2012: No Predictions, Just Actions

Filed under Application, Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 21 December 2011 at 08:20 {7 comments}

Everyone seems to have dusted off their crystal balls the past few weeks as the predictions for social media in 2012 are plentiful. I  stopped reading them. There are only a handful of people who are making predictions that I would trust, and after seeing so many most are not taking into account the current economic climate and the themes are too repetitive.

Instead of adding to the overcrowded space of predictions I want to focus on actions. The path for next year is clearly lined with more questions than answers. So, what am I looking at in 2012, a year clouded with economic uncertainty and promises for social media nirvana? Here’s a rundown of what’s on my agenda and questions you may need to ask yourself:

What's ahead for you in 2012?

  • Digital Content: We’re doing a lot more with digital content on our website and that will continue. What we’ve learned from the past few years of doing social media is that we have become our own media aggregator with original content that cannot be captured anywhere else. Whether it’s our blog, our online magazine, our media room or our education center, various stakeholders look to us for content and we will continue to drive more of that next year. What are your plans for digital content in 2012? Have you developed an editorial calendar? Do you have an editorial team?
  • Mobile: This was a great year for us and using mobile devices as we expanded our iPhone/iPad offering to the Android and Blackberry. In addition, we introduced an app specifically for our annual Global Financial Leadership event. Our research continues to show that users are moving more and more toward accessing our site from mobile devices and we know that consumers in general are digesting more information via their mobile devices. We will continue to enhance our mobile strategy in 2012 not only for distributing content through social platforms but also for giving people access to our information. How are you integrating mobile into your marketing strategy? What type of research do you have on people accessing your content from mobile devices?
  • Real-time matters: We’ve been using Twitter since 2008 and are one of the few verified brands. In our line of business, real-time news and information matters and for the markets and finance this won’t change. David Meerman Scott’s latest book on real-time marketing captures exactly how we approach this world of instant news. Where we’ll be looking at improving on what we’ve already accomplished is with our partnership with StockTwits. Messages about our products and services in the past year surged from 15,000 a month a year ago to more than 40,000 a month last year on their platform. Does real-time matter to you and your business? Are you targeting the right people on Twitter? Do you have a plan for how you can leverage StockTwits and the messages about your company?
  • Social networks: Facebook will still be a part of our plan and remains a great way to connect with customers in a more static environment. We can create very topical conversations around news and events on our page and that won’t change. We do know that Facebook fans are passionate about topics and the stream has changed our approach to this platform and has helped in creating more awareness about our offerings. We can’t ignore either of those facts. The challenge for 2012 will be to figure out how to use our Google+ page, but first I think Google needs to figure out Google+ for brands. I don’t see a lot of focus there yet from Google so do not plan to spend much time there. At the best right now it’s an experiment in SEO. How are you going to handle new technologies that come out in 2012? Do you have an assessment plan or team in place?
  • LinkedIn: I am a long-time fan of LinkedIn for the B2B market and am very excited about 2012. The company has made some great changes to the corporate pages managed by companies and added a much needed dashboard for group managers. Both of these additions have been much needed and further enhance LinkedIn as a social business platform. We continue to leverage the groups and the private feature has allowed us to create a 24/7 virtual focus group environment where we talk with our customers. We will putting more emphasis on LinkedIn in the coming year and finding ways to better improve what we do for the benefit of our customers. How do you leverage the groups on LinkedIn? Is your company page a place where potential employees view you as a thought leader? How do you get others in your organization involved in LinkedIn?
  • Video: We do have a YouTube presence, but our video strategy continues to focus on bringing people to our location. Our website continues to be populated with video content in a number of places and videos allow us to visually tell our story through our spokespeople, customers and thought leaders. We’ll continue to build content that includes video as a key component and through our social platforms bring this content to our followers. How are you leveraging videos? What is your distribution plan? Do you use video to complement content?
  • Metrics: I’ve always believed that in order to manage content you have to know what is happening. So metrics and measurement continue to play a very active part of what we do and this will continue to be the trend for us in 2012. We have a number of tools that we use that include both qualitative and quantitative metrics for us to better understand what we are doing. Are you measuring the right information? How are you making decisions based on your data?
  • Experiment: We did a lot in 2011 to try new things and apply new technologies. For example, we integrated Facebook comments onto our digital magazine, started using Google+ brand pages, launched our Weibo account in China, and made several changes to our LinkedIn company profile. In the coming year we will continue to do the same and experiment where it makes sense. New technologies and enhancements are now the norm and finding ways to leverage them will be a challenge. How do you stay on top of the latest information? Do you have a social team to review and plan for new initiatives? How do you prioritize what to implement and where to hold off?
  • A Social Business: In 2011, we continued to integrate our social media with our business. One of the best posts I’ve read on this topic is from David Armano and Demystifying Social Business. When I started using social media at the company in 2007 it very much was a silo channel for us, but in the past year we have made great strides as an organization to integrate it throughout the company. That will continue in 2012 with our sales force, marketing activities and with our employees. How do you communicate your social initiatives internally? Have you implemented any training or education programs? Do you have social guidelines for employees and if so when was the last time you reviewed it?

