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).
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 help you get started.
What follows are the presentation and video versions from that session.
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:
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 emails sent out through their distribution list. Like most companies, they have a feature on their IR website in which people can sign up for email alerts. The rationale behind the Twitter account was to alleviate the task of sending out any news to their email list altogether and cut down on costs to use a third party provider to disseminate to the list. Bryan informed me that in a few months, they hope to disable the email alert function altogether.
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 improve your investor relations strategy.
Both free and paid-for monitoring tools to help you get started.
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.
The use of social networks for IR continues to be a contentious issue for public companies. As part of an initiative to provide some light on this subject, we put together and recently issued a report on the use of Twitter for IR.
Social networks are having a dramatic impact in helping marketers and public relations professionals increase brand awareness and build new relationships with consumers. But how have these tools been adopted in the highly regulated world of investor relations?
To answer this question Q4 analyzed 80 public companies and their use of Twitter during the Q2 2009 earnings season. Some of the findings of the report which were issued in a press release today revealed that:
55% are using Twitter for investor relations.
48% are using Twitter to engage with their audience.
34% of the companies were from the technology sector, including Cisco, Dell, Oracle and Sun to name a few.
68% provided a link to their Q2 quarterly earnings release.
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Earlier this week, Darrell Heaps, 
Last week, I moderated a webinar on 
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 
Rio Tinto
The use of social networks for IR continues to be a contentious issue for public companies. As part of an initiative to provide some light on this subject, we put together and recently issued a 