Now let me first state that part of my professional skillset is taking complex technical information and translating it into easily digestible content. Having had a number of mining clients over the years I have a pretty good understanding of geo-speak so I found myself impressed (for the wrong reasons) by the fact that this company had managed to write and send over the wire a press release that I could not understand the relevance of.

Four pages long with just one paragraph break – the release might as well have been in a foreign language. As much out of professional curiosity as of shareholder interest, I contacted the company and had a call back from one of the IR team. To his credit, the IR was able to explain in less than a minute just what the actual ‘news’ was. He was less able to explain why an unintelligible press release had been used to communicate this news.

Even releases sent out purely to ensure regulatory compliance are opportunities to communicate so don’t pass them up. Walls of text are difficult to read and many people will simply not make the effort to wade through something that takes too much time and effort to understand.

The same goes for using too much technical language. Even tech-savvy or geo-savvy investors will appreciate you prefacing the tech-speak with an explanation of the news and its relevance. If you package and present your content so that it flows and is easily digested by readers who are pushed for time it will pay off.

Ultimately this is a smart move for Twitter and is likely to be a handy tool for companies that utilize Twitter properly. It should prove useful in getting a firmer grip on certain metrics and more successful engaging Twitter followings. Of course, you’ll still be able to link to survey’s on other sites (including your own) which will have the advantage of avoiding the Twitter survey fee but any tool that encourages participation (in this case – faster interaction) is likely to deliver greater results.

Have you ever used Twitter to promote a survey? What sort of engagement did you get? What are your thoughts overall? As ever, feel free to leave a comment or get in touch directly.

I’m not actually referring to the use of dashboards themselves but rather the fact that, if you read the article,  you’ll notice that most of the dashboards that Neil reviews plug users into a social community – either a gated-community of their own making or by integrating with existing platforms.

More than almost anyone else, those in the investment community have a deep appreciation for timely information to say the least. So, from an investor communications perspective this social integration is a welcome and exciting feature. The ability to perceive and act instantly on the combination of new market and social data – connecting with key brokers, investors and analysts is something that anyone in the investor relations world should leap at.

Now I know the use of online chat, Twitter and other Internet-based communications is not the preferred or even the standard approach for many IROs. Picking up the phone (or headset if you are a skype/IP phone fan) or meeting face to face is quite rightly an integral part of investor relations for a host of reasons. However, the fact remains that more and more members of the investment community are taking their affairs online and acquiring the knowledge and ability to engage them via this medium is a smart step to take. It shouldn’t be a replacement but rather an additional way in which you connect with investors, brokers and analysts.

When you do decide to step up your online game, be aware that there are numerous dashboards out there and just as many ways your company can monitor and engage with the online investment community. Deciding what works best for you personally and understanding where your  investors, brokers and analysts can be found online will be major factors in how you approach things. I’ll be tackle these subjects in subsequent posts so for now, if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me directly via davidm@publiccocommunications.com

This news has been in the pipeline for a while and following the announcement marketing software company, Hubspot, has written a couple of useful posts covering the details. I’ve pasted their general overview below and I also recommend you read their detailed analysis here.

Top level changes

• More prominently featured page elements, such as Company Updates and the Products & Services sections of your page.
• The ability to add a cover-style image that represents your company/brand to the top of your page.
• The availability of Company Pages on iPhone, Android, and iPad apps.
• A new look for the Career Pages section for select Company Pages.
• A more obvious, prominently displayed option for targeting your Company Updates to certain segments of your audience.

Only a select number of companies have already received the upgrade. The rest will be rolled out between now and the end of the year so when your time comes be sure to take advantage of it.

Rather than answer the unspoken question I suggested we spend ten minutes scrolling through some of the follower list of that competitor. My client’s amazement at their follower numbers soon turned to disbelief when, after the minutes (and followers) sped by we didn’t spot a single Twitter user on there follower list that had any relevance whatsoever to the company.

