The Beat Goes On at StockTwits

Filed under Application, Discussion, Uncategorized by Allan Schoenberg on 30 March 2011 at 06:21 {3 comments}

I’ve written before on the various merits of StockTwits for B2B communicators and how it can be used as a listening tool for investor relations and communication teams. Who wouldn’t want real-time insight into their company from the people who invest and buy your products? Well, the company continues to gain momentum. As reported this week by IR Web Report, TechCrunch and Business Insider, the company has hired David Putnam, a senior product director from Yahoo! Finance. I’m excited for Putnam’s addition to the team and the energy he is going to bring. I’m also thrilled at the opportunity to work with him.

We remain a dedicated partner of StockTwits and here’s why I continue to endorse what they are doing:

  • Their official investor relations accounts give companies a dashboard look at what is being discussed. In addition, the official badge verifies a company to external people, making it a credible source of news and information, and provides internal teams metrics from the discussions. Here is a white paper from StockTwits on the investor relations account. StockTwits also is a great platform to help executive communicators showcase the value of social media to finance executives.
  • The company continues to develop new and innovative ideas. As a partner who is excited about working with StockTwits, it’s sometimes difficult for me to keep up with the passion and innovation produced by the company. Working with a company like this energizes our team to continue to think of new ways to reach our customers.
  • Take a closer look at the CNN Money pages. If you haven’t noticed yet StockTwits is providing a real-time stream from their site on the stock symbol pages. By the way, they’re on Yahoo! Finance too. And MarketWatch as well. Those are three very credible news sources all tapping into the StockTwits network.
  • There is a tremendous focus on community — taking out the features that made most message boards of the past useless and making sure value is added to the network. The team that works at StockTwits believe in what they’ve built and it shows in the quality and quantity of the content.
If you still haven’t looked at StockTwits as part of your company’s or your client’s social media planning  it’s probably time you rethink that strategy.

If you liked this post you should also read:

Should Investor Relations Teams Use Twitter?

Are You Using StockTwits?

Social Media for Financial Communicators

Should Investor Relations Teams Use Twitter?

Filed under Application, Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 1 September 2010 at 10:30 {4 comments}
Image representing StockTwits as depicted in C...
Image via CrunchBase

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.

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Show me the CNNMoney!

Filed under Discussion, Resources, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 31 March 2010 at 11:47 {no comments}

Yes, I’m riding the coattails of Jerry Maguire, but when it comes to marketing and communication sometimes we really do need to show management the money. After all, they’re running a business and we need to help them do that — whether that’s driving revenue or building our reputation (Shannon Paul has a great post on this topic Social Media and the C-Level). One growing area where all of us in B2B communications continue to learn is in the area of social media, and sometimes I think we forget that showing good examples doesn’t mean we have to create them.

I blogged on B2B Voices last year about the value of StockTwits as an investor relations tool. Well, once again the team over there has given another example of how to show the value of Twitter to monitor what is being said. Last month the company partnered with CNN Money to integrate a real time stock conversation widget powered by StockTwits. Check it out for yourself - CNN Money Real Time Tweets.

There are some key takeaways from this if you are at an agency working for a publicly traded company or work for a B2B company this is a listed company:

1. You should create an account at StockTwits and learn how to use the platform. As a side note, I often find the StockTwits platform more reliable than Twitter or Tweetdeck.

2. Send the CNNMoney link to your investor relations team. While they may not be using Twitter or may think that StockTwits is a fad they should see the value in CNN Money as a key source for the impact of Twitter and real-time conversations. It may spark an interest from them and give you a way to leverage an internal relationship to promote your efforts. I mentioned why getting internal buy-in for social media is important last year.

3. Keep looking for outside sources and third parties to build into your communication plan. We have a great relationship with StockTwits and continue to work with them to meet our objectives. Who are you using?

What are your thoughts? Do you use StockTwits? Have you partnered with outside resources? Tell us your stories.

Are you using StockTwits? If not, you need to give it a look

Filed under Application by Allan Schoenberg on 19 October 2009 at 00:03 {5 comments}

I can’ t recall the exact date I went to StockTwits online — it was about this time one year ago — but I do remember that I was immediately captivated by it. What the site essentially offers is real-time commentary by traders who use Twitter to discuss what they are doing. The company was co-founded by Soren Macbeth and Howard Lindzon. You can see Soren on CNBC from April 2009 here talking about the company. Howard also is a co-founder of the fund SocialLeverage, which has invested in companies like TweetDeck and Bit.ly.

StockTwits - Real Investors. Real Ideas. Real time.

StockTwits - Real Investors. Real Ideas. Real time.

While the site is geared towards traders of stocks, futures, options and currencies, it also can act as a source of vital information for communicators doing or working with investor relations. As a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: CME), I can watch what shareholders are saying about our company — how they react to our news, discuss the company, discuss competitors and trade our stock. Rather than wait to read the latest analyst reports or view a Google/Yahoo chat board, I can now read in real-time what our shareholders are talking about.  In addition, the page adds a real-time news stream about our company and a daily/weekly/monthly chart on our stock. If you work for a publicly traded company, or your clients are publicly traded, you now have a new tool to listen to a key audience.

Monitoring the competition also has its advantages via StockTwits. As outlined above, you can replicate the same strategy that you have established for your own company and now expand this to all your competitors. I’ve set up my StockTwits porfolio to track other financial exchanges in order to stay on track of their shareholder streams, how they are communicating to shareholders, and then report back anything I see as important or timely.

StockTwits has also expanded beyond their web site. The company recently launched a desktop application that has a look and feel of TweetDeck but geared toward traders. Two features I particularly like about the desktop application include: The ability to create or join individual groups that are topic specific (very helpful for our exchange-listed products to follow customers), and the ability to create groups in order to send private messages directly to the entire group or to multiple groups that don’t appear in the public stream. The company has also launched its own web TV program at StockTwits.tv.  

While I’ve found StockTwits to a must-have site for me, the integration of investor relations and social media is still young. I read this post last week on Investor Relations and Web 2.0 very helpful, especially the spreadsheet at the very end. The spreadsheet alone is worth the read and to share with your investor relations team. 

This week in Chicago is our annual Futures Industry Association Exposition. I was fortunate enough to be asked to lead the first social media panel for any conference hosted by our key industry association. This panel would not be complete without the participation of Howard Lindzon and StockTwits and he graciously accepted my invitation. I plan to follow up this post later this week with an interview with Howard. If you have any thoughts on StockTwits, investor relations and social media, or questions you want me to ask Howard let me know.

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