One of the challenges of working for a public company is keeping an eye on what is being said in many different mediums including social media.  Having this information provided by LinkedIn left companies little or no control over the content.  It also imposed an onus on the company to monitor the information to ensure it was correct.

Status updates can be up to 500 characters long and can support URLs with multimedia as well.  In addition, status updates will now be aggregated in the news feed on the homepage of the company’s follower*.  Followers will also be able to comment on the content, ‘like’ and share with others.

The status updates give companies more control over the conversation as they can now customize and share more valuable insights with their followers such as breaking news, employee changes and job opportunities to name a few.  And companies that use the same channels as their key audiences will better equipped to take control of the conversation when it’s necessary.  For example, correcting erroneous information or addressing speculative commentary that (more often than not), can turn into rumours.

As more companies adopt social media as part of their online communications, I asked Darrell Heaps, Q4’s CEO about his thoughts on how public companies can capitalize on this change. He had this to say:

LinkedIn is the most popular social network for business with over a 120M members, with more than half of these members based in the US and 12.9% of them being financial service professionals.  That is close to 8M finance professionals.

http://www.slideshare.net/amover/linked-in-demographics-statistics-july-2011

He added:

As LinkedIn continues to evolve and roll out features like this, it is becoming more and more like a true social network. This is very important for public companies as it has the potential to become critical channel investor relations departments and their efforts to attract and engage with institutional shareholders.

LinkedIn is evolving quickly and these latest changes from them make it easier for companies to communicate with key audiences.  With the high number of professionals using the service, the likelihood is that company specific services will continue to emerge. Our recommendation is to keep a close eye on the evolution of this channel, as it will only grow in importance to investor relations.

*In 2010 LinkedIn enabled members to ‘follow’ a company and receive updates to changes in personnel, including promotions).

Related posts:

1. Q4 Partners with StockTwits to Offer Public Companies Social Media Management and Distribution We are pleased to announce that Q4 has partnered with...
2. Effective Uses of Hashtags on Twitter to Help Attract Investors Our latest whitepaper has revealed that Twitter is the most...
3. Q4 Whitepaper: Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations – Summer 2010 [caption id="attachment_2327" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Download the latest Q4 Whitepaper on...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

State of the Media: The Social Media Report:  http://bit.ly/qFvlxM

How has social media changed the way newsrooms work?: http://j.mp/ohGE9A

IPO Backlog Hits Record Despite Market Turmoil: http://stks.co/CU2

Five Reasons Why Websites Still Matter: http://bit.ly/qjBJKV

6 Social Networking Questions IT Should Investigate: http://bit.ly/pidQbN

The best and most complete story on the UBS rogue trader: http://bit.ly/mWrWKA

Robot traders set to oust humans from the trading floor: http://bit.ly/r9M5I4

HP execs misled investors before August stock crash: lawsuit: http://reut.rs/mVXyma

Until next week!

Related posts:

1. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of September 19, 2011 Here is what we’ve been reading and sharing on Twitter...
2. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of September 26, 2011 Here’s this week’s roundup of what we’ve been reading and...
3. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of September 5, 2011 Here’s this week’s roundup of what we’ve been reading and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

IRO’s continue to use Facebook to provide greater context to the company and its markets by sharing industry-related information and using multimedia to showcase assets.  We are seeing emerging trends, such as increased engagement with investors and interesting new uses of Facebook, including a notes page to provide a weekly recap of new information and events.

The increased adoption of Facebook points to a changing attitude of the channel, from primary use by a younger demographic to a viable channel to connect with investors.

In nearly 50 examples, complete with screenshots and discussion, we give you a comprehensive look at how IRO’s are taking advantage of Facebook.

