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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …