A quote from the author Esteban Contreras:

There might be saturation, but social media has changed the way we live. And this means social media is no longer a question for marketers. Companies of all sizes have accepted and even embraced the importance of social media. Investments are starting to increase and companies are now building teams to tackle the new risks and opportunities that social media has created.

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The primary change that we made to Q4 Web to make these Widgets possible is to move to JSON feeds for the delivery of all investor and financial content (news, events, presentations, reports). Previously, content would come from the Q4 Web CMS and be displayed using a module and HTML. Q4 has always been the anti-template solution, offering a high degree of flexibility and customization. We have now taken this to an unprecedented level among IR focused providers

Now with JSON feeds, all of this content is pushed out of Q4 Web as a structured data feed – which means web designers can use any aspect of this data and create new ways to display it for the desktop, mobile, apps, etc. In addition, because the content all comes in a JSON feed, clients continue to be able to easily manage everything from the Q4 Web CMS.

JSON feeds + Widgets provide total flexibility with design combined with complete content management control – a perfect combination.

Using JSON Feeds as the source, we then created a JQuery Widget Library that is completely extensible. Which allows our web design partners to create and share new and interesting Widgets for all types of corporate website content.

Our initial release includes Widgets for Financial content such as news, events & SEC filings and social content such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. You can also just use an external RSS feed. This is only the beginning, as each time a new widget is created, they are added to the JQuery Widget Library and made available for use by all clients and designers!

Finally, we made Widgets embeddable not only on the company website, but also on 3rd party sites like blogs. Controlled entirely by the company, the embed code for any widget can be shared and used to embed on any other website or blog. We’re very excited about this and look forward to our clients’ widgets being embedded across the web. With all content being all controlled from their Q4 Web CMS instance.

Check out the Live Demo on the earlier post or the new Widgets page on the Q4 product website.

We’re super excited about this release and look forward to working with our many web design partners and our clients in 2012!

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Q4 Widgets have been created to give public companies and their web designers complete flexibility in how they design corporate and investor websites, while continuing to maintain complete control over content publishing via the Q4 Web CMS.

With this release, using JSON feeds as the source, Q4 Web has integrated a JQuery Widget Library that is completely extensible, and allows for virtually any type of content to be rendered and displayed. This means investor and financial content such as press releases, events, reports and financial data are no longer connected to a specific display, but instead are published as structured data, that can be literally designed in any layout and interactivity.

The new Q4 Widgets provide unmatched flexibility among IR website vendors for designers to integrate financial content and social media into corporate and investor websites.

Widgets are now available to all Q4 Web subscribers and include a complete set of IR financial content, all major social media sites and any RSS feed. Content can also be “mashed together” to create new ways to display content for website and mobile users. Widgets can also be embedded into any website or blog by a simple embed code. Just like embedding a YouTube video. See a live demo of a Financial Reports Widget at the end of this post.

Darrell Heaps, Q4′s co-founder and CEO had this to say about the new widgets:

“Over the last year we’ve worked with hundreds of clients and their design agencies on corporate and IR websites. We asked them how we could take Q4 Web to the next level, and these new feeds and widgets are a result of a collaborative effort to put these tools in place.  I’m very excited to see such great work coming out of our clients and their design agencies and I’m looking forward to what they’ll create with these new tools.”

Widgets are available in the following 3 content types (JSON feeds are also available):

Financial Widgets
Financial Widgets are available for Press Releases, Events, Presentations, Financial Reports, SEC Filings, Quotes, Charts, Fundamentals, Institutional Ownership and Financial data. Each financial widget is 100% configurable in terms of how it is displayed, what data is displayed, and what level of interactivity is provided.

Social Widgets
Social Widgets allow clients to aggregate social content from across the web. Supported channels include: YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare, Flickr, Twitter, StockTwits and Facebook. Each Widget can be configured with a specific user account, tags, search terms etc., allowing for unlimited freedom in how social content is integrated in the corporate website.

RSS Widgets
RSS feeds from any external website can now be pulled into a Q4 Widget and seamlessly displayed alongside corporate website content. This allows for external blogs, websites, news sources etc. to be easily integrated and displayed on corporate websites.

Visit the Q4 Widgets Product page for more information and client examples.