Get the FREE whitepaper today and you’ll learn:

• How your peers are using Facebook to interact and engage with investors.
• Innovative uses of video and photos to highlight particular aspects of your business.
• New ways companies are using welcome, notes and corporate social responsibility pages to highlight important events and underscore sustainability initiatives.
• What sectors, geographic regions and size of companies are leading the way in adoption.
• Ideas to help formulate precise commenting guidelines and terms of use.
• How to effectively integrate RSS feeds from your IR website or blog to populate Facebook pages.

Related posts:

1. Q4 Whitepaper: Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations – Summer 2010 [caption id="attachment_2327" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Download the latest Q4 Whitepaper on...
2. Q4 Whitepaper: Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations – Part 1 Twitter & StockTwits Q4’s fourth whitepaper on social media shows an enormous ramp-up...
3. INFOGRAPHIC – Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations The following infographic contains most of the charts from the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

C: Often I hold your site up as a best practice example for other companies but the response I get from some IROs is, “We don’t have the same size team as a company like Potash – we don’t have that kind of budget.” What’s your response to that?

T: People think we have a much bigger team than we actually do. We have only just recently hired someone specifically for the web and we’ve been a two-person department up to that point.

The reality is that you can have a good site, regardless of your budget by addressing some of the things we talked about before: navigation, architecture, usability and a good story. These things are not expensive, they just require thinking and strategy – it’s a necessary investment of time upfront in ‘thinking’.

PotashCorp makes it easy for analysts to immediately access data they would normally have to spend hours building models in order to view using the datatool as shown below:

With our site the majority of the cost was in the backend development, but 70% of the effort went into the thinking, planning and strategy.

The big question is, “Have you thought about your story? Have you thought about how to communicate it and the assets you already have in terms of telling the story (photos, presentations etc.)?”

If you do the proper strategic planning to ensure that you achieve your communications objectives and then build the site so it’s easier and more cost effective to maintain and evolve, the time and money you spend will give you a significant payback.

C: Potash tends to put more content on its site than most organizations do about the company, market opportunity, investment proposition – information that provides a broader context. Where did the idea come from to do this? Did you find that investors were asking questions about this kind of information?

T: Absolutely. We struggled for many years because we are in an industry that not many people are familiar with. If nobody understands your business, it’s not going to be easy to get people to invest. So we’ve focused a lot of energy on how we tell our story and how we’ve evolved it.

Potash provides good context and background on their company, their markets and their investment proposition via the “Why Invest” as shown below:

C: Your story is really tight now – it’s very compelling.

T: And it continues to evolve and improve. That’s the great thing about the web. If you go out to a conference and you’re telling the story and you feel that something is not quite where it should be, you can go back and tweak it. It’s easy to evolve your story online – you don’t have to wait for the next annual report to come out in order to do this.

C: Prior to doing the things you’re doing now, before investors understood your story, did you find that conversations were taking place at a much more basic level? Were the calls more repetitive than they are now? In other words, do you find that now your conversations with investors are more enhanced, because they understand your company better based on the information they are able to access on your website?

T: Absolutely. This is the payback. We have a very small team relative to other companies. We had two people, so when the interest in agriculture exploded in 2007, (and with it the interest in PotashCorp as a major play), we were under water with the demands for information. And approximately 70% of the questions we were being asked were all the same. So if you build your site in such a way that the information users are looking for is easy to access, people are willing to do their own work to find it. So by the time we’re talking with them, much of the basic information has already been dealt with – and if these same questions do come up, you can direct them to your site.

C: We have a client who used to get 50 calls a week from individuals in the early stage of the investor life cycle, who asked the same questions in call after call. After structuring the website to better tell their story, the number of repetitive 101-type calls reduced to just 2 per week. Now the calls she is getting are with investors who already have a basic understanding of their company and value proposition.

T: That again speaks to the payback. People make excuses as to why they can’t do a more effective job of the web – but look what they’re missing!

C: I like the way that you don’t try to cover everything in an FAQ. Instead, you thoughtfully layer your story so the user gets more and more information as they move through the site. It’s very engaging and it makes a big difference to the experience.