You can imagine his questions after we finally stopped. Here is the gist of my answer. There is plenty of marketing software out there that helps to manage social media activity. Audience and conversation research, content management and even audience growth can be automated to one extent or another. Given time and the right software anyone can amass a huge Twitter following. You can even, should you wish to do so, actually purchase Facebook ‘likes’ from third parties. Doing so, if you are trying to use these channels in a serious fashion is utterly pointless. The competitor in this instance had obviously hit the ‘go’ button on some Follower acquisition software but was not using a ‘human’ to vet the list of Twitter users that the marketing software had identified. The result was a huge but nevertheless empty list of followers.

The same rule of networking applies to the online work as it does face to face – Quality over Quantity. By all means use software and cloud-based services to reduce some of the grunt work in managing your social media activities but be absolutely certain to have someone (internally or externally) who understands your business managing and evaluating the programme correctly.

In fact just yesterday one of our clients was approached by a so-called online marketing firm which runs a stable of websites and several high quantity Twitter feeds. Note I say quantity rather than quality. They boasted that they could saturate Twitter with our client’s name and get them in front of hundreds of thousands of investors.

A quick trawl through one of their websites and five minutes scrolling down follower and tweet lists showed that the Twitter feeds were bot-controlled and the tweets ranging from nonsense to almost outrageously non-compliant. In other words, a dangerous waste of time and money for unsuspecting companies looking to outsource their online communications.

So what is Twitter really about? At time of writing, Twitter has nearly 500 million registered profiles and over 100 million active users. With such vast numbers you could be forgiven for thinking that you need an advertising, scattergun approach to capturing the attention of the right people. The problem is it doesn’t work like that. Oh you can use that approach but when it comes to investor relations, that strategy is likely to do more harm that good.

Following someone on Twitter has now become similar to giving out your email address – you don’t want to be spammed and nor do you want unsolicited contact. This means that genuine Twitter users (and by that I mean human rather than bot-run), particularly those utilizing Twitter for work or investment purposes tend to be very selective in who they follow. Since it’s the genuine users that you’re after, you need to identify the right ones using the correct identification and search procedures and you need to give them what they want and that means quality content. This holds true whether your Twitter usage is IR related or more mainstream marketing.

A content strategy that prioritizes quality is vital to leveraging the potential of Twitter. You need to give users a reason to follow back or find you of their own accord, you need to increase the number of retweets from high profile and respected influencers, you need to encourage people to actually read your tweets and click on links that you’ve inserted. You also, of course, need to ensure your content is compliant with regulations. In theory I shouldn’t need to mention compliance (it should be a given) but we are regularly amazed at how far some companies and so-called social media firms or consultants will sometimes go, and the risks they take, when it comes to social media communication.

If you’ve recently started up a Twitter feed for IR purposes or are thinking of doing so, feel free to get in touch and tell us how things are going.

I spent some time after the conference checking out the social media presence for each of the companies these IR execs represented and was not surprised at what I found. In much of the IR world, particularly in certain sectors such as mining and energy, social media retains a shroud of mystery, as if it were a new and popular fad that will fade in time. The result is that many IRs who try it out, do so without really understanding the requirements for successful engagement.

Social media – and by this I mean socialized media and social networking – is not rocket science. It is a communication channel first and foremost. Yes it has some particular qualities compared to other forms of communication – principally it’s potential for two-way engagement with your audience – but if anything these qualities reinforce the need for the same best practice that applies to all communications.

Best practice encompasses a number of elements but for now, based on what I found during and after the IR conference, I want to highlight just two: activity and content.

If you have set up an account on Twitter, StockTwits, Facebook or some other social network then make sure you use it daily. Visiting an account page that does not feature regular updates is like visiting a store that has hardly any product on the shelves – you leave unimpressed and unlikely to return. Moreover, as you start to build up an online audience and followers you need to engage them regularly, after all, what’s the point in connecting with them if you’re not going to leverage their attention?

Of course, daily updates means you need regular content and this was the second area where most of the execs I spoke to had fallen down. Your target audience, and here I’m talking about investors, brokers, analysts and journalists, expect useful information from you. Simply posting share prices daily is not going to cut it and that means you need a content strategy before you push the ‘go’ button on social media which will enable you to generate and promote content that is useful to your audience, draws them to your social media pages and website on a regular basis, furthers your business goals and is compliant.