The coming year promises to be another exciting year for communicators. We will not only face a global economy that has numerous challenges for our businesses, but we are being inundated with new and various tools to communicate with our stakeholders. Finding the balance between those two will help determine success for each of our enterprises and I wish you all the best of luck.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study

World-Class social practices for B2B companies

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses?

Social Clutter or Social Clarity?

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 14 December 2011 at 14:54 {9 comments}

The past year has been a year of more dashboards, more ways to measure, more apps, more blogs and just more of more. And it’s all happening in real-time. So how can we keep track of what we need to keep track of without losing track of things to track? In fact, there’s so much content that we now call wading through it all content curation.

What do you see? Clutter or potential content?

From our standpoint, we tend to have a lot of information to review and manage; check out our Twitter feed to get an idea of the vast array of topics we need to cover. In order to manage all that’s going on in our world here are my thoughts on what works for me:

  • Use a Social Platform: We use Hootsuite and StockTwits for similar and different reasons, but they both work well for us. The reality is there is just no way you can manage finding and reading the content you need and a social platform brings to you the items you need. In addition, most of these now offer a mobile app as well so that you can use while you are away from your desk. The mobile apps tend not to offer the same robust functionality of the desktop versions, but they are good enough to get the job done.
  • Review Content Regularly. While time consuming, reviewing the sources your following and reading the content will you keep your sources fresh. I often add sources based on news cycles and trends in order to help me stay on top of what’s happening right now that we need to know. This is probably the most difficult part of the process but also the most important. Twitter lists in my opinion are the best resource for you in order to do this. I also still rely on RSS feeds and Google Reader. By having both of these tools I can cover just about every news source and person that I need to follow.
  • Research Your Audience. Again, another obvious observation, but how often do you review a news outlet on Facebook to look for inspiration? Or do you take time to look at a few days worth of your most important Twitter followers?  Take the time to learn from them — what they post and how often — and decide how you need to make adjustments.
  • Make Time. Easier said than done, but if you take a little bit of time each day or week to review how you read and distribute content as well as the tools you (may) need you will get better at it. Once you find a routine it does get easier.

What makes this so difficult to control is the rate at which things are changing. If you think you can get into a routine with content curation you’re wrong. There is no cruise control, which makes this a very demanding art to master. What you need to really do is get organized. While my desk wouldn’t show my great organization skills, I have become quite good at organizing my online content.

Perhaps the best advice is to just make sure you step away and let the world go by at times. Don’t ever rule out taking time for yourself away from the digital domains where we tend to reside today. I’ve often found that some of my best ideas for online content and content management come from writing in my Moleskine while grabbing a coffee — or even dumping a box of my son’s Legos on the floor and taking a photo.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

Content Curation: What Does it Take To Be Successful?

What’s your “I” in social media?

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

How are you measuring influence?

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 6 December 2011 at 12:31 {one comment}

Last week I spoke at the European Corporate Communications Social Media Summit on tracking influence and the non-financial ROI. The topic has been a key issue for our industry in 2011 as offerings such as Klout, Peer Index and the Social Business Index have garnered plenty of attention — both good and bad. I’ve written on this blog before about ROI (Return on Influence) as has Aaron Pearson (Dare we measure ROI?) and I’ve also written about the Social Business Index. The subject warrants discussion as B2B companies are devoting more resources to social media and in particular working to discover and measure what matters — the people, messages and sources.