Live Demo – Financial Reports Widget

The live demo below is a Financial Report widget pulling content from our product demo site. (Thanks TVI Pacific for letting us use their content). Click on “Portait View” to see the 7 optional layouts that are being dynamically displayed in this Widget. This demo illustrates the level of flexibility of these new widgets.

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Six Social Media Trends for 2012

Facebook Timeline Review: This Is the Greatest Thing Facebook’s Ever Done: http://awe.sm/5btZ5

New Twitter: 25 Tips and Tricks for Savvy Tweeters: http://on.mash.to/sY2BBf

Adults Now Spend More Time With Mobile Devices than with Print Media: http://bit.ly/uVtHCG

Twitter Reloaded: What it Means for Corporate Communications: http://bit.ly/vNi2uL

Coca-Cola, Best Buy Shareholder Votes Get Social Twist: http://bit.ly/t7uyFg

Bill Miller bows out: investors reconsider risk, returns, and consistency: http://tinyurl.com/7dsmsug

How Social Media Is Changing The Stock Market:  http://rww.to/tOCP1a

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Using the social media publishing capabilities of Q4 Web, our market leading website CMS and social media platform, we tagged the videos and presentations so we could seamlessly integrate the content from Vimeo and SlideShare into our website.

We have some new and exciting whitepapers and webinars in store for 2012 – and we’ll update this section accordingly.

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Most young adults go online for no good reason at all: http://shar.es/oAFCO

Twitter Used By 91% Of B2B Marketers, But LinkedIn Generates Twice As Many Leads: http://ow.ly/7LL3f

‘Enforcement wave’ heading for advisers: Ex-SEC official: http://bit.ly/sbf83U

The Latest 15 Facts and Figures on Facebook – Plus Infographic: http://wind.mn/vo9YeY

Apple employee blogging and social media guidelines revealed: http://bit.ly/rYAde1

The Naked Retweet Dilemma: http://bit.ly/sKRkXY

Drafting Better Risk Factor Disclosure: http://ir4.me/zGJzl

2012 Outlook: Analysts See Volatility: http://bit.ly/ssF8qM

The mobile web in numbers: http://ir4.me/zS3hj

Announcing the Launch of StockTwits Direct for Investor Communications: http://bit.ly/vlPqTZ

Schwab Mobile App is Nearing Its One-Year Anniversary: How are you using it?: http://bit.ly/uxbgHx

Think About Developing a Social Media Plan: http://bit.ly/ud2gqa

Employee blogs can provide honest perspective on workings of a company: http://ow.ly/7U79T

Wither Expert Networks?: http://t.co/73hehbj7

The New Startup That Plans To Blow Up The World Of Wall Street Analyst Predictions: http://stks.co/1QZV

Netflix’s CEO Sees ‘Arms Race’ in Streaming: http://stks.co/1PqC

Revolve Debuts Infographic Company Snapshots: http://bit.ly/snJEW8

CEOs follow the money, not the tweets: http://bit.ly/vbfNq0

With TVs, Microsoft is right and Apple is wrong: http://bit.ly/tw7eRw

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Measuring Social Media ROI: 3 Things to Consider

Media companies and Twitter – still mostly doing it wrong: http://bit.ly/srsKZj

Reporters Use Twitter to Promote, Not Report [STUDY]: http://on.mash.to/tBtS1F

Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think: http://stks.co/17ga

Over 48 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute: http://post.ly/3tLJD

Social Readiness: Architecting a Connected Enterprise: web-strategist.com/blog/2011/11/1

Paving a way for women in Brazil: http://j.mp/vOxSyG

Investor videos: Success Tips from a Producer: http://bit.ly/tpUzkc

Bringing you insights into LinkedIn Groups with our new statistics dashboard: http://zite.to/sYnFwp

5 Must Read Investor Relations Articles and Blog Posts: http://bit.ly/vJrT5P

We are having a conversation without you (The WHY of Social Media): http://bit.ly/u78rTw

#ShiftNYC shows you Social IR: http://stks.co/18kh

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1. Preparing tweets in advance of the call.
2. Providing a link to the materials associated with the live event.
3. Proactively soliciting questions in advance.
4. Consistent use of #hashtags.
5. Appending tweets with your ticker symbol.

As I mentioned last week, I thought a separate post on disclaimers was warranted.  So this post is dedicated to some specific examples from our research on how companies are using disclaimers for live-tweeting events.

