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.
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 Partnershttp://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:
An article in IR Alert featuring an interview with Q4’s CEO and Co-founder, Darrell Heaps, was issued today. The interview includes Darrell’s commentary on the increased adoption of Twitter by public companies and how they are specifically using it for Investor Relations (IR). He also provides his thoughts on the future of Twitter within IR and other social media developments he foresees on the IR horizon in 2010:
The social nature of the Web will continue. Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on will continue to dominate and affect how the Web is used. Looking into 2010 and 2011, we will see more companies and IR departments embrace these tools and drive value from them. Those companies will benefit by taking early steps once the risk side is addressed. We will see a greater adoption rate of these tools, and there will be a lot of companies coming out to provide tools to help companies get the most out of the Web market.
There are a lot of great insights as well as what he deems as the three biggest mistakes a public company can make on Twitter and social media in general. Click here to read the entire article.
More and more public companies are adopting social networks as part of their communications strategy. Of these early adopters, we are seeing some emerging trends. For example, we found that 48% of the 350 companies analyzed in our recently issued report on the use of Twitter for IR are using Twitter to engage with their audience.
Some other trends we found include tweeting the earnings call, providing a link to a video on YouTube of the CEO talking about recently issued financials and reaching out to followers to submit questions they would like answered on the quarterly earnings call.
Westport Innovations was also included in our recent study. While the company has only been using social networks for a short period of time they have already implemented some interesting ideas, had some early wins and realized some of its pitfalls.
We felt it would be useful to speak with Westport to learn more about their early experience with social media to help increase awareness for those who are still sitting on the sidelines. So Q4’s CEO and co-founder Darrell Heaps and I recently spoke with Darren Seed, the company’s Senior Director of Investor Relations and Ryan Thompson, Multimedia Manager to learn more about their social media strategy.
The interview was recorded and you can Listen or Download:
StockTwits is an open, community-powered investment idea and information service built on the Twitter platform. On November 5, 2009 Phil Pearlman posted an invitation to IROs to join the community. We thought it’d be interesting to dig a little deeper to learn about StockTwits, where it’s headed and how companies can benefit in being a part of it.
Phil Pearlman is an investor in and the Director of Community at StockTwits. Prior to this, he was a co-founder of Lumina Fund Management, a long/short equity hedge fund which focuses on behavioral and sentiment analysis to exploit under and overreactions in options markets. He is a contributor to Real Money, a paid service owned by TheStreet.com. He currently trades a private account in New York.
The focus of the paper is how online communication tools, in particular social media, are influencing the communication practices of corporate IR departments at public companies of all sizes. It also examines the question of why corporate IR departments have been slower to adopt social media communications tools than their marketing and corporate communications counterparts.
Dave currently splits his time between teaching public relations in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University in Texas and works as Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for First Financial Bankshares, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIN).
While I highly recommend that you take the time to view the presentation in its entirety (below), I have summarized some of the key findings.
As IR practitioners it is hard enough to keep on top of the ever-changing regulatory environment. Not to mention the virtual conversations happening about your company and the fact that you know you should be a part of those online discussions through social networks. But before you can even think of having a social media presence you have to get buy-in from the C-Suite.
Brunswick Group LLC, recently released results of an online survey to examine if and how new media (which encompassed blogs, message boards, Facebook and Twitter) plays a role in the investment recommendations and decisions of institutional investors and analysts. The survey was distributed to several thousand buy-side investors and sell-side analysts in the U.S. and Europe in July 2009. 455 analysts and investors responded with a nearly 50/50 split between the sell-side and buy-side, and a similarly even split between respondents based in the United States and Europe. Participant profile etails were captured in the survey, including firm type, geographic location, sector focus, market-cap focus and age group.
On September 17, I moderated a lively discussion on monitoring social media 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.
They presented some great insights for IROs into why you should be listening to the conversation, how to sift through the conversations, what you should be listening for and when to engage. They ended off with some valuable tips on some free and paid-for monitoring tools to help you get started.
What follows are the presentation and video versions from that session.
I recently had the opportunity to sit on a panel to discuss social media and investor relations. The event was put on by the NIRI Cleveland chapter in downtown Cleveland. The panel consisted of myself and Matt Lehman – Web Experience Director at Progressive.com and was moderated by Chuck Hemann, Research Manager for Dix and Eaton.
The following post is what I consider to be the top 5 points from the session:
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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).
In early October, I had the honour of partaking in an 
As IR practitioners it is hard enough to keep on top of the ever-changing regulatory environment. Not to mention the virtual conversations happening about your company and the fact that you know you should be a part of those online discussions through social networks. But before you can even think of having a social media presence you have to get buy-in from the C-Suite.
I recently had the opportunity to sit on a panel to discuss social media and investor relations. The event was put on by the NIRI Cleveland chapter in downtown Cleveland. The panel consisted of myself and Matt Lehman – Web Experience Director at Progressive.com and was moderated by