Q4 Blog

According to a survey by Socialware, over 60% of financial advisors in North America are using social networks to drive new business and build better relationships with customers. The survey consisted of over 30 questions and was completed by a total of 196 financial advisors; 44% of the respondents have an average account size of $300K and more than 53% of them have over 100 clients.

KEY FINDINGS:

Usage:

• In addition to the 60% who are already using social networks for business, 11% more plan on using them in the future.
• Of the 29% with no plans to use social media in the future, 85% of them are prohibited by their firms.
• The average number of social networks employed is 1.8.
• Linkedin is the most popular social network used.

Read more…

Download the latest Q4 Whitepaper on social media for public companies.

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 of 350 companies told us that 35% were using Twitter for IR, in the current report you’ll see this adoption is now at 65%.

However, it’s not all about Twitter. So we expanded our research to include Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, YouTube and SlideShare.  Their respective adoption rates for IR came in at:

• 37% Facebook
• 29% YouTube
• 10% Corporate blog
• 10% SlideShare
• 93% LinkedIn

Social Media Used by Public Companies for IR

We included LinkedIn because company pages are created automatically and now anyone can “Follow” any company.

What impresses me the most about the state of the market is just how many companies are using social media . We’ve included hundreds of examples in this report and we’ve literally just scratched the surface.

The complete report is 96 pages and has tons of stats, charts and web links.

Register on the landing page and we’ll email you the whitepaper right away.

We hope you enjoy it.

Let us know what you think in the comments below! Is social media for IR reaching a tipping point?

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 channels on their corporate website.

We are only just beginning to scratch the surface on our new research, but are seeing an increase in the number of companies who are providing links to all of the social networks they have adopted as part of their broader communications strategy via a “Stay Connected”, “Connect With Us”, or “Follow Us” approach.

Read more…

In her article “Should CEOs lose sleep over analyst recommendations” Clare Harrison, IR Magazine’s Deputy Editor, poses the question “How much attention do investors really pay to analyst recommendations?”

I think she raises some interesting points in answering the question. So much so that I’d like to reinforce and provide my two cents from an IRO perspective on those points here.  I’ll also provide some suggested tactics IROs can use to foster relationships and gain credibility with investors, and ways to help them make informed investment decisions about your company.

Read more…

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 Partners http://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:

Download MP3 File (11 MB)

During the interview you’ll hear Tom’s thoughts on:

• How his daily research activities have been affected by the social web
• How he manages risk when obtaining information on financial blogs and social networks
• Whether the use of social networks by a company influences his intent to cover them
• What kind of content companies should be sharing
• How financial blogs such as Seeking Alpha have changed the financial landscape

Hope you find it interesting.  Please let me know what you think.

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.

Read more…

In spite of the increasing importance of the Internet as a primary source of gathering information, I hadn’t really given much thought about its influence on how analysts form opinions and/or build their models around a specific sector or company to generate research reports.  That was until I listened to Robert Passarella’s webcast “Equity Research in the Age of the Web”.

Robert has spent about 20 years on Wall Street in various roles in equity research, trading operations and sales.  In light of the current economic meltdown (and some inquiries from his family and friends), he put this presentation together to answer the question “What is happening on Wall Street?”

In the past, the market was driven by speculation – people were making decisions whether to buy or sell a stock based solely on the information they had.  However, this prompted the need to find out and ask “If I am making a buy,  why is someone else selling?”  Does someone have access to proprietary information that I don’t?  There has to be a reason why they are taking the opposite stance.  With the Internet in its infancy access to proprietary information sources such as Bloomberg terminals were limited to a select group. Others were making decisions based on what they were reading in the newspapers.

Read more…