It didn’t happen. Social media didn’t go away. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred: Social media has exploded in its usage and ubiquity, and now significantly influences many communications around the world. The challenges of strengthening corporate reputation and building trust among stakeholders can prove difficult for any professional communicator. Across investor relations circles, the practice of supplementing more traditional IR strategies with social media is not widespread. Certain functions specific to IROs, namely the disclosure of material news, make adopting social media and using its channels as primary communication tools something to be thoughtfully considered. So, for the sake of this brief discussion, let’s sidestep the legal department and address the “relations” function of the IRO so that we can better understand how channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs can work to enhance shareholder relations and improve the corporate bottom line.

Some “untruths” about social media for IR

Common fallacies among IROs considering social media include:

• It’s only for the public relations and marketing departments.
• My target audience and stakeholder groups are not active in social media.
• There is no connection between social media and my company’s financial results.

As more IROs begin to implement social media as part of their overall communications strategy and use the channels to enhance — not necessarily replace — traditional IR practices, they are connecting with media, analysts, investors and consumers in new and profitable ways.

How social media can strengthen the IR function

Social media connects you to audiences that matter. For those who think Twitter and Facebook users aren’t relevant to IR, think again:

• 85 percent of financial services professionals under 50 are utilizing social media (LederMark Communications)
• 58 percent of institutional investors and sell-side analysts in the US and Europe believe new media will become more important in helping them make investment decisions (Brunswick Group)
• 35 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a Twitter account (The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
• 79 percent of the top 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or their own corporate blogs (Burson-Marsteller Fortune Global 100 Social Media Study)

For IROs, social media presents opportunities to directly access the stakeholders and influencers who are active within networks and groups, and lets you connect to customers, analysts, investors and the media.

Social media can start conversations and strengthen existing relationships. Every day, millions of people are sharing ideas and opinions on companies, products and brands.  Search Twitter, YouTube or Google Blogs for your company, your CEO, your products and services or your competition. Chances are, you can’t afford to stay out of those discussions. By tapping into and monitoring conversations, you’ll soon identify the key influencers and opinion-shapers you need to talk to and incorporate into your IR outreach. The opportunities to promote your company and make it attractive to potential investors abound in social media. You can go beyond telling the story through financials and build strong relationships with key and new stakeholders. Remember, people are already talking about your company — it’s your choice to ignore or engage.

Social media participation can directly affect your bottom line.  Attributing ROI to social media participation can prove difficult, but directly correlating a company’s financial performance to its social media activities is impossible, right? Not necessarily. The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group’s ENGAGEMENTdb Report found that the most valuable brands in the world are “experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement (interacting with others, instigating discussions and responding during conversations.)  The relationship is apparent and significant: Socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.”

Where to begin with social media

The tips, rules and strategies for establishing a presence in social media are seemingly as infinite as the channels themselves. Let’s keep things simple and outline some straightforward activities and no-cost ideas you can put to work right away:

