcast series on related topics from Securities Docket(an online publication that tracks securities litigation and enforcement developments on a global basis).
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…