For my presentation I was asked to address what we are doing and to help the audience target two questions:  Where should your business be spending its time and how much time should you allocate to the social channels?

I will admit, this is nearly an impossible topic to talk about and discuss in any great detail in under 60 minutes.

When I look at measuring the effectiveness of what we are doing I like to break down our metrics into two categories. By doing so, it helps me to focus on both the quantitative and qualitative items that can help us see what’s working and who/what matters. The two sets of metrics I like to reference are Attention Metrics and Influence Metrics.

Attention metrics tend to have a bad reputation. But don’t discount them. While they are hardly scientific and lack context, they can help validate over time topics and issues that matter to your audience and who you are trying to reach. Keep in mind that these are a helpful guide — but treat them as a guide since they are easily and readily accessible, but lack the depth you need to act on any strategic decision making.

The second set of metrics I prefer for better analysis are what I call the Influence Metrics. These will take more time from you and your team to assess, but certainly can give you a better indication of the content and people that matter to you. For instance, location metrics can better help you understand if you need to translate content or even add more content to focus on other regions, but you need to get an understanding from the business if that’s really ideal to sales and revenue generation. In our case, seeing the growing traffic from China helped make our decision to join Weibo. Another metric that matters is trying to know the people who talk about your company and products, but it’s not as simple as seeing if they’ve retweeted you or posted something on your Facebook page (more than likely they have not). You will need to find the tools and resources needed to locate and engage with them both online and in person. Take a read at what Vann Morris wrote about the value of B2B relationships in social media if you want to learn more.

The conclusion of my discussion was more of a reminder than anything else. It’s key for any program — social or traditional — to focus on what you are trying to achieve and how you will get there. I like to use a three step process that I’ve used for many other forms of communication — new product launches, events and white papers. First, decide what it is you want to accomplish with your program. In the case of social media this could be to increase the number of positive conversations (or decrease the negative) and build relationships with the people online whose opinions matter most (customers, bloggers, journalists); understand the metrics you will want to use; and, finally, analyze the content and then repeat. You may find that you need to change what you want to accomplish or perhaps you were measuring the wrong item. Some programs we use require more detail and more steps, but these three should provide a good foundation.

Even as the existing tools get better and more tools are introduced (like Awe.sm — and I suggest you try this one), the key to remember is that you need to always focus on what you are trying to achieve. You may need to adjust your tactics, but use your metrics to better understand if you reaching your goal — and don’t lose sight of your goal.

So what’s Next for ROI? I pointed to four key trends that we are all going to need to pay attention to in the coming year.

  • We are awash with data. At times it seems like we are drowning. But don’t despair as the technology to analyze this will continue to get better. Will it be perfect? More than likely not, but it will continue to evolve and help us better evaluate what we are doing. My suggestion is that you not enter into any long-term vendor agreements and make a concentrated effort to use the tools. The more you can engage with your metrics the better you will be able to tell a story about what’s happening with your brand.
  • CRM will matter even more, which means communications and sales have a tremendous opportunity to gather social data and apply it toward sales relationships. Salesforce.com continues to integrate social capabilities and will provide more insight on your customers. While I’m a bit sceptical for the early results, it’s a step in the right direction and needs to be watched closely.
  • There’s not a silver bullet and never will be. There are some great resources and tools that help you move in the right direction, but one solution will not work for everything. If that’s what you’re looking for and expecting you will be disappointed. If you focus on using the tools to make you more efficient and better utilize your resources you will certainly move in the right direction.
  • Everything will move in real time. Are you ready for a real-time B2B world? Not only is the data growing exponentially, but it’s moving faster and faster every day. For example, StockTwits helps investor relations professionals now monitor real-time conversation, and those discussions are growing (we monitor nearly 45,000 posts each month about our products). Are you ready to monitor, report on and respond to this new era of public communication? In 2012 more B2B companies will look at who staffs and responds to these issues and the centralized v decentralized model debate will continue.