• Listening:  The old adage holds true: “Think before you speak.” Perhaps the most common mistake people make in social media is jumping into the conversation too soon. Take the time to search the most popular sites – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube – for mentions of your company.  Who’s talking about you, and what are they saying? Technorati can help you identify key industry bloggers, and searching for keywords at BlogPulse can show you how many bloggers are talking about your company and industry.  Listening is the best first step because it is risk-averse and you can remain anonymous.
• Monitoring:  One of the easiest and most effective free monitoring tools is Google Alerts. Many IROs spend at least part of their day monitoring the discussions and analyses on Seeking Alpha or following real-time conversations and investor sentiment on StockTwits.  Ongoing monitoring will not only help you identify key influencers, it will keep you abreast of important conversations should you, or someone in your company, need to respond.
• Sharing:  According to the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of online news consumers get news forwarded to them through email or posts on social networking sites, and half of those people pass along email links to news stories or videos to others. Powerful statistics indeed and a testament to the importance of incorporating social components into your news to facilitate it being shared.  This is not a difficult or costly process, and many digital assets that already exist (perhaps in the public relations and marketing departments) can be re-purposed and used with great efficacy across social media and on corporate websites. Making audio, video, photos, presentations and other collateral available to a wider audience can greatly increase corporate awareness and transparency, and provide a more robust overall picture.  It can also personalize a corporation and engage investors and other valued stakeholders. And because social networking sites encourage feedback and comment-sharing, you are able to stay on top of conversations and respond accordingly. Easy first steps for content sharing can include:
  • Being proactive with your investor communications and republishing news release titles and earnings alerts via Twitter after they cross the wire.  Be sure to include social media sharing functionality in all of your releases.
  • Socializing digital content by posting corporate and executive photos to Flickr or Photobucket, and presentations to SlideShare and docstocs. Corporate channels on YouTube appeal to a wide range of audiences – remember, the site is second only to Google in search-engine use.
  • Promoting your company to a broader online audience of shareholders and prospective investors by creating a corporate Facebook page and posting news, video and photo content.
  • Maximizing interest and “stickiness” on your corporate website by including icons, links to corporate social network channels, multimedia elements and a company RSS feed.
  • Increasing “findability” of your news and corporate website by ensuring that all of your content is optimized for search.  Good search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are essential to successful online communications.

“This is no longer a shareholder but a stakeholder world. Companies need to be everywhere, engaging everyone…communicating through a variety of channels,” reports The 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer.   For IROs, social media presents an incredible opportunity to meet the challenges of reaching the people who matter to their companies, and to use channels and resources like Twitter and YouTube to engage stakeholders.

Todd Defren, principal at high-tech PR firm SHIFT Communications and author of the popular blog PR-Squared, is the inaugural guest in our Ask the Expert series.  As the PR industry is morphing (thanks in great part to social media), so too is SHIFT with a new office in The Big Apple. We picked Todd’s brain on both fronts:

What spurred the decision to open a new office in New York and how do you anticipate it benefiting the team at SHIFT?

Consumer brands have grown to become a significant proportion of SHIFT’s revenue.

We’ve proven an ability to compete and win against large, entrenched PR agencies.  Meanwhile…

New York City is the Mecca of consumer brands. And,

Coincidentally, many of our Consumer Team staff raised up stakes from Boston and moved there on their own, anyway.

As PR people, we’re not necessarily math-savvy enough to get “2+2 = 4,” but in this case, we saw that 1+1+1+1 = 4!

How has the success and global acceptance of the social media news release met your expectations?  What are your thoughts on its future?

While it’s nice to have the credit for inventing the Social Media Press Release, I have diligently “stayed out of its way” since then – watching the trend grow and cheering from the sidelines.  It was an idea whose time had come, and I still think it is early in the game. As the Web becomes increasingly broadband, multimedia and social, the concept of the Social Media Press Release will likely be absorbed and talked about, merely, as a “typical” news release.

Why do you think it’s important for PR/marketing communications professionals to embrace social media? How might it impact traditional media?

In a world in which every consumer is becoming a stand-alone media outlet, indexed by Google, social media is allowing public relations to fulfill its original mission of creating, mediating, and cultivating relationships with the public. PR already does a ton of monitoring and analysis of both media and social streams.  We can vet the issues, alert clients to rising customer angst, analyze which users need to be ushered into the red-carpet service channel, defend against frustrated claimants, etc. Consumers increasingly expect that their online ruminations will be monitored and responded to in real time. This represents a monstrous scalability problem as the hordes increasingly move online.  For the PR firms who figure out how to help companies attend to this dilemma, the benefits will be clear.

As you may have heard, we recently launched a free Social Media Fitness Program.  What are your (honest) thoughts on the program?

The idea is good but I think you may have a channel conflict here, i.e., PR agencies are likely offering (or hoping to offer) similar services to their own clients.

What is a common misperception you come across about social media?  What is your rebuttal?

The common misperception is that social media is free. It is true that the tools of participation are free, but the amount of time required to regularly create content and interact with people online is immensely time- and resource-intensive.

What do you predict is the next “big thing” to hit PR?

When and if I figure that out, I’ll be posting it to my blog!  Meanwhile, we are all still plenty busy sussing out how social media continues to impact our profession, and our world!

