On February 14, Darrell Heaps, our co-founder and CEO, and one of North America’s leading authorities on social media for IR hosted a guided tour of “The Current State of Social Media” webinar in which he walked through a current snapshot of what’s happening in the use of social media for IR and why it’s important to your investor relations program. Here is the full replay of the session and the Q&A, it’s 1hr15mins long:
During the session participants were provided with an interactive demonstration of how social media is helping other public companies mitigate share value erosion, dramatically increase their website traffic and broaden their reach to potential investors. As part of his guided tour he also revealed:
Which social networks are being adopted by companies for IR first and why.
How these companies are using social networks and deriving value from them.
Tips to enhance engagement and streamline quarterly reporting.
Darrell’s presentation was loaded with over 50 examples and case studies of how public companies are using social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and blogs to enhance their IR program.
If you’re thinking about if, when and how to integrate social media with your investor relations program, you should watch the video version of the presentation.
I’ll also be providing an overview of the session with lots of links in an upcoming blog post…stay tuned!
Join us on Thursday, February 11th from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST for a guided tour by Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4 Web Systems, and one of North America’s leading authorities on social media for IR. If you are thinking about if, when and how to integrate social media with your investor relations program, you can’t affords to miss this interactive demonstration of how public companies are using the social web for IR.
Which social networks are being adopted by your peers for IR first and why.
How these companies are using social networks and deriving value from them.
Tips to enhance engagement and streamline quarterly reporting.
Register today for this free webinar and learn how social media is helping other public companies mitigate share value erosion, dramatically increase website traffic and broaden their reach to potential investors.
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, Catherine Crofton, Q4’s VP, Sales & Marketing hosted a second webinar on IR Website Best Practices. Interest was high as we had another great turnout with people from around the globe in attendance. I also tweeted the event so if you were unable to join us, you can do a search on Twitter #Q4BP for a feed of the conversation.
This presentation was a follow up to a webinar Catherine conducted on this topic in April of last year in which she discussed five common barriers that block potential investors from understanding a company’s investment story. Click here to view last year’s presentation and listen to the audio.
On January 14, Catherine Crofton, Q4’s VP Sales & Marketing hosted an IR Website Best Practices webinar. Her presentation focused on how to build investor confidence through effective online communications. The presentation includes a lot of great examples of companies using best practices and how they can be applied to your own IR website.
In particular she outlined some critical improvements to make to the IR website in 2010 including:
Key information to include for potential new investors in this economy.
Using social media effectively to increase your reach (and website traffic) and to protect your share value – with case stories and examples.
New interactive technologies – what kind of technologies increase user engagement and add value.
If we weren’t able to get to your question during the webinar, please feel free to post it in our comment section below or email sherylj@q4websystems.com.
“My sole objective, and the only bullet on my job description, is to get the share price of TVI to a fair and sustainable value, PERIOD. I decided the way to do that would be to use all things social media and set some benchmarks for Return on Investment (ROI) so I could measure the results. Indicators such as increased web traffic, improved liquidity, increased institutional holdings and improved investor sentiment, would all result in a fair share price.” – Rhonda Bennetto, Executive Director Investor Communications, TVI Pacific Inc.
TVI is still a relatively new user of social networks and in conjunction with the launch of their new website in mid-November 2009, they have reaped some interesting results thus far:
Website visits are up from 100/mth to 4,000/mth;
83 followers on Twitter (as of Jan 11);
Photos have been viewed on Flickr 1,519 times and they have 696 views of their videos on YouTube;
Average daily trading volume has increased 55%; and
Their share price has risen from $0.06 prior to launch to $0.12.
Times have changed but have your web communications kept pace? Today’s more discerning investor is more open to portfolio diversification – which may mean that you need to provide different information than you are offering now.
Join us on Thursday, January 14th at 4:00 p.m. ET as we share top IR Website improvements to meet today’s challenging economic environment. If you’re involved in your company’s IR website, this webinar will show some great examples of best practices from the world’s leading organizations as well as innovative small cap companies and how you can apply them to your own website.
Register now and learn 3 critical improvements to make to your website in 2010:
Key information to include for potential new investors in this economy.
Using social media effectively to increase your reach (and website traffic) and to protect your share value – with case stories and examples.
New interactive technologies – what kind of technologies increase user engagement and add value.
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.
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.
Welcome to the company blog of Q4 Web Systems. Here we talk about Q4, Investor Relations websites, web disclosure, IR 2.0, online reporting, xbrl and our products. Subscribe to our RSS feed or email alerts.
In early October, I had the honour of partaking in an 
