Should Investor Relations Teams Use Twitter?

We’ve talked in the past here on B2B Voices about using StockTwits to track and follow what people are saying about your publicly traded clients or company. And recently the company announced it is now offering verified investor relations accounts.The new investor relations accounts launched with three companies: Ford, HP and CME Group (Disclaimer: I work in corporate communications at CME Group and we also partner with StockTwits for our futures products).

So this sounds great. Sign onto Twitter/StockTwits and start tweeting, right? Well, like all things in communications, you need to nail your strategy first. Here are some thought starters on how/why to use StockTwits for investor relations:

• Objectives: Know what you want to get out of StockTwits first. This isn’t the place to spam users and and not talk back. The network of traders mean business and these are smart people. Before you get involved have an idea of how you plan to use the platform.
• Monitoring: It’s been said so often but you can’t ignore the fact that people (shareholders) are talking about your company. You need to follow the sentiment. Not that you can use Twitter to change the price of your stock, but if there are false rumors or statements you should correct them.
• Promotion: Material information (e.g, new products/services, earnings) should be communicated to your target audience of investors and StockTwits allows you to do that.
• Disclosure: Know and understand both the SEC requirements and your client/company’s policies. If you want to brush up on these issues the fourth annual Financial Markets World conference on social media disclosure is taking place this September.

In addition, if you haven’t been reading the IR Web Report you should. The site if full of useful information for investor relations and public relations professionals alike. For instance, the site recently published a report that 41% of publicly traded companies do not use PR news wire services. This number could decrease as the site points out that, “…rule changes by the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ Stock Market now recognize SEC filings and website postings as fully meeting their disclosure requirements.” This ruling creates a great opportunity for services like StockTwits to fill a void of communicating financial news for companies.

As communicators we have a responsibility to consistently look for new and innovative ways to communicate to our stakeholders. Using tools like blogs, Facebook and Twitter have provided a wealth of options, but I’ve always believed that these tools must fit into your overall business and communication goals and objectives. These aren’t silver bullets to solve your challenges. Services like StockTwits provide us with another way to enhance our efforts and bring the corporate communications and investor relations functions closer together.

My recommended next steps for you would be the following:

1. If you have clients or work for a publicly traded company go to StockTwits and search for them using their stock symbol. I suggest you bookmark these sites or add them to your RSS feed in order to follow them regularly.
2. Subscribe to the IR Web Report in your RSS feed.
3. Review your current communications plan and how you are integrating social media as a communication tool.
4. Set up a meeting with your investor relations team and discuss how StockTwits can add value to your clients/company.

In addition, don’t just think StockTwits is for publicly traded companies. The company just launched a service to track privately held companies as well. You may want to see if your client/company is listed.

Finally, congratulations to the team at StockTwits for all their hard work, which paid off by being named by Time magazine as one of the 50 best websites of 2010. Another validation for the use of social media in the business world.

What are your thoughts and experiences on this topic? Let us know.