SHIFT Communications recently announced the opening of its New York office. Read the social media press release on the Marketwire website.

Are you a PR pro? Are you super-savvy in social media? Are you in-the-know in investor relations? Are you a media professional who’s been transformed by the digital revolution?  We’d love to interview you for our Ask the Experts series! The Ask the Expert series is Marketwire’s way of delving into the minds of industry leaders and experts, asking them the most salient and pertinent questions that affect PR, IR and marketing communications professionals. Please contact Nick Shin (nshin [at] marketwire [dot] com) for consideration.

On Friday, December 4th, Marketwire attended the public unveiling of the new CBC/Radio-Canada Vancouver integrated newsroom in support of the broadcaster’s annual Food Bank Day Fundraiser. To help promote the event and draw a bigger crowd of “do-gooders”, we organized a tweetup with other marketing and journalist professionals.
Over the course of the day, over 6,000 people visited the new tech-savvy broadcast centre and got to meet-and-greet the CBC/Radio-Canada staff.   Some of the CBC’s personalities, like CBC News Vancouver anchor Gloria Macarenko, showed great enthusiasm with their fans, making sure to shake hands with everyone she met.  The event was also followed closely on Twitter with updates under #cbcopenhouse. It was a great opportunity for us to connect with peers and introduce and ourselves to editors, reporters, communication specialists, and radio and TV personalities.  

From left to right: Gus Fosarolli, Dory Lanenter, Cecilia Lu (Kiwano Marketing), Chantal Jura, and Amanda McCuaig (Lighthouse Sustainable Building Center)

Marketwire was quickly recognized by CBC Online and Interactive Reporter Theresa Lalonde for our tweetup initiative. Before we left this great social and networking event, we were already posted on Lalonde’s blog “Tell Your Story.”

This event stands as a great example of how social media can help you maintain connections with people you know, and how it can help you meet new people, plan events and build strong relationships.  CBC’s Open House and Food Bank Day was a terrific event, and we definitely left the new state-of-the-art broadcast centre more informed and better connected with the people at CBC.

Paper, glass, or plastic — how do you like your news delivered? Are you traditional and tactile, with newsprint-stained fingertips and a fondness for the weekend paper? Do you still tune in regularly to TV news programs and all-news stations? Do you own a radio? How about your iPod, BlackBerry or Kindle – if someone snuck a peek at your news apps and downloads, what would they say about you? Chances are, you’re a “blended” news consumer who likes a little of everything.

What we consider to be news is changing, too, thus dictating what we consume, in what format we consume it, and who we trust as its source. By its simplest definition, news must be current and it must mean something to people, so it makes perfect sense that one man’s tweet might be another man’s front page. The filters through which news must be passed in order to be credible have all but dissolved in a social media world, and the heated debate over the future of journalism rages on. In 2010, we’ll closely monitor whether mainstream media and participatory journalism can coexist, and if journalism can survive even if newspapers do not.

Source: Daryl Cagle’s Political Cartoonists Index

April 2012, Columbia University... "...and this year's Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Tweeting goes to..."

Our habits for getting news fixes and sharing what we like with others have changed dramatically over the past couple of years. And that pace is quickening. For some, RSS feeds are so 2008, and TweetDeck is where it’s at. But, for others, that glossy, ad-laden, two-pound magazine still pairs well with a double-espresso. In our on-demand world of news and information, we can almost always get what we want, dictate when and how we want it, and rarely do we have to wait. The demand for customized news and information and the power of “I want” will continue to push news creators, producers, and distributors to new levels of innovation and content interactivity. It might also determine the limits of what kinds of content consumers will pay for.

For example, last month, media giant Conde Nast introduced the GQ app, offering a full replica of a single issue of the monthly men’s magazine. Glossy pictures, feature articles, cool ads, and Tom Brady – what could be better? (I downloaded this for, ahem, “research purposes.”) A closer look shows the reader what’s really amazing about the digital version of this well-known print publication: Selected ads are interactive, pulling you directly to a product site. Or, a digitized feature story on Clint Eastwood is enhanced with photos not in print and includes a link to his new film, Invictus. Fun stuff, indeed.

