Social Media & Investor Relations
Guess What?
Your company has spent over $100M building its brand. ……Protect it.
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Defining RegFD
• Designed to prevent public companies from disclosing material information that may affect the price of one’s stock on a selective basis. • RegFD can be met by a press release, or more recently via company’s website • Note: To date, no public company has been investigated by the SEC for their involvement with traditional social media websites although several companies have modified their conduct.
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Defining Social Media
What is social media? – Encouraged by the SEC – A natural extension of many of your current in-house depts – Analyst interaction on steroids – 24/7: Social media is continuous – Prevalent • Lower barriers of entry for companies • Higher customer expectations – Successful • Shown to increase company visibility • Shown to increase revenues – Not going away….. As long as people interact online, your audiences are online
What Social Media is Not
• • • • • • • • • • • Replying to message boards Sharing information that has not been disclosed Cheap Easy Viral A one-way news broadcast platform Text only Non-responsive Static Perfect Online is forever….
Financial blogs and social networks
• Largest financial blog aggregator partnered with Yahoo!Finance. 4M unique users • Trading social network. Based on Twitter. 85K users, growing 500 a day. Now available via Bloomberg • Wiki finance portal. Social interactive data.
* Source: Q4
Public Companies on Twitter
- Best Buy - Cisco Systems - Toys 'R' Us - Dell - Johnson & Johnson - Wells Fargo - Microsoft - Time Warner - FedEx - New York Life Insurance - McDonald's
*Source: Brian Solis
- Oracle - Google - Avnet - Amazon.com - CBS - Texas Instruments - EMC - Monsanto - Whole Foods Market - Rubbermaid - Symantec
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Case Study: Dell
• Dell: Investor relations blog
• Results:
– Time saved – Stable stock price – Increased factual information sharing
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Case Study: Ebay
• Tweets analyst calls and other key pieces of information
• Results:
– Time saved – Stable stock price – Increased factual information sharing
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Case Study: Cisco
• Cisco: Uses its consumer-focused blogs to stave off rumors that could affect stock prices
• Results:
– Time saved – Stable stock price – Increased factual information sharing
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Time Saving Tips
• Repetitive phone calls
– Instead: Flush out the answers to these questions on your blog – Time saved: 1 hour a day, 5 hours a week, 260 hrs a year.
• Stock moves due to inaccurate information
– 8 hours to resolve the issue, 2 hours to write press release, etc. – Instead: Write a short, generic blog post providing accurate information – Time saved: 10 hours minimum + a more stable stock price
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How to Get Started
• Listen to your analysts
– Ask your analysts what sites they interact within and monitor those sites – Sign up for a monitoring service like SocialMention
• Measure your online footprint • Create a companywide social media policy
– Ensures solid company messaging and eliminates potential mistakes – Blog! Or at least participate on your blog
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Making Mistakes
• Everyone makes mistakes • Guess how long it took Dell to perfect its SM program? • What do you do about it
– Assess the situation/impact:
• • • • • • • • Size of site Audience Site visibility Site tone Update your blog with correct industry knowledge Outreach publicly Outreach privately Know when to shut up
– Determine response
SEC Resources*
• /rules/interp/2008/34-58288.pdf Aug. 08 interpretive guidance on websites • /pdf/disclosuredocs.pdf survey of individual investors on use of disclosure • /spotlight/xbrl.shtml XBRL home page (SEC webcast planned for 6/10/09) • /news/press/2009/2009-116.htm proxy access proposal • /rules/final/2007/34-56135.pdf e-proxy rules • Follow @SEC_News on Twitter
*Courtesy of Dick Johnson, IRCafé.com
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About Us
• Startup Army is a full-service agency with one main goal, to help our clients build a stronger business. • Startup Army offers Social Media executive briefings and consulting • Serena Ehrlich is a 15 year communications veteran providing social media strategy and implementation to a wide range of pubic and private clients. Serena is also the past president of NIRI – Los Angeles, NIRI – Dallas Fort Worth and co-founder, Corp. Sec. of the Social Media Club
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