As IR practitioners it is hard enough to keep on top of the ever-changing regulatory environment. Not to mention the virtual conversations happening about your company and the fact that you know you should be a part of those online discussions through social networks. But before you can even think of having a social media presence you have to get buy-in from the C-Suite.
What follows are some tips I compiled to help IROs put together a business case to begin using social media as part of their IR plan. These tips were inspired by the article “Problem Solved: How Do You Convince the Boss That it’s Time to Go Social?” by Claire Coyne of MarketingProfs which are based on ideas from David B. Thomas, Social Media Manager, SAS for convincing your boss it’s time to go social.
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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.
Presentation on SlideShare:
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Q4 was recently named as one of Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies by PROFIT Magazine, as part of the 10th annual PROFIT HOT 50 ranking and awards program.
Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies are a tiny elite. Most of the tens of thousands of businesses launched each year in this country fail within a few years. Even among the survivors, only a precious few expand at anything close to the blistering pace of the PROFIT HOT 50, whose revenue growth averaged 1,007% over the past two years.
In spite of sectoral downturns, qualified worker shortages, prospects’ reluctance to buy from a young firm, and currency fluctuations, every HOT 50 firm at least doubled its revenue from 2006 through 2008, and 13 grew by at least 1,000%. The extraordinary performance of the PROFIT HOT 50 goes beyond the top line. Fully 70% were already in the black in 2008.
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The XBRL-US developer Technology Workshop & Summit was recently held in Santa, Clara, CA. The event was hosted by Hitachi Data Systems and brought together XML developers and other professionals from around the world who are involved with implementing XBRL reporting standards.
The 2 ½ day event consisted of discussion sessions and workshops to educate and generate ideas on solving issues in XBRL development such as rendering, versioning, data quality and validation.
In an otherwise very tech-centric conference, Q4’s Co-founder and CEO, Darrell Heaps provided some interesting ways that companies can make XBRL content discoverable, shareable and viral to move seamlessly through the financial web by key stakeholders such as analysts and investors.
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In a recent edition of IR Alert, Jeffrey D. Morgan, CAE, President and CEO, National Investor Relations Institute cites “the top challenge facing IR now is regulation including moves to have companies become more transparent, governance changes and generally looking at corporate practices. Regulation is one of the key challenges right now. It’s evolving rapidly and where we’ll end up is not quite known.”
What follows is some of his advice to IR professionals for keeping pace in this rapidly changing regulatory environment. He also discusses current challenges and opportunities and ways to address them.
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Last week our CEO, Darrell Heaps, and I presented to a study group formed through an initiative of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) Research Studies Department. Comprised primarily of volunteers, this panel of experienced professionals research and provide guidance for comprehensive and integrated corporate reporting in order to promote effective communication.
By reading their reports and following their guidance, any IRO in North America can improve the standards of their company’s stakeholder communications.
To familiarize you more with their work, I have provided an overview of their most recent study, Corporate Reporting to Stakeholders.
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On June 10 I attended a panel discussion at the NIRI annual conference in Hollywood Florida entitled The Evolution of Financial Communication, which centred on social media. Michael Nowlan, President & CEO of Marketwire, the event sponsor, did an excellent job of moderating the discussion.
Panelists were: Timothy Carey, Managing Director, Digital Media, ICR, Inc; Ruth Cotter, Director, IR and Treasurer, Advanced Micro Devices; Eileen Cassidy Rivera, Vice President, Communications & Investor Relations, Vangent, Inc., and Darrell Heaps, President, CEO & Co-founder, Q4 Web Systems.
Michael opened the session by asking each panelist to introduce themselves and to describe their involvement /perspective on social media.
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Yesterday, a press release was issued announcing that SlideShare and Q4 have partnered to offer public companies enhanced best practice capabilities for their IR websites using SlideShare’s innovative web platform for displaying and sharing presentations and pdfs combined with Q4’s market leading IR website platform.
Companies using our Q4 web platform will be able to easily embed SlideShare presentations into any area of their IR websites and publish directly to both their IR website and SlideShare.com. Additionally, SlideShare is launching a separate Investor Relations category. Companies will also have the opportunity to promote their investor relations presentations to SlideShare’s 18 million visitors in a targeted manner.
Read the full release!
We officially launched our Summer ’09 release from the NIRI National Conference in FL, which introduces Social Media and XBRL capabilities to IR websites. This latest release offers different ways for investors to find, subscribe and share content through social networks.
Q4’s web platform continuously evolves with market and regulatory trends that keep the IR website on the leading edge of companies’ investor communications. Q4’s latest IR website products create viral IR content, which means they can be shared, disseminated and republished across the web to millions of retail and institutional investors.
Customers can now:
- Embed and distribute presentations, videos and documents through SlideShare, YouTube and Docstoc,
- Automatically update Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook with news presentations and events, and
- Aggregate all social activities on the IR website with inbound RSS feeds.
We also announced from the NIRI National Conference, that our Q4 web platform now delivers a highly accurate real-time rendering of XBRL-tagged SEC filings.
Read the full release!
This new product enables users to view XBRL-formatted financial statements in an easy to read display on IR websites while helping public companies meet the new SEC XBRL regulations which require them to post financial statements in interactive data formats.
To respond to this mandate Q4 now offers US-based filers:
- XBRL financials with real-time rendering on your website – once your XBRL filing is accepted by the SEC, within minutes your website is updated with the complete filing displayed in HTML,
- Multiple report formats for enhanced financial analysis and reporting by investors, analysts and the financial media, and
- Ability to view and download XBRL reports, or share embed codes through social networks.
If you’re interested in learning more contact us today and we’ll setup a live product demo.
Summer ‘09 Preview
Earlier today we released our Summer ‘09 Preview through Twitter and LinkedIn. In case you didn’t see it there, we wanted to let you know that our latest release brings Social Media and XBRL to Investor Relations websites in a way that you haven’t seen before. If you’re interested, register for a demo today and your chance to win an HP Netbook!
Over the next couple of weeks we are going to officially launch Summer ‘09 and provide more details on these exciting new additions. Until then, a couple of key features that separate Q4 from the rest of the IR website providers include:
- 30+ best practice IR website modules integrate with any website
- Easy to use content management and workflow
- Leading edge Investor Tools and Social Media Sharing
- XBRL financials with real-time rendering on your website
- Presentations, videos and documents distributed through popular social networks
- Full-text RSS feeds, email alerts and subscriber management
- Website disclosure records and verifiable audit trail
Register for your preview of Q4 Summer ‘09 today!