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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Q4 was recently named as one of Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies by PROFIT Magazine, as part of the 10th annual PROFIT HOT 50 ranking and awards program.
Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies are a tiny elite. Most of the tens of thousands of businesses launched each year in this country fail within a few years. Even among the survivors, only a precious few expand at anything close to the blistering pace of the PROFIT HOT 50, whose revenue growth averaged 1,007% over the past two years.
In spite of sectoral downturns, qualified worker shortages, prospects’ reluctance to buy from a young firm, and currency fluctuations, every HOT 50 firm at least doubled its revenue from 2006 through 2008, and 13 grew by at least 1,000%. The extraordinary performance of the PROFIT HOT 50 goes beyond the top line. Fully 70% were already in the black in 2008.
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Rio Tinto was one of the companies included in our report on the use of Twitter for IR by public companies. I recently spoke with Bryan Smith, Principal Adviser – Digital Media, Corporate Communications, the person responsible for implementing Twitter and the majority of the tweets (there are also a few others in his group with access to the account).
Rio Tinto has been using Twitter since April 2008, mainly for corporate communications supporting the media team. But one of the primary reasons was to cut back on the number of emails sent out through their distribution list. Like most companies, they have a feature on their IR website in which people can sign up for email alerts. The rationale behind the Twitter account was to alleviate the task of sending out any news to their email list altogether and cut down on costs to use a third party provider to disseminate to the list. Bryan informed me that in a few months, they hope to disable the email alert function altogether.
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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.
Last week, at our second webinar of the year, Darrell Heaps, Co-founder and CEO of Q4 discussed the current trends in social media and investor relations. Social media has been given a lot of attention within the IR arena and Darrell has been an active participant in some of those discussions. For example, he recently sat on two panels on the evolution of financial communication and the evolution of disclosure at the NIRI and CIRI conferences respectively this past June. He also presented to the CICA research group in Toronto on trends in corporate reporting earlier this month.
We had another great turnout and a lot of insightful questions at the end. The team at Q4 did tweet the event, but we thought we would provide an overview of the salient points for those of you who missed it:
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Join us on Thursday, July 16th from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. ET as we share tips on how to integrate social media tools into your current IR program. Social media is a great way to increase your audience reach, empower people to engage with your company and give them a better understanding of your investment proposition.
Register here to learn innovative ways to:
- Improve your discoverability so your company is easier to find, exposing you to new investors and markets.
- Package your content so it can be shared, disseminated and republished across the web to millions of retail and institutional investors.
- Start using free monitoring tools to listen to what is being said about your company.
As more companies begin to slowly dip their toe into the social media realm, they are not only trying to figure how it fits into their overall business strategy, but what is the ROI of using it?
Mike McDonald of WebProNews cites an interview with Tarla Cummings, Social Media Manager from Location3 Media from the SMX Advanced Conference recently held in Seattle, WA.
When looking at your social media campaigns, Tarla discusses the acronym M.O.M. which stands for Monitor, Outreach, Measure.
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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.
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The Q4 team is off to the NIRI National Conference in Hollywood, FL from June 7-10. For those who are attending we are looking forward to meeting with you, so stop by booth #504 to:
• Find out why social media is now a key aspect of investor relations in lowering capital costs, why it doesn’t need to be difficult and how to responsibly get involved.
• Learn about XBRL filings that can be viewed in an easy to ready display on your website.
For those of you, who can’t make it, we will be providing regular updates on Twitter and posting on our blog.
They may differ in their size and sector, but Canada Gas Corp. and Barrick Gold both agree there is value in using social media. I recently sat down with representatives from each company to discuss why they have adapted it into their online communications plan, how they use it and some words of wisdom for anyone looking to integrate it into their business strategy. What follows is an overview of those conversations. Read more…