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.
Recently, I responded to a discussion on LinkedIN entitled “Required skill sets for IR professionals”. The person who started the discussion was a former portfolio manager and head of research who now has his own consulting business that is putting together a training course for IR professionals. He asked “in addition to how the buy-side analyzes company financial statements and announcements, values a company’s shares and assesses corporate strategy what else would an IR professional need when dealing with the buy-side?”
Dealing with the buy-side has been pushed to the top of the priority list for IROs – especially since there has been a slow decline in the number of sell-side analysts over the past few years. This coupled with the spotlight it has been given at this year’s NIRI conference with a panel discussion entitled “How the Buy and Sell Side Trade your Stocks Today” (and the fact that there was standing room only) along with the discussion I outlined above has prompted me to share some ideas for IROs to consider when dealing with the buy-side.
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 and corporate communications counterparts.
Dave currently splits his time between teaching public relations in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University in Texas and works as Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for First Financial Bankshares, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIN).
While I highly recommend that you take the time to view the presentation in its entirety (below), I have summarized some of the key findings.
Earlier this week, Darrell Heaps, Q4’s Co-Founder and CEO participated in a panel discussion entitled “Best Practices for Using Social Media to Communicate Material Information”. The event was put on by the Twin Cities NIRI Chapter in downtown Minneapolis and was co-sponsored by the Dorsey & Whitney Law Firm. Other panelists included Jonathan B. Abram and Melissa Krasnow both Partners with Dorsey & Whitney LLP and was moderated by Barbara Doyle, Vice President, Investor Relations at Lawson Software, Inc.
We had intended to write a follow up post that summarized the event, but IR Magazine beat us to the punch with “IR in the age of social media” . Rather than duplicate the post we thought we’d just point you to their blog.
Here’s a quick quote by Darrell:
‘The risk posed by social media for your company … exists whether you participate or not,’ observed Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4 Web Systems, an IR website and communications firm out of Toronto. ‘If you’ve ignored social media and said there are too many risks, we‘re not going to get involved, then you are putting your company at higher risk … than if you know how to use the tools. The market doesn’t care whether or not you’re there. They’re going to use the channels that are most readily available to them to put their message out.’
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 etails were captured in the survey, including firm type, geographic location, sector focus, market-cap focus and age group.
Based on the excellent turnout there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that companies are gradually realizing that online conversations are happening whether they are a part of them or not.
Our panelists had a lot of great information to share and as usual the Q4 team tweeted the event, but we wanted to provide a snapshot of the relevant points as it relates to IR professionals (for the most part, the notes that follow will be a combination of all ideas presented in the webinar).
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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.
In early October, I had the honour of partaking in an 
Recently, I responded to a discussion on 
Earlier this week, Darrell Heaps, 
Last week, I moderated a webinar on