We’ve been conducting our research on how public companies are using social media for investor relations for the past few years now. So we’ve had quite a few discussions with IROs and IR professionals. More often than not, the conversation begins with questions about the compliance issues and potential risk of violating Reg FD using social media to share investor information.

We’ve also had many conversations with legal representatives such as Caroline Clapham who have taken the time to share their thoughts and insights on the topic of social media for investor relations.  Caroline is a securities and M&A lawyer at Fasken Martineau in Vancouver, Canada.  I met Caroline on Twitter earlier this year after reading an article she wrote for her firm on how companies can use social media and maintain compliance with Canadian securities laws. Since then, we have stayed in contact.

Caroline feels that the best practice is to have a general disclaimer in a company’s Twitter profile (usually by link), and then include shortened links within tweets that require disclaimer language, whether triggered by National Instrument 43-101 or by the inclusion of forward-looking information in the tweet itself.

Caroline said:

because tweets can be searched and located as stand-alone statements, the conservative approach is to include appropriate disclaimers embedded by link in each tweet. This minimizes the risk that an investor or potential investor might come across an individual tweet and rely on it as a hard fact.

To-date, I haven’t seen anyone use disclaimers as outlined above, but in my opinion this is a logical approach.

Now for some examples of how companies are using disclaimers to live-tweet their earnings call, annual shareholders meeting and analyst/investor day on Twitter….please note that we are not saying one way or another that any of the following examples we provide are right or wrong.  Instead, as usual, we are merely sharing some observations from our research on this front to inform the IR community.

Earnings Call

In our research, we are seeing companies provide a link to their FLS before they begin tweeting their earnings call and then one more time when the event is over.  For example, before Polycom begins live-tweeting their earnings, they issue a tweet (like the one below) that links to forward-looking statements:

Once they are done live-tweeting the earnings call, they finish off the sequence of tweets reiterating where their forward-looking statements can be found:

Companies are also using StockTwits to provide real-time earnings news. In addition to appending their tweets with their $TICKER tag and #hashtags unique to their earnings announcement,  companies often use a disclaimer at the start of the session for compliance, comprising of a Safe Harbor and non-GAAP Financial Measures Statement.  For example, like the LivePerson message below:

Annual Meetings

Johnson and Johnson also incorporate disclaimers for live-tweeting their annual meeting.  After an initial tweet that provides a link to the annual meeting webcast details: http://twitter.com/#!/JNJComm/status/63603179081834496,
as they discuss their first quarter earnings at the annual meeting, they provide a link to the forward-looking statements in their quarterly earnings release:

Analyst/Investor Days

More companies are also tweeting about meetings with analysts and institutional investors. For example, Exxon Mobil invited followers to listen in to their analyst meeting being held at the New York Stock Exchange:

The url provided in the above tweet: http://bit.ly/hjeaZV links to the webcast notice, presentation and forward-looking statements that all reside on the company’s website:

In addition to live-tweeting, I thought it would be useful to provide some other examples of how companies are using disclaimers on Twitter.

As we know, Twitter is limited to 140 characters, so we are seeing companies include a shortened disclaimer which links back to the full disclaimer (which is housed on their website). For example, Zimtu Capital Corp. provides a ‘Terms of Use’ link in their bio which links to their website:

As you can see, they prominently display the link to their disclaimer in their company bio at the top of their Twitter profile.  Doing so, helps make it easy for followers to see the link and subsequently read the terms.

Potash Corp. also provides a disclaimer on their Twitter profile page.  Although instead of linking to it on their website, they have written out the entire disclaimer as it relates to their tweets on the left-hand side of their Twitter profile:

Note: you can see the disclaimer in its entirety by viewing their @potashcorp account on Twitter.

I’d love to hear of any other examples of how disclaimers are being used by public companies on Twitter. Please let me know in the comments section.