What are you thoughts on measuring and influence? Is this a case of too much information to make it matter or can we cut through the noise and build business solutions?

And while I like to delve into our metrics I continue to learn more from reading what some of the true thought leaders on this subject have to say. Here are some resources on this topic that you should read:

Social Media Measurement 2011: Five things to forget and five things to learn – Metrics Man

The Digitization of Research and Measurement – Metrics Man

Social Media Impact Takes Awhile to Gauge – KD Paine

Real Time is Wrong Time in Measurement — KD Paine

Making Business Decisions Through Data — Logic & Emotion

Why Online Relationships Matter — B2B Ideas@Work

12 Tools to Measure Social Media Influence (Maybe) – Social Media Today

Social influence matters! No, it doesn’t! — B2B Voices

Are You Ready for a Real-Time B2B World?

Filed under Discussion, Resources by Allan Schoenberg on 3 October 2011 at 07:28 {no comments}

The past two weeks may have been an eye opener for firms who tend to ignore the “real time” world.  In fact, we may be reaching a tipping point as more and more data comes online via social media. That tipping point comes in the form of a competitive advantage for some. Some companies, like StockTwits, took this trend seriously three years ago and developed ways for B2B firms to use social media. We are now seeing more and more B2B companies, such as the hedge Fund Derwent Capital, put this data to use.

How are you managing "real time"?

And while companies like Twitter and Google (search only since Google+ brands pages have yet to officially launch) have been leading the way for B2B brands to look at and use real-time news and analysis, recent changes at Facebook are now under scrutiny by brands. With these three firms firmly racing to be the platform of choice for sharing information, as communicators in the B2B world we need to think about all of the options to meet the needs of our brand.

A number of stories and posts have come out in the past week showing how the mining of real-time data is making many companies and brands take notice. Here’s a sampling of the stories you should read:

The Economist: What’s in a Tweet

But companies that mine the stream of tweets for marketing and other purposes (see article in this week’s issue of The Economist) get much more information.

The Economist: Sipping from the Firehose

Fed through clever algorithms, a torrent of microblogs can reveal changes in a nation’s mood. Hence the excitement about a new market: the sale and analysis of real-time social-media data.

Think Quarterly (Google): Predicting the Present

Using the publicly available tools mentioned above, we’ve uncovered a number of interesting relationships.

Google: Predicting the Present with Google Trends

Can Google queries help predict economic activity?

Business Insider: What Facebook’s Changes mean for Brands

The key takeaway for brands is that the News Feed matters ⎯ a lot. For most brands, the News Feed is their best chance for interacting with fans (aka consumers).

UPDATE: This story from the WSJ also takes a look at real-time data analysis.

WSJ: Decoding our Chatter

Want to monitor an earthquake, track political activity or predict the upds and downs of the stock market? Researchers have found a bonanza of real-time data in the torrential flow of Twitter feeds.

So what can you do now armed with this info? Here are two takeaways from the recent news:

  • Now is a good time to take another look at your social media strategy and reassess what you are doing and what you are posting. We do this on a regular basis as new trends and technologies are introduced, but also as we connect with new users.
  • Share this info internally. But don’t just share this with the marketing and communications team, make sure the right technology and research managers know that you are watching this trend. You want to continue to push these changes internally and to ensure you can help evolve the business case around real-time information.

One objective of this blog is to continue to raise the business relevance of social media in B2B communications. We continue to look for examples and ways that companies are doing this in order for all of us to learn. Hopefully, we’re helping accomplish that and we can continue to build on this objective. Stories like I mentioned above add further evidence to the important of real-time information, which is taking place more and more online in public forums. As these stories develop we will share our thoughts with you and look for your comments.

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

The Beat Goes on at StockTwits

Need a Strategy? Start by Playing Games

Using Social Networking Sites in B2B Businesses

Has Social Media in Financial Services Arrived?

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 10 May 2011 at 07:15 {2 comments}

It’s been a busy week for social media in financial services…and it’s only Tuesday.

