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.
“My sole objective, and the only bullet on my job description, is to get the share price of TVI to a fair and sustainable value, PERIOD. I decided the way to do that would be to use all things social media and set some benchmarks for Return on Investment (ROI) so I could measure the results. Indicators such as increased web traffic, improved liquidity, increased institutional holdings and improved investor sentiment, would all result in a fair share price.” – Rhonda Bennetto, Executive Director Investor Communications, TVI Pacific Inc.
TVI is still a relatively new user of social networks and in conjunction with the launch of their new website in mid-November 2009, they have reaped some interesting results thus far:
Website visits are up from 100/mth to 4,000/mth;
83 followers on Twitter (as of Jan 11);
Photos have been viewed on Flickr 1,519 times and they have 696 views of their videos on YouTube;
Average daily trading volume has increased 55%; and
Their share price has risen from $0.06 prior to launch to $0.12.
Best wishes from everyone on the Q4 team for a wonderful holiday season! We will be taking a short hiatus from our blog and Twitter to spend some time with loved ones.
We look forward to connecting with you in early 2010!
Over the course of 2009, I have connected with a lot of smart, seasoned IR professionals on Twitter. I have met IROs and IR consultants alike. One great contact I have made is Trevor Heisler, an IR consultant at TMX Equicom (a TMX Group company).
With experience as both an in-house IRO and IR consultant, I know the day-to-day challenges that IR professionals face. One newer challenge has been the question of whether to embrace social media as part of the broader communications strategy. Although I am not a practicing IR professional anymore, I was curious to hear how consultants were dealing with this rapidly emerging topic. With that, I asked Trevor to be interviewed with the goal of compiling tips that would help consultants handle client inquiries about social media.
An article in IR Alert featuring an interview with Q4’s CEO and Co-founder, Darrell Heaps, was issued today. The interview includes Darrell’s commentary on the increased adoption of Twitter by public companies and how they are specifically using it for Investor Relations (IR). He also provides his thoughts on the future of Twitter within IR and other social media developments he foresees on the IR horizon in 2010:
The social nature of the Web will continue. Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on will continue to dominate and affect how the Web is used. Looking into 2010 and 2011, we will see more companies and IR departments embrace these tools and drive value from them. Those companies will benefit by taking early steps once the risk side is addressed. We will see a greater adoption rate of these tools, and there will be a lot of companies coming out to provide tools to help companies get the most out of the Web market.
There are a lot of great insights as well as what he deems as the three biggest mistakes a public company can make on Twitter and social media in general. Click here to read the entire article.
More and more public companies are adopting social networks as part of their communications strategy. Of these early adopters, we are seeing some emerging trends. For example, we found that 48% of the 350 companies analyzed in our recently issued report on the use of Twitter for IR are using Twitter to engage with their audience.
Some other trends we found include tweeting the earnings call, providing a link to a video on YouTube of the CEO talking about recently issued financials and reaching out to followers to submit questions they would like answered on the quarterly earnings call.
Westport Innovations was also included in our recent study. While the company has only been using social networks for a short period of time they have already implemented some interesting ideas, had some early wins and realized some of its pitfalls.
We felt it would be useful to speak with Westport to learn more about their early experience with social media to help increase awareness for those who are still sitting on the sidelines. So Q4’s CEO and co-founder Darrell Heaps and I recently spoke with Darren Seed, the company’s Senior Director of Investor Relations and Ryan Thompson, Multimedia Manager to learn more about their social media strategy.
The interview was recorded and you can Listen or Download:
On Nov 11th, I had the pleasure to speak to the NIRI Tri-State chapter outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. The topic of the discussion was about social media and investor relations. During the Q&A portion of the session we focused on dealing with rumors and misinformation on blog posts and social networks.
The initial reaction by many IROs is to ‘not engage’ with these individuals and to simply ignore these tweets or blog posts. This approach is based on policies forged years ago related to message boards and chat rooms. The challenge with these boards is selective disclosure. It is difficult to answer one comment and not another because the non-answer may be seen as acceptance. So companies need to either answer all comments, or none. It’s not surprising that companies choose to not respond to any of the messages.
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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.
Over the course of 2009, I have connected with a lot of smart, seasoned IR professionals on 
On Nov 11th, I had the pleasure to speak to the NIRI Tri-State chapter outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. The topic of the discussion was about social media and investor relations. During the Q&A portion of the session we focused on dealing with rumors and misinformation on blog posts and social networks.