T: That’s what we set out to do. One of the biggest changes we made with the new site was not to cut and paste content from documents like the annual report, but instead to specifically write content for the web. Doing this allows us to layer the information more effectively and in a way that makes it easier for users to digest the information.

C: What about your analytics – are they telling you that site users are looking at the context you provide around your organization? Or are they just looking at the filings and press releases?

T: We use Google analytics and it shows us that people are doing their research – they’re reading the background on the company and the industry. Of course people that come back time and time again are mostly looking for the new updates. That comes back to addressing all phases of the investor life cycle. Overall we get a broad use of content across our site.

C: Is there anything that you think companies consistently miss in planning the strategy for their website?

T: Most companies don’t take enough time to think about their stakeholder groups in terms of ‘what do they want?’ and importantly, ‘what do you want from them?

C: It’s interesting that you should say this. I’ve been saying this a lot lately, especially in consideration of the template providers. It’s not just about making it easy to find things, it’s also about, what does your company want to say? What content do you want your users to see? And how do you present that information to move your users through your priority content?

T: Not addressing that aspect is a fundamental flaw. Companies have a communications opportunity and if they don’t use it, that’s a missed opportunity. Companies have to think about the web that way – it’s a part of a communications strategy. You have people coming to your site, but you’re also outreaching and you have to be telling your story, you have to reflect your brand. There are CEOs and CFOs that don’t understand that there is a payback for doing this right and doing it well happens over time.

You can’t establish the web channel quickly. You have to make the website a good experience – so users don’t have to think that hard and so they regularly come back for more information. This helps establish your channel.

Our strategy really worked for us in the BHP situation. Our stakeholders were already used to going to our website for information and so it made it easier for us to address this situation. We had the ‘go’ (issues) website up and ready in no time. We had the story. We had video of our CEO discussing the takeover on YouTube, and we had a good experience already established. The web was essential to addressing BHP’s acquisition efforts. That’s the type of payback that you get – when a crisis hits, you’re ready.

C: What are the top 4 things a company should do to have a great website?

1. Understand your stakeholder needs and your organizational objectives.
2. Start with an overall communications strategy to ensure consistent messaging across all communications and therefore, a better understanding of your story.
3. Build the site in a way that is easy to use – don’t make users have to think to find things.
4. Ensure that your site is easy to maintain and can evolve to keep pace with new advances in the way the web is being used.

C: My feeling is that a website is never finished – so how do you plan for continuous improvements?

T: You’re right – it’s the story that never ends. There’s two things that we do, one hard and one soft:

1. The hard one being the technology side – you need to use programming that can evolve. And we rely on Zu quite a bit for their advice on this. You don’t want to corner yourself with technology that doesn’t evolve.
2. In terms of the soft side – the content and the thinking behind what we do – we conduct research and we rely on our vendors in terms of what they see: Creative Fire, who handled the redesign and were the primary driver for assisting on the communication strategy; and Zu, who were essential in planning and technical  execution (bringing together the big outside box ideas). We talk to Q4 and read your information, we’re involved in the CICA, we’re involved in CIRI etc. The research aspect is about being out there and having your finger on the pulse and looking at what’s going on in the web world – and not just in the corporate world, because ultimately what’s happening beyond ‘corporate’ ends up leaking down. It’s looking at ideas that are working well in other areas (such as B2B and B2C) and then applying these in the corporate environment.

C: Anything else you’d want to add?

T: Just keep up the good work – the research you’re doing, the evolution of your product, it’s very important.