For years I’ve been an advocate of using social media in a B2B/financial services setting. I recently spoke in London at the Finextra conference about our experiences. It allows you to educate, build advocacy and monitor for issues. There is clearly no doubt that social media has made its mark with consumer brands and in breaking news. But who is lagging and why? Many have pointed to the financial services industry as being the late adopter. In some cases this is true, but in others it is not (e.g. at CME Group we’ve been using social media since mid-2007).

But in the past few days there has been a flurry of news surrounding social media and financial services. Why now? Before I answer that let’s look at what’s been written:

Financial Times: Embracing trends in social networks

Reputation is one of the most valuable assets companies possess, but controlling it amid the rising influence of social media is a growing challenge. Financial services personnel who naively think their company has no presence on social network sites are sadly mistaken, according to Mark Park, head of digital at MHP, a London-based public relations consultancy.

Financial Times: Twitter research promises trading success

However, because these tweets are effectively broadcast for global consumption they can be data mined.

Gorkana: To tweet or not to tweet

Current and potential clients of asset managers increasingly consume their news and conduct their research into new products on the web. The frenetic blackberrying of business people on commuter trains, in airports and by the pool on holiday are reminders of this trend.

Asset managers need to start experimenting and take some steps into the world of social media. At the very least, it is clear that social media is becoming an increasingly important communications tool for journalists and offers asset managers additional ways of communicating with its stakeholders in a very personal and interactive way.

USA Today: Wall Street traders mine tweets to gain a trading edge

Measuring investor sentiment has long been used by financiers as a tool to divine the future direction of stocks. But traditional tools are decidedly low-tech and less timely, such as the weekly polling of individual investors and financial newsletter editors to see how many are bullish and how many are bearish.

The skyrocketing use of chatty and highly trafficked sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube has created a fresh, massive and useful warehouse of new data. Sophisticated investors view the mining of digital chatter via machines as a way to gain an edge.

Derwent Capital Markets, a London-based hedge fund, was so taken with Bollen’s findings that it will soon launch a fund based on the methodology in his paper.

StreamBase: Twitter and trading – a ripple in the big data wave

In these terms, all of Twitter generates only a sand castle of quality data a day. While some of that data is very valuable, such as tweets from CME Group (@CMEGroup), most of it simply tells us about mass sentiment. And because its open and available to everyone, it doesn’t provide an unfair advantage to the computers of Wall Street. On the other hand, the talk about Twitter does reveal the opportunity and challenge of big data.

Wired: CNN Money relaunches website, adds StockTwits for Wall Street Chatter

CNNMoney will begin pulling content from StockTwits’ network of 55 independent bloggers, Lindzon told Wired.com by phone. “Our goal is to make our stream richer with great content, not just tweets,” Lindzon said.

As Twitter has insinuated itself into so many aspects of our lives — as well as major industries, institutions and companies — Wall Street and the broader finance world have been somewhat behind the curve on harnessing social media. With its new redesign and partnership with StockTwits, CNNMoney clearly hopes to change that.

So what’s changed?

First, we’ve had an enormous amount of media attention given to social media companies and its use, from LinkedIn’s up and coming IPO to Facebook talking to Baidu of China to the Royal Wedding in London (infographic), it’s been difficult to escape the usefulness as well as widespread use of social media. In fact, many will argue social media is now the norm.

Second, we’ve seen the financial services industry show an interest in investing in social media companies. Clearly they see value in these organizations.

Third, I think as an industry we’ve had good direction and guidelines set by regulators that have helped define what is acceptable.

But those three reasons alone don’t necessarily justify the recent uptake and interest in using social media by the industry. The real reason as nearly every story above indicated comes down to one word: data. Information, sentiment, links and more on social networks are creating a mountain of data. We’re finally at a point where we have so much data about economies, companies and markets that it can be useful. For instance, just look at this chart generated by LinkedIn at the rise in the number of links shared on its network.

While some may think that the recent firehouse of data is just too much, smart companies will be able to wade through the information and data. Google Analytics is one way of doing this. Using StockTwits to follow your company is another way. Hootsuite also has recently updated its tools for users to better refine and measure effectiveness. And PR firm Cognito has recently launched its own tool for financial services companies to help monitor social media.