Yes, this approach takes ongoing time and effort but without it social media will be of little practical use to your company.

Effective corporate reputation management is comprised of many elements, one of the most important of which is stakeholder communications. Stakeholders come in many forms: investors, regulators, customers, legislators and of course the Media. Regardless of size, it is vital that public companies build and maintain good relationships with each group because left alone, stakeholders can and will receive information from many sources some of which may be less than reliable or include deliberate misinformation.

Consistency, understanding and preparation are three of the watchwords that public companies should hold dear:

Consistency of message – it is vital that the same key messages are communicated across the board. With such a large audience and so many channels available, your company must talk with a unified voice.

While your message must be consistent, you also need to understand your audiences in terms of what information they need to know and how they prefer to receive and engage with it. Press releases, briefings, statements, pod casts, tweets, blog posts… understand your audiences and channels.

Ensure your spokespeople are prepared so that they can and will be able to respond correctly, consistently and in a timely manner to enquiries from any stakeholders and you can reach out quickly to intercept any issues.

Managing your stakeholder relationships will help to build and protect your corporate reputation, directly benefiting your company at multiple levels.

Distinct PR was the only public relations agency that the company had decided to speak to. The other companies pitching for the business were all pure-play social media companies. Now I happen to know some social media firms that are very, very good at what they do – they understand social media’s place in the larger marketing mix and what is needed to deliver genuine business-orientated results (and I’m not talking number of likes, fans or follows).

Unfortunately the social media consultants that we were pitching against did not fall into the knowledgeable category and had instead filled the prospective client’s collective head with such meaningless drivel that even I, with many years of consultancy under my belt, was appalled. I’m not going to bore you with a lengthy account of the uphill battle to re-educate the prospect’s execs (which was successful because we got the business) but I do want to pierce a few of the smoke and mirrors that are being employed by certain firms and consultants out there.

It’s not about the packaging: It takes minutes to set up an account on most social media platforms. Sure, you can have a custom-made page for platforms like Facebook and this can take some time but be wary of anyone who makes a big song and dance out of getting you set up on the various platforms and creating specialized pages for you. Having a great looking page is worthless if you don’t have a corresponding content creation program.

Automation and integration: It doesn’t take long to send out updates on each platform so don’t be impressed by anyone stressing how they will update every single platform out there. There are many 3rd party programs out there that will enable you to put out a single update (tweet, wall posting, status update, etc) and have it published across multiple platforms simultaneously.

The right tool for the job: There are many forms of social media and online communities out there – from the big networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, to countless forums, blogs and more. Just because they all exist, doesn’t mean they are right for your company. Question anyone that gives you a long list of social media networks and communities that they will help you engage with. Depending upon your business model and industry, you may only need to get involved with one or two forms of social media to show the right ROI.

Of course, it’s one thing to know what to avoid, it’s another to know what to go for. I could write multiple posts on the subject of conducting social media in a professional manner that generates the right results but since this post is about what to avoid, let me finish by saying that if you find yourself on the receiving end of a social media proposal, if it doesn’t talk about things like audience analysis, listening exercises, joining and starting conversations and above all content creation then kick it into touch.

Now I’m not going to discuss the merits of social media networking vs offline, face-to-face networking – both are important in today’s business world. However, many of those involved in social media – from marketing and PR pros to industry observers – have become so obsessed with the numbers game – be it FB Likes, Google +1. Klout +K, LinkedIn Connections and Twitter Followers, that the art of genuine networking seems to be getting lost in the noise.

It was with delight therefore that I came across an article on networking, well an annotated slideshow actually, in the Harvard Business Review that discusses and advises on the art of networking at work. The main takeaways from the slideshow are as follows:

• Build outward not inward – don’t deepen connections with people you already know well – reach out to those outside of your main circle.
• Focus on diversity not size – focus on adding people with skill sets, experiences and views that differ from others in your network.
• Build weak ties, not strong ones – sounds strange but the idea is that strong ties tend to be your friends whereas weak ties (which only need contact a few times per month) are often your window and access point to skills and experience that you don’t share.
• Use hubs, not familiar faces – identify and reach out to hubs – those who are established and well-connected.