Admit it. You can’t resist it. Thanksgiving in the U.S. has, since I can remember, signaled the start of shopping and socializing. And no one is immune. Including you. Black Friday beckons to all and in the digital age never before has this siren sounded so loudly. And never before have so many of us answered her call, taking shopping and socializing traditions to new heights and new forms.

Even in today’s fragile economy, while bottom lines won’t prove the season’s spending as a success (or failure) for weeks to come, social media marketing offers insights and tracking abilities that do prove consumers are definitely window shopping, or as Google Trends indicates, searches worldwide for Black Friday Deals are being conducted at “volcanic” proportions.

It used to be that we’d wait for our holiday shopping circulars to come to us via snail mail. Glossy colorful slicks: eye candy for the shopaholic. It used to be that during drive time, while listening to random radio tunes, we’d be lulled into desire for products promoted in jingle-bell style. And it used to be that in between our favorite sitcoms and serial dramas, those award-winning television commercials would entice our auditory and visual senses, pushing us out the door and to the store to buy. So come Black Friday, traditionally, we’d make a date with friends to meet at the mall for some good old-fashioned shopping and socializing.

Those traditions still hold true, however.  More often than not they aren’t at the forefront of capturing our attention and spurring us to action, nor are they cost-effective strategies for retailers to boost the bottom line. Snail mail circulars equate to junk mail and both radio and TV allow us to easily bypass promotional advertising. In addition, none of the traditional temptations offer immediate gratification, immediate validation, or immediate results.

Today’s hardcore shopping and socializing take place in the new media space. Click, we’re done. Nearly every one of us searches online for information on everything from products to services to coupons to schedules to recommendations to directions to you name it before we make a move or spend a penny. And even our socializing has blossomed from meeting at the local mall with a neighborhood friend, to figuring out where to meet by tapping into our mobile widget and getting advice from folks we don’t know on dining data sites such as Urban Spoon, to meeting in a chat room with folks we’ve befriended on Facebook or joining a User Group on our LinkedIn, to deciding what to buy for our Secret Santa based on some tweets endorsing this gift or that.

Our ability to promote and to consume in smarter fashion as well as our potential for networking and connecting knows no bounds and has no restrictions, except, perhaps, for our willingness to take advantage and to engage in traditions that take new form and offer new opportunities.

Web 2.0 technologies have irrevocably changed the volume and speed of news delivered and consumed on a daily basis.  There has been a shift of influence from professional journalism to social media as many news consumers now rely on a significant mix of traditional and online sources.  In a recent CBC Radio show, Ira Basen explores the changing landscape of news delivery from news 1.0 to news 2.0, and asks whether the world is ready to part ways with traditional news media.

Accessible tools, dangers therein

Basen points out that, in a very short time, journalists have lost their monopoly — the creation and distribution of news has shifted from journalists alone to “just about everyone.”  He also mentions that, although the news has become much more democratic through the empowerment of “citizen journalists,” freedom does have its potential pitfalls.

• “Democratization of media” has minimized the lag time between when an event occurs and when the story breaks, and credibility can come into question depending on the source.
• Accessible publishing tools mean that there is an inherent loss of an “independent, professional journalistic filter.”
• “Citizen journalists”: Can they help make informed choices?

Basen assembles a star-studded social media cast, including Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired; Clay Shirky of the New York University Interactive Telecommunications Program; Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur; Paul Sullivan, journalist and owner of Sullivan Media Consulting; and Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers.

To read more or to download the CBC Radio podcast, visit News 2.0: The Future of News in an Age of Social Media.

After an eventful first day, Day 2 of the Online News Association’s annual conference opened with a bang as CEO/Founder Lisa Stone, BlogHer, talked about the evolution of “the mommy media.”  She spoke about the transformation of B2B and B2C marketing through blogging.

Some of the top sessions centered on hot-button topics, such as “Journalism for the Mobile Generation” with panelists like Benjamin Moss, director of mobile products, Associated Press.

