Yesterday I attended a panel discussion that primarily focused on social media and the opportunity it provides to communicate with shareholders and potential investors. The panel included: Serena Ehrlich, Director of Social Media, Startup Army/BLAZE; Laura Graves, Senior IR Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc; Dick Johnson, President Johnson Strategic Communications Inc.& editor of  IR Cafe, and Robert Williams, Director Investor Relations, Dell Inc.
Robert said that Dell uses social media primarily to reach out connect with people who are interested in their company and want to access their information in different ways. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Since the SEC released new guidance permitting public companies to (forgo using newswire services and) disclose material information on corporate web sites and blogs, it has been a wait and see period. Many of the issuers I spoke with across the US (as well as inter-listed Canadian companies) are intrigued at the prospect of reducing newswire costs, but do not want to pioneer the web disclosure model.
Instead some are taking steps to transition and ensure that they can meet the SEC’ s criteria (which contrary to what some people would …

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 …

A couple of weeks ago Darrell posted about how Twitter is changing the face of communication.  If you are not very familiar with Twitter I recommend reading his post as it’s a great overview of the service.
There is no doubt that social media is dramatically changing the landscape of communication and more and more companies are using Twitter to market their products or services and bloggers and journalists around the world are using Twitter to break news.
Two recent events come …

The new Reg. FD guidance governing web disclosure has underlined the importance of the corporate web site as a primary source of information for investors and the capital markets. As more issuers look to fully leverage web technologies to meet compliance requirements, the need for integrated disclosure controls and comprehensive records becomes increasingly important.
Determining the best approach to these requirements should not be something delegated to the web master or IT department (although they will ultimately be involved). These are communications, compliance and risk management issues – requiring the involvement of …

This month marks roughly the 2nd anniversary for  Twitter. If you don’t know what Twitter is here is a brief description from Wikipedia:
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets ), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends …

The other day I came across a Tweet from Tom Becktold at BusinessWire:
becktold From IR Magazine: Perils in relying on company website as primary channel http://tinyurl.com/6qnlx9 about 3 hours ago from web
I’m always interested to see what IR Magazine has to say so I checked it out. I was disappointed to see the article was based on a “study” from The Equity Group that says the majority of security lawyers don’t support web-site disclosure. I dug in more and found the press release that the article was based on. 
Here are …