On April 8th, 2010 I presented to a group of investor relations professional in Montreal, Quebec. I was fortunate to present alongside Lorne Gorber, VP, Global Comm. & IR at CGI Group Inc. The following is the deck that I used during the session. It contains updated trends and statistics on the use of social media in the capital markets. I also included a handful of examples of companies that I think are doing a good job at using these new channels. Hope you enjoy the new deck!
The founders of Agoracom are set to appear in front of the OSC at the end of April, where we assume we will all hear more details of the allegations and the defense of Agoracom. I, like many others, await more details before passing judgment on what really happened and to what degree fraud was committed (if at all).
In light of this recent situation, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about the problems with message boards and the importance of transparency and trust and being successful online.
In a continuing effort to share how public companies are using social networks, Darrell Heaps, Co-Founder and CEO took a large audience of IR professionals on a guided tour of “The Current State of Social Media & Investor Relations”.
Participants were provided with over 50 examples and case studies of how companies are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and IR blogs to mitigate share value, dramatically increase web site traffic and broaden their reach to potential investors.
Social media success takes work and things don’t happen overnight. So, based on the plethora of information discussed during the webinar, we compiled all of the company examples, links and the questions and answers into this whitepaper as a reference guide for IR professionals.
If you’re thinking about if, when and how to integrate social media with your investor relations program, download the FREE whitepaper today and you’ll learn how companies are:
Interacting with shareholders and managing their discussion boards on Facebook.
Proactively soliciting questions in advance of quarterly earnings call on Twitter.
Using feedback from the institutional community to make their IR blog a valuable resource to learn about their company.
Repurposing video content to increase discoverability across all channels.
Cord Blood America, Inc. (OTCBB:CBAI) is one of the over 350 companies we track in our ongoing research study on how public companies are using Twitter for Investor Relations. They use Twitter to keep their followers up to date on both company and industry-related news and overall do a great job of engaging with their followers on this channel.
Similarly, they also use Facebook to connect and engage with shareholders and also populate this channel with company news, frequently post commentary on happenings in their industry and provide links to relevant sites.
So in a continuing effort to share how public companies are using social networks, I contacted Mike and Trina Elliott of NETGENPR, who helped CBAI develop their social media strategy. Of particular interest to me is how they manage their Facebook community; on the discussion board one of the topics is entitled “Removed Posts Board” where they archive the posts deemed inappropriate under the Discussion Guidelines and Terms of Use and give the reasons why they were removed.
What follows is a discussion with Mike who is Co-Founder & Head of Digital Strategy. We talked about how CBAI’s strategy unfolded, how success was measured and how the “removed posts board” evolved.
On February 14, Darrell Heaps, our co-founder and CEO, and one of North America’s leading authorities on social media for IR hosted a guided tour of “The Current State of Social Media” webinar in which he walked through a current snapshot of what’s happening in the use of social media for IR and why it’s important to your investor relations program. Here is the full replay of the session and the Q&A, it’s 1hr15mins long:
During the session participants were provided with an interactive demonstration of how social media is helping other public companies mitigate share value erosion, dramatically increase their website traffic and broaden their reach to potential investors. As part of his guided tour he also revealed:
Which social networks are being adopted by companies for IR first and why.
How these companies are using social networks and deriving value from them.
Tips to enhance engagement and streamline quarterly reporting.
Darrell’s presentation was loaded with over 50 examples and case studies of how public companies are using social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and blogs to enhance their IR program.
If you’re thinking about if, when and how to integrate social media with your investor relations program, you should watch the video version of the presentation.
I’ll also be providing an overview of the session with lots of links in an upcoming blog post…stay tuned!
In their article “Is Your Company Tweeting Towards Trouble?”, attorneys Julie Jones and Cynthia McMakin, discuss some of the risks and compliance concerns public companies need to consider when using Twitter. In particular they state
“Due to Twitter’s innovative, yet immediate and informal, nature, tweets made by public companies and their employees may create a higher risk of violating US securities laws because the substance of each tweet may not be as thoroughly vetted as information that is disclosed through traditional channels of communication. Twitter’s appeal as a tool for companies to use to quickly dispense information to the public heightens these risks”.
Join us on Thursday, February 11th from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST for a guided tour by Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4 Web Systems, and one of North America’s leading authorities on social media for IR. If you are thinking about if, when and how to integrate social media with your investor relations program, you can’t affords to miss this interactive demonstration of how public companies are using the social web for IR.
Which social networks are being adopted by your peers for IR first and why.
How these companies are using social networks and deriving value from them.
Tips to enhance engagement and streamline quarterly reporting.
Register today for this free webinar and learn how social media is helping other public companies mitigate share value erosion, dramatically increase website traffic and broaden their reach to potential investors.
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.
Quarterly reporting is a key part of communicating a company’s financial story to the investment community. As many companies are in the midst of another earnings season right now, I thought it would be timely to highlight some of the interesting things they are doing to interact and engage their shareholders in the quarterly reporting process.
Right now, the social network predominantly being used to share this material is Twitter. So what follows are concrete examples from our Twitter for IR report we issued in November 2009. However, I will also be highlighting a company or two that reported in January of this year who are trying new approaches to engage investors during the quarterly process.
A number of interesting ideas came to light from our research and I have categorized them into three groups: 1) Proactively engaging shareholders before the quarterly call; 2) Keeping shareholders engaged during the quarterly call; and 3) Providing additional commentary after the quarterly call has ended.
Last week, Catherine Crofton, Q4’s VP, Sales & Marketing hosted a second webinar on IR Website Best Practices. Interest was high as we had another great turnout with people from around the globe in attendance. I also tweeted the event so if you were unable to join us, you can do a search on Twitter #Q4BP for a feed of the conversation.
This presentation was a follow up to a webinar Catherine conducted on this topic in April of last year in which she discussed five common barriers that block potential investors from understanding a company’s investment story. Click here to view last year’s presentation and listen to the audio.
On January 14, Catherine Crofton, Q4’s VP Sales & Marketing hosted an IR Website Best Practices webinar. Her presentation focused on how to build investor confidence through effective online communications. The presentation includes a lot of great examples of companies using best practices and how they can be applied to your own IR website.
In particular she outlined some critical improvements to make to the IR website in 2010 including:
Key information to include for potential new investors in this economy.
Using social media effectively to increase your reach (and website traffic) and to protect your share value – with case stories and examples.
New interactive technologies – what kind of technologies increase user engagement and add value.
If we weren’t able to get to your question during the webinar, please feel free to post it in our comment section below or email sherylj@q4websystems.com.
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On Thursday April 1st, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) – the Canadian equivalent to the SEC, put forth 
