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” …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Earlier this month, Dave Hogan, presented his paper “Reaching Shareholders Online: Trends and Best Practices in Online Communications and Social Media in Corporate Investor Relations” at the 2009 Annual Conference of the International Association of Online Communicators in Washington, D.C.
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 …

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.
What follows are some tips I compiled to help IROs put together a business case to begin using social media as part of their IR plan.  These tips were …

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 …

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 …

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 …