The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a study that expands its prior research on the usage of social media – in particular corporate blogs, Twitter and Facebook among the Fortune 500.
Click here to read the methodology and complete findings of the study.

KEY FINDINGS
Blogs

116 (23%) of the primary corporations listed on the 2010 F500 have a public-facing corporate blog with a post in the last 12 months
Companies in the computer software, peripherals and office equipment (including HP, Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and Xerox) …

Over the past month I’ve been fortunate to meet with many groups about the use of social media and investor relations.  This includes events in Chicago, Dallas, Toronto, Vancouver and New York.  I really enjoy getting out on the road and meeting with people face to face, it’s also great to sit on panels with really bright people like Serena Ehrlich, David Baer, Rhonda Bennetto, Doug Chia, Broc Romanek, Michelle Leder and Eric Jackson.
To prepare for this road trip my presentation and notes focused a lot on why companies should …

On September 14, Darrell Heaps our CEO here at Q4, moderated an informative discussion with Andrea Wentscher, Investor Relations Manager at BASF SE and Caroline Japic, VP, Corporate Communications & Customer Marketing at Polycom including:

Their views on sharing analyst estimates and other IR-related content;
How they synergize the content shared on Twitter with other social networks and their IR website;
Setting realistic objectives for using the channel as part of their communications strategy;
Ways they listen to online conversations and how they use the information to refine messaging;
Whether they are interacting with investors; …

Join Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4 Web Systems on Tuesday, September 14th from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EDT as he moderates an interactive discussion with Andrea Wentscher, Investor Relations Manager at BASF SE @BASF_IR and Caroline Japic, VP, Corporate Communications & Customer Marketing at Polycom @AllAboutPolycom as they share tips, wins and the pitfalls of using Twitter for investor relations.
Register now and reserve your spot to learn:

Tips on working with management and legal for a smooth integration into your IR plan.
How to set realistic objectives and measure your efforts.
Innovative ways …

In a press release issued earlier this week, Newport Digital Technologies, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: NPDT) announced the “formal launch of its Digital Strategy and Social Media program”.  The program was developed by the company’s Digital Strategy team “to leverage the ever-evolving social business networks, bringing NPDT brand awareness to shareholders, investors, potential clients, and industry partners.”
Newport is a technology solutions driven company organized to focus on serving five of the fastest-emerging businesses in the technology space – RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), WiMax, eLearning, and LED Digital Signage and LED Lighting …

Polycom has whole-heartedly jumped into the social media pool.  They incorporate Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs and LinkedIn into their communications strategy and have several accounts for each channel.  The company prominently displays this information on their website via a dedicated “Connect with Polycom using Social Media” in the newsroom section.

A review of how Polycom uses each channel revealed consistent messaging and current and up-to date information.  Some of the senior management team also regularly tweet and are active bloggers providing additional commentary on an industry-related topic or company specific news. …

Our latest whitepaper has revealed that Twitter is the most widely used channel for investor-related material. Although in spite of this, the channel is not being used for direct dialogue between investors and companies but rather more like an efficient channel to disseminate information and to provide context to investors interested in their market and business.
This may change in the future, as more investors begin to engage companies through Twitter. So in anticipation of this, there are some effective ways that companies can use hashtags to help get the attention …

The following infographic contains most of the charts from the latest whitepaper. Public Company Use of Social Media for IR. This research is based on 362 public companies that have Twitter accounts and how they use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, YouTube and SlideShare for investor relations.
We hope you enjoy it!

Recommend on Facebook Share on Linkedin Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post

We’re thrilled to announce our latest report on the use of social media by public companies for investor relations.  If you’d like to get right to the report you can download it here.
Last year we released two research reports on Twitter for investor relations.  At that point, our sample told us that 35% were using Twitter for IR, in the current report you’ll see this number is now 65%.
However, it’s not all about Twitter. So we expanded our research to include Facebook, Linked, Blogs, YouTube and SlideShare.  Their respective adoption …

We are currently working on our next research report on how public companies are using social media. This research is based on our analysis of over 350 companies and their uses of social media from a corporate and investor relations perspective. We have recently completed the primary research and have decided to share our findings as we go, through a series of blog posts that will highlight various aspects of the report.
To kick things off I thought we’d take a quick look at how companies are promoting their social media …