Related posts:

1. PotashCorp: The Makings of a Best Practice IR Website – Part 1 Through my involvement over the past 10 years as a...
2. New Rivel Research: Buy-side Perspectives on Best Practice IR Websites Rivel Research is well-known for their ability to gather, analyze...
3. Case Study: Pacific Drilling – Best practice IR website Pacific Drilling (NYSE:PACD) is an ultra-deepwater offshore drilling company that went...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A front row seat to Steve Jobs’ career:  http://tnw.co/pC9x4w

Twitter Is #1 social network for financial groups: http://bit.ly/ojpaO6

Investor Relations Atwitter Over New Technologies: http://t.co/08ElEHH

Bank of America Fires Back at Henry Blodget: http://t.co/j2uew0E

Mckinsey report predicts return to basics for investors: http://t.co/MjziXHY

Canadian Investor Relations Institute issues backgrounder on social media: http://t.co/i2q82g1

How baby boomers could depress stocks for decades: http://on-msn.com/rc9YCo

Financial Services Clamor for Social Media Guidance: http://bit.ly/prbkYl

B2B social media: Highlights from new benchmarking research: http://bit.ly/pL7dQ3

How to deal with the ongoing stock market turmoil from a financial communications perspective?: http://t.co/3eCQgPA

Despite Reg FD, study finds traders profit from private CEO meetings: http://t.co/pnqJxLs

Happy Reading!

Related posts:

1. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 1, 2011 Social media has made the sharing of ideas and information...
2. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 8, 2011 Social media has made the sharing of ideas and information...
3. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 29, 2011 Here’s this week’s roundup of what we’ve been reading and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Here’s a list of interesting things we’ve been reading and sharing on Twitter this past week. Lots of great articles, we hope you find it interesting!

Social Media & IR Best Practice example “Dell Investor Relations Answers Questions from Social Media” http://t.co/EIPtZBj

FINRA proposes to exempt social media communications from getting prior approval: http://t.co/9OafC4K

Big Changes On Twitter – Everything You Need To Know: http://t.co/vh0Ifjs

New research on social media & IR, Euro focus “IR 2.0 International Benchmark Study”: http://t.co/taz1zoH

Twitter hedge fund beats the market, other funds: http://t.co/5OSpG1Q

Why Social Engagement Is Critical To Business Success: http://t.co/LUg8hPZ

Yes the wealthy are participating in social media: http://bit.ly/r5nVqX

SEC approves NYSE rule for complimentary investor relations services: http://t.co/PtmWBwL

Mind the Gap: http://t.co/Rvp4vxE

Governance Roadshows Prepare for Proxy Season: http://t.co/VdPKW5G

Does “under promise/over deliver” work in IR: http://t.co/yPM3gdA

Computers Rule Wall Street: http://t.co/MiM6QYW

Companies Begin Disclosing ‘Downgrade Risk’: http://t.co/jI6Dxng

Twitter users are more likely to impact your brand than any other social network http://t.co/RzM9VmU

HP To Apple: You Win. http://t.co/Pz9zCtu

Happy Reading!

Related posts:

1. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 1, 2011 Social media has made the sharing of ideas and information...
2. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 8, 2011 Social media has made the sharing of ideas and information...
3. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 22, 2011 Here’s this week’s roundup of what we’ve been reading and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The audience spanned many countries such as China, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany, UK, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa and many more.  Knowing this I made sure that I included relevant information on what countries are using social media for investor relations.  I also thought the audience would appreciate some background on sector use as well.

I also wanted to adequately setup how online communications has evolved over the past few years and been impacted particularly by the increased use of social media to reach and engage with key audiences.  Here are some of the key points:

• Companies are adapting to changes in online communications by integrating their IR website and social media channels.
• Investors are using social media which is evidenced by research that supports this such as Rivel research that found 49% read financial blogs weekly and 63% agree that social media will increase in importance over the next year.
• Further evidence of whether investors are using social media is the emergence and increased use of popular financial blogs such as StockTwits and Seeking Alpha.
• Financial blogs are the ‘New Information FoodChain’ and investors are consuming blog posts being written about companies and sharing corporate assets such as presentations and quarterly releases.

I then walked the group through examples of what channels are being used to share investor-related material and the specific information they are sharing. You can see the examples by viewing the presentation below:

This was the first time I spoke to such a global group and to be honest I expected a lot of questions.  That said, I did provide a lot of information to take in and our research has found slower adoption of social media in countries outside of North America.

