They may differ in their size and sector, but Canada Gas Corp. and Barrick Gold both agree there is value in using social media. I recently sat down with representatives from each company to discuss why they have adapted it into their online communications plan, how they use it and some words of wisdom for anyone looking to integrate it into their business strategy. What follows is an overview of those conversations. Read more…
As you may know, Q4 conducted a webinar a couple of weeks ago on IR Website Best Practices. The main theme was ‘Avoiding the 5 Barriers to Effective Communications‘:
1. Home page/investor index lacks easy access to key information.
2. Content does not convey/summarize a compelling investment proposition.
3. Information is not geared to various investor audiences.
4. Key content is missing, in wrong format or just not engaging.
5. Lack of tools to aid relationship/brand building.
We also used a few case stories to illustrate how leading issuers are maximizing their websites to communicate their investment propositions and unique advantages.
I recently read an interesting article entitled “Corporate Tweets and the SEC: Sometimes It’s Better to Keep Your Mouth Shut” which provides some insights and commentary on social media, investor relations and web disclosure.
Since the SEC announced its recognition of corporate blogs as public disclosure in July of last year, social media has been used quite effectively by PR, marketing, and advertising professionals. However IR practitioners are still pondering the risks and opportunities outlined in the recent SEC guidelines.
There are many things to consider for integrating blogs and other social networks into an IR program – such as disclosure and adhering to legal compliance. This is quite a dilemma as the adoption of social media has exploded and continues to be a medium of choice for millions of individuals hungry for instant information. Read more…
We had a great turnout at our first ever webinar yesterday – IR Website Best Practices. Catherine Crofton, VP at Q4 discussed five common barriers to effective web site communications to an audience of representatives from Canada, the U.S. and the UK. (Our CEO, Darrell Heaps also Tweeted the event with lots of links to examples).
We attribute the large turnout to the fact that the web and the IR website is now the dominant channel for investor communications and many companies are looking for ways to do things better. We were really pleased with the number of people that attended and that we had lots of questions at the end. We’ll be doing webinars on a regular basis so be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed or email alerts to stay up to date.
For those of you who missed it here are some highlights of the common barriers:
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Yesterday Catherine Crofton delivered our first webinar regarding removing the 5 barriers to an effective investor relations website. I come from a web development and media background so I was a bit green to all this IR stuff when I started at Q4 a couple of years ago. Needless to say I’ve been schooled the hard way and have learned internally and from our customers what issuers need to say to their investors.
One of the questions that stood out to me from yesterday’s webinar was when an attendee asked if we had any samples to show how small cap companies are leveraging the IR website best practices Catherine was speaking about. Catherine had shown great examples from some larger companies, namely, Nexen and Potash and explained how they have done a great job of conveying their messaging as well as making it easy for their audience to find information quickly. Read more…
Join us on Thursday, April 30th from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. ET as we share our insights on IR Website Best Practices. We annually audit more than 50+ websites from all sectors which are selected from Fortune 500 and the Report on Business 1000 through our participation as judges in the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accounts (CICA) annual electronic disclosure awards. In addition, we have gathered input from IR leaders across Canada and the United States, third-party surveys and a host of other sources.
We invite you to join us for this FREE webinar. You can learn more and register here.
NIRI Webinar - Trends in Technology and Disclosure
NIRI recently held a Webinar entitled “Trends in Technology and Disclosure.” Three IRO’s from Microvision, BGC Partners Inc., and Sun Microsystems each discussed how they have integrated social media tools such as corporate blogs, implemented notice and access releases and enriched investor communication portals to enhance and increase interaction with shareholders.
Microvision – Corporate blogging
The first speaker was Tiffany Bradford, IRO of Microvision who was at the forefront of implementing the company’s corporate blog initiative. As she is the only person in the IR department, she (along with other key members of management) was spending quite a bit of time on the phone with investors. Having worked internally in IR, I can tell you that this can be a time consuming task. As a result, she began looking into cost-effective solutions that would enable communication of non-material information to a broader audience. In order to gain buy-in from management, she armed herself with research of what other companies were doing and what would work the best for the company. The end result was a multi-author blog with representatives from communications and marketing entitled “The Displayground” which links to media articles, product demonstrations, customer testimonials and anything that supports and enhances understanding of the Microvision story.
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Read the full Press Release!
Our latest Spring ‘09 release builds on The Q4 Web Platform and introduces 3 new investor relations website products plus new features designed to help you manage your online communications and build better relationships with your investors and stakeholders.
New IR Website Products
Each of these new on-demand products are designed to be seamlessly integrated or embedded into any existing corporate or investor relations website. All products are delivered on The Q4 Web Platform and include complete self-publishing control, automated updates, and reduced risk through our proprietary web records.
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On Feb 23, 2009 BGC Partners became one of the first widely known companies to utilize a ‘Notice-and-Access’ release for their quarterly earnings. This approach was based on the SEC’s guidance regarding using websites for disclosure under Reg. FD.Leading up to and following the announcement, a lot of online discussion took place about potential pitfalls. The day after the event, Dominic Jones of IR Web Report provided detailed commentary as to how the event unfolded.
As a follow up to this, I contacted Jason McGruder, VP Investor Relations at BGC Partners to find out why his company decided to utilize notice-and-access, how the process went and what the feedback had been from the market. Finally, I also asked what best practices Jason and his team could share so that other companies considering this approach could learn from their experience.
**Interview**
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I received a “Reg FD” Google alert the other day about a new study entitled: “News Dissemination and the Impact of the Business Press” by Phd student, Eugene Soltes. Shortly after this I came across responses to the study by Michael Becker/Business Wire who posted a response that positions the study as endorsement of their services and Anna Snider/IR Magazine who used the study to write another post on her opinion that web disclosure won’t work (it would be nice to see you write about the positive’s now and again Anna). After I read each of these posts I felt compelled to dig into the study to see what it was all about.
First, let’s clarify what the study is about:
The study is about how greater news dissemination increases the visibility of the firm issuing the news and lowers the cost of acquiring information for investors, AND that this has a direct effect on tightening the bid–ask spread, increasing trading volumes and reducing volatility.
The first thing to understand is that ‘news dissemination’ (as defined in the study) is based on the effect of repeating and transmitting the same piece of information through the business press. For example, when the WSJ writes an article about a firm’s earnings, part of the information distributed by that article is strictly the disseminated news (the other part is new information). The degree to which this is measured in the study is based on the number of articles created by the business press from a company issuing a press release.
Therefore, if a press release is issued and has 100 articles written based on it, it is deemed to have a higher degree of dissemination than one that results in only 10 articles. Following this example, the news with more articles (aka dissemination) results in the issuer experiencing a tighter bid-ask spread, increased trading volumes and reduced volatility. it is important to note that this has no impact on the movement of the stock, these effects occur when the stock moves up and when it moves down.
This is not a study or an endorsement of press newswires and their capital market benefits. In fact, according to the research, if a press release is issued and does not receive any press coverage, it is not considered ‘disseminated’ (regardless of how widely it was distributed through a newswire) and therefore was not included in the study. As such, none of the capital market benefits listed in the report would apply.
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