Other sessions discussed the ethical considerations the media must take into account when using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and included tutorials on best practices when using SEO and SEM to reach your audiences. Take a look at J.D Lasica’s (founder, Socialmedia.biz) presentation on social media best practices.

My personal favorite was “The State of Global Innovation,” which brought to light the latest trends and advancements in online news abroad.

Overall, the conference was a huge success.  Our team was introduced to some of the top dogs at CBS Interactive, O Globo, YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo!, and Google.  Check out Evan Williams’ (founder, Twitter) keynote session:

We walked away with ideas that are invaluable to us as media professionals.  Additionally, we collected information we can share cross-departmentally that will ultimately shape us to be a better communications company.  A great opportunity to listen to knowledgeable speakers — visit the following link to see a list of speakers from ONA 2009.

It was made abundantly clear in discussions at the fifth annual IR Magazine Canada Think Tank, held October 1 in Toronto, that social networks, Web 2.0, and our real-time, mobile nature of communicating with each another have radically changed the practice of investor relations.   A growing percentage of the Canadian financial community is embracing social media and reaping its rewards.  They are tapping into channels like Facebook and Twitter to listen to and engage stakeholders, employees and analysts, and they are utilizing digital channels like YouTube, SlideShare, and podcasts to expand the reach of corporate messages and materials.

The perception that “IR folks don’t use social media” is false, and it’s becoming more apparent that across the discipline, IROs, buy- and sell-side analysts, stockholders, investors, and  financial media are tapping into these conversations at a steadily increasing rate.  A recent Brunswick Group survey of U.S. and European institutional investors and sell-side analysts (pdf) found that while the investment community looks to individual companies themselves as their primary source of information, social media channels are increasingly becoming influential.

According to Think Tank participants, to ignore the conversations that are taking place in social channels can often mean missed opportunities to connect with an entirely new audience and to gain valuable insight into real-time conversations about companies and among investors (and depending on the size of the organization, among employees themselves).  With more frequency, Canadian companies, both public and non-public, are entering the social space to be the voice of authority – not necessarily in a rigid, uni-directional way, but more to establish a corporate presence, quash rumour, correct erroneous dialogue and keep an eye on the competition.

Why partake in social media?

• Become the voice of authority
• Establish corporate presence
• Quash rumours
• Correct erroneous dialogue
• Keep an eye on the competition

Of course, let’s not forget that these are public companies whose communication is strictly regulated – it matters who receives what information when and over what channels.  Talk is not of replacing traditional, formal disclosure channels with social ones, but rather using social networks, blogs and microblogs to enhance the overall communication experience.  Companies who are not, at the very least, using Twitter to republish the headline of a news release and drive followers back to the corporate website are doing themselves a disservice.  Setting up even the simplest of Google Alerts to keep tabs on what’s being said about your company and your competition across the blogosphere is a step in the right direction.

(Caveat:  Think Tank events are “closed door” sessions with anonymity guaranteed to participants, so this report has been generalized to a degree.  You can read more about the event in the IR Magazine blog post Canadian IROs out of survival mode.)

The fifth annual Online News Association conference is being held this year in San Francisco and includes an amazing line-up of speakers and networking opportunities.  At the top of the conference, participants had already learned about Twisten.fm (Pandora’s cousin – a social media site for music), Muckrack (a journalist-only Twitter feed), and caught a quick glimpse of Yahoo!’s new editorial style guide. We collected a ton of marketing shwag and chatted with the editorial director of CNNMoney.com.

In the interest of objectivity, all media organizations provide great networking opportunities, but the information we obtain and relationships we forge at the Online News Association conference are invaluable to the livelihood of our business with respect to media relations.

This conference poses a question: Do you mourn the death of traditional media? According to Leo Laporte, host of ”This Week in Tech,” a netcast on TWiT.tv, the answer is “no.”  He says to embrace the transformation and remember that the public will always need great storytellers.

Sessions on the horizon include “Producing Content with Your Phone” and “From Flip to Web Via iMovie” – topics that are sure to shape the online news industry.

Check out the full speech, included below.