However, the group seemed to understand that they needed to stay apprised of what is happening with online communications, as I did get a question or two around the strategy behind using specific channels first such as Twitter.  Another asked if certain channels should be used to target retail or institutional investors.  As opposed to a typical discussion around ‘why’ companies are using social media for investor relations or concerns over regulatory issues.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Related posts:

1. Trends and Best Practices in Online Communications and Social Media in Corporate IR Earlier this month, Dave Hogan, presented his paper “Reaching Shareholders...
2. Poll: What role is your corporate website playing in your social media efforts? SmartBlog on Social Media has a weekly reader poll that...
3. IR Community Debates Social Media’s Role in Equity Research I missed this week’s #irchat.  As I was reading through...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

That’s why we’ve decided to put together a list of some interesting things we’ve been reading and subsequently sharing with our followers for the week of August 1, 2011:

Paper on investor relations and social media in the new 2011 IAOC journal: http://bit.ly/neBOcu

Nielsen Ratings Coming to Facebook Campaigns This Month: on.mash.to/qB9jqv

Buffett Can’t Get Analysts to Say Buy Berkshire: http://bloom.bg/qTtBAm

How Washington took the U.S. to the brink: reut.rs/qeiaya

More findings from survey of European fund managers and analysts: http://bit.ly/nERrMj

Financial Analysts — We Love the “Beat”: http://ir4.me/dRShK

Is It Time to Invest in Your Investor Day?: http://t.co/K68XCPg

Will Netflix CEO Hastings usher in a new era for investor relations? http://ir4.me/dbCHj

SlideShare presentation: IR 2.0 International Benchmark Study: http://t.co/k9FmTkh

5 Tips for Integrating Social Media with Offline Events: http://bit.ly/nNudbT

8 emerging social media archiving solutions: http://bit.ly/rfyhBC

Happy Reading!

Related posts:

1. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 22, 2011 Here’s this week’s roundup of what we’ve been reading and...
2. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 8, 2011 Social media has made the sharing of ideas and information...
3. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 29, 2011 Here’s this week’s roundup of what we’ve been reading and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As an early adopter of social media, we used Lubrizol as an example of a company that benefits from using StockTwits to augment their news distribution in our latest whitepaper: Public Company Use of Social Media for IR – Part 1: Twitter and StockTwits.

After we issued the whitepaper, Jennifer Tucci, Lubrizol’s Financial Analyst (and the person responsible for getting the company’s investor relations team to use Twitter), emailed me to thank me for including Lubrizol in our whitepaper.  She also informed me due to the acquisition of the company by Berkshire Hathaway, that the company’s StockTwits account would be closed after the completion of the merger agreement.

Based on this revelation, I asked Jennifer if she could answer some questions and share why the company made the decision to use Twitter and (subsequently) StockTwits for investor relations and elaborate on her experience using the channels.

Tell us a little about yourself and Lubrizol

I am a financial analyst at Lubrizol in our Investor Relations and Corporate Planning departments.  I have been with Lubrizol for almost 6 years in various finance and accounting roles.  In 2009, I assumed the financial analyst role in Investor Relations.  By early 2010, I was given the responsibility of researching our options to use social media in Investor Relations.

The Lubrizol Corporation (NYSE: LZ) is an innovative specialty chemical company headquartered in Wickcliffe, Ohio that produces and supplies technologies to customers in the global transportation, industrial and consumer markets. These technologies include lubricant additives for engine oils, other transportation-related fluids and industrial lubricants, as well as fuel additives for gasoline and diesel fuel. You can learn more about Lubrizol at www.lubrizol.com.

What were your objectives for Lubrizol before you signed up for Twitter (i.e. was the intent to use Twitter strictly for IR?) StockTwits?