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Josh Clark debunks the 7 Myths of Mobile Web Design: http://tnw.co/u9MqRR

Lessons from the Australian Parliament’s iPad Revolt: http://onforb.es/tDj75g

Google to end support for Blackberry Gmail app this month: http://bit.ly/uAgTqI

Company Tweets and Regulation FD: Material or Immaterial?: http://bit.ly/uJ3JLf

A New Way to Learn About Bloomberg: http://ow.ly/7jAZA

Global Buy-side Attitudes Regarding Superstar CEOs: http://bit.ly/s9ety1

When Placing Ads, Don’t Underestimate the Value of Mobile: http://goo.gl/5W4lS

It’s Official: Flash Mobile Player is Dead: http://on.mash.to/tDy9WA

Social Media Use in Financial Services: Our Ongoing Research: http://j.mp/sIvGir

Raymond James Gets Social Media Right: http://stks.co/14QY

Infographic: The social media crisis communications decision tree:  http://bit.ly/t1uera

To Time or Not to Time?: http://stks.co/10f8

US Buy-side speaks out on credit rating agencies: http://bit.ly/t9XgDn

Infographic: How, When & Where People Share Content: http://selnd.com/vQvolp

The Shareholder Letter – NIRI Presentation by Rob Berick: http://slidesha.re/rt1m01

Social Media Compliance Policies For Financial Firms: http://ow.ly/7p8EH

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As we are in the midst of earnings, and as annual general meeting season is just around the corner, I thought I would share some thoughts on best practices for live-tweeting.  Note: these best practices have been put together based on observations we have made through our research on how public companies are using social media for investor relations.  Here is a list of what we will cover today (in no particular order):

1. Preparing tweets in advance of the call.
2. Providing a link to the materials associated with the live event.
3. Proactively soliciting questions in advance.
4. Consistent use of #hashtags.
5. Appending tweets with your ticker symbol.
6. Linking to disclaimers.

One additional note, before I get started. I’ve left disclaimers until the end, as I feel this warrants a post on its own.  So that said, I’ll be putting together some thoughts (with the hope of having some experts weigh in) on the appropriate placement of disclaimers on Twitter.  As usual, I’ll provide some examples.  You can look for this post the week of November 14, 2011.

1.    Preparing tweets in advance of the call. This is easily accomplished by extracting key messages from the release and the script. Compiling the information for the tweets prior to the call will ensure consistent messaging and help mitigate the risk of tweeting anything that was not previously released over an approved disclosure channel.  It would be wise to also share this information with your legal counsel in advance and obtain their sign-off.

2.    Providing a link to the materials associated with the live event. For example, providing a link to the event well in advance (common practice is at least one week prior), and letting investors know that you’ll be live-tweeting is a good best practice. Johnson and Johnson did this as shown in the tweet below:

Similarly, sending out a tweet the morning of the event and re-sending the link to the notice of call will serve as a reminder.

Also sending out a link to any additional materials relating to the specific event such as a press release or presentation as soon as it has been disclosed over the appropriate disclosure channels will equip followers with the information they need.  This can be especially useful in the case where a company holds an investor/analyst day to update the investment community on a merger.  For example, Constellation Energy sent out the tweet below to inform the financial media and bloggers with a link to a website that houses more information related to the merger:

3.    Proactively soliciting questions in advance.  If you are going to allow investors to submit questions in advance, you should have an appropriate system set up where investors can submit them.  For example, we have seen companies proactively ask their investors to post questions on their blog like Microvision does below:

We’ve also seen TVI Pacific provide a link to their website where the instructions are easily found in the upper right-hand corner:

In general, if you’re going to allow investors to submit questions in advance, ensure that they are properly informed. This can be easily accomplished by using your website and social media so everyone has an equal opportunity to have their question addressed.

4.    Consistent use of #hashtags.  If you’re going to live-tweet an event (and you intend on continuing the practice each quarter or annually for your shareholders’ meeting), we recommend that you use consistent #hashtags. For example, when Polycom live-tweets their earnings calls, they incorporate their stock symbol (PLCM) along with the current quarter (i.e. Q1, Q2…) and append every tweet with the appropriate #hashtag like they did below for their Q1 results:

Using consistent #hashtags helps followers identify the event being discussed. It also helps anyone who was not able to follow along the ‘live’ event, to search for and read the tweets at a later time.

5.    Appending tweets with ticker symbol. IR teams who are live-tweeting events – particularly earnings are also appending their tweets with their ticker symbol, like American Electric Power does below:

StockTwits invented the $TICKER which was built to aggregate messages around tickers.  As such it acts as a search engine that gathers all messages that include common messages using the $TICKER tag (e.g. $AAPL). Appending the $TICKER will not only ensure message discoverability across StockTwits, but also on Twitter and the wider social sphere.

6.    Linking to disclaimers.  As mentioned, stay tuned for an upcoming post dedicated to the use of disclaimers on Twitter.

Let me know if I’ve overlooked anything in the comments below.

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