We were researching our various options in social media and decided to use Twitter for Investor Relations based on its ease of use and large audience.  We wanted to first use the tool as another method to distribute our press releases.  Once we were comfortable with the tool, we had plans to expand our tweets to include key highlights from our events, information about the company and products and updates to our website.  When we claimed our corporate ticker on StockTwits, the goal was to incorporate a tool with more visibility in the financial community into our social media program.  We were planning on using the same objectives with StockTwits that we had used with Twitter.

Did you have any interaction with retail or institutional investors on Twitter?

No, we did not have any interaction with retail or institutional investors.

How was the decision made to use Twitter first?  Then StockTwits?

At the time we were exploring our social media options for Investor Relations, we did not have any knowledge of the StockTwits official corporate accounts.  I think both are equally important. Right now, I will tweet using StockTwits if it’s a topic that is more regulatory or financial in nature.  These tweets will also feed into our regular Twitter account.  For business press releases, I will only use Twitter. If I was going to initiate a social media program now for Investor Relations, I would still create both accounts.

Was it difficult to get approval from sr. executives to use social media?

I believe Investor Relations is an area in a company that may be more difficult to get approval from senior executives to use social media.  Our use of Twitter and StockTwits was initially part of a social media pilot program.  Our senior executives supported this program; however, we were also not involved with two-way communication.  I think two-way communication would be more difficult to gain approval from senior executives due to increased disclosure risks.  Overall, they seem to understand that social media was not going away.

Anything notable you’d like to share i.e. increased website traffic etc., you have seen from using social networks?

We did monitor the referral URL links from Twitter to our Investor Relations website and noticed an increase in our web traffic.  We also noticed the importance of social networks during the announcement of our merger agreement with Berkshire Hathaway.  We gained a substantial amount of followers during that time period.

What advice would you give to someone who is contemplating using Twitter or StockTwits for IR?

Just do it.  You can minimize the risk and gain more approval from senior executives by starting out with a one-way conversation and gradually moving into two-way conversation.  I think social media is important for Investor Relations regardless of your industry, size or customer base.  My initial social media research consisted of following larger, high tech companies that didn’t have any connection with a mid-cap specialty chemical company, but provided great insight and examples.  The value is still there regardless of who you are.

Related posts:

1. Q4 Whitepaper: Public Company Use of Social Media for Investor Relations – Part 1 Twitter & StockTwits Q4’s fourth whitepaper on social media shows an enormous ramp-up...
2. Case Study: How CME Group uses StockTwits for Investor Relations StockTwits is an open, community-powered investment idea and information service...
3. Combatting Compliance Issues of Using Twitter for Investor Relations A while ago I published a blog about the risks...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

That’s why we’ve decided to put together a list of some interesting things we’ve been reading and subsequently sharing with our followers for the week of July 25, 2011:

Madoff Trustee Makes $1B Settlement With Tremont: http://bit.ly/o2g0HS

Social Business TV- social media info for financial services: http://bit.ly/nh5ujT

LinkedIn Launches Button That Lets You Apply for Jobs: http://on.mash.to/qaodNI

Taking Social Media to the Next Level: http://bit.ly/nawzzG

Google Declares War On Slow Web Pages: http://twb.io/pWVl0Z

Eureka! I pronounce the end of social media for investor relations!: http://bit.ly/eJbkyo

Pubco responds to a negative NYT article via social: http://t.co/2DaJ3b6

Netflix Q2 results: open earnings call, Q&A-only, w/questions submitted via email: http://t.co/tjpo1iD

6 reasons to start an investor relations blog: http://lnkd.in/j8QcNE

Happy Reading!

Related posts:

1. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing – week of July 18, 2011 Social media has made the sharing of ideas and information...
2. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of September 12, 2011 Here’s this week’s roundup of what we’ve been reading and...
3. Trending on Twitter: What Q4 is reading & sharing on social networks – week of August 1, 2011 Social media has made the sharing of ideas and information...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.