So what can a B2B company — not just a financial services company — do to navigate the data? First, have a plan. The best way to do this is to conduct a social media audit. Know what you want to achieve from using social media and more importantly what you want to find out. Second, search for the right tools. You will need to take some time to do this but a good place to start is searching through the Mashable site. In addition, make sure the tools you use fit into your overall branding efforts. Third, build your own social network. Connect with people at the companies you want to emulate and see what they are doing. I’ve always felt that benchmarking — not copying — against others in a variety of industries will help you think smarter. Finally, always remember the focus is on giving your followers what they want. This may take some experimenting but don’t be afraid of failing.

We’ll see in the coming months and year what other changes financial services firms make to their social outreach. Not only will the results of Derwent Capital be followed closely, but I think we’ll see an evolution (not a revolution) of financial services firms being more active in social media. Some great destinations to watch these trends unfold include The Financial Brand, IR Web Report, StockTwits and Visible Banking.

Let me know your thoughts, but more importantly your questions, on this this topic.
If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

Visualizing B2B Social media marketing

Finextra: The growth of social media in financial services

Is motivation the key to success?

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

It’s Social Media Week — Do You Know Where Your Brand Is?

Filed under Application, Case Study, Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 7 February 2011 at 08:19 {2 comments}

Today marks the launch of Social Media Week around the world and there’s a lot going on. I’m hoping to get to one or two events this week in London. With so much taking place around the world it’s clear that the days of not paying attention to social media are over.

To me the foundation of social media — any media for that matter — is the concept of listening. Who is talking about your brand? What are they saying? Why should you care? What can you do? The rapid growth of technologies makes it far more easier to discover the answers to these questions, but my advice is don’t just use anything. Find the right tools. Here are some that I particularly like and have used to help us.

  • StockTwits: I’ve talked for months about the value of this network from an investor relations perspective. But the platform brings a much richer experience than traders just talking about puts and calls on your stock. This is a constant stream of investors who are also talking about your executives, products and services. You should register and tune in.
  • Hootsuite: I like what Hootsuite has done with its dashboard in terms of metrics and its ease of use. Because of the platform and how simple it is we can really take a deeper dive into specific topics and the people talking with us and about us. There’s also an ongoing debate around Klout, which is integrated into Hootsuite — I’m following the discussion closely. In fact, I just started an online poll about Klout the other day — http://twtpoll.com/s4luaa
  • 14 Blocks: This is a very simple tool that looks at the time your followers on Twitter are most active. The free trial is useful and does give you a good indication of when to engage with your audience.
  • Facebook: We continue to gain a larger audience on Facebook and I continue to be impressed with their analytics. I think they could improve them with more information about topics that our followers discuss, but I’m sure they’re working on that. And if you haven’t tried Facebook ads yet I would encourage you to do so. I think you’ll be surprised.
  • Omniture: If you’re not talking to your website team about this you should make it a point to do so this week. Their tools for your website can give you a much better picture of social media traffic and how you can improve your programs. Your web team will also appreciate the attention and how they can help. It’s a win-win.

There are lots of other tools and resources out there. In fact, my good friend Ken Burbary has created a Wiki of social media monitoring resources to use.  So what are you using to listen and why to you like it? Let us know.

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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Social Media for Financial Communicators

Filed under Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 22 June 2010 at 14:18 {no comments}

Last week the exchange co-sponsored the Ragan Communications Social Media for Financial Communicators event with our business partner NASDAQ OMX. You can review the entire event on the Facebook page created by Ragan. I was encouraged by the content of this event since it was so narrowly defined for financial communications – and I think a vertical industry focus is certainly the next big phase in social media. And even though the financial services industry is heavily regulated, there were many great examples of companies using various platforms. ragan conf

If you attended this event you came away thinking, “There really are few reasons to not be doing social media.” Kudos to Mark Ragan and his great staff for putting this event together. I wasn’t able to attend every session but here are my reactions from the panels I did watch.

Be the brand: I have always said that social media at the exchange was never a silver bullet. I think companies that take the approach that social media can “save” their brand are misguided. It must fit within your existing brand and support various initiatives.  Steve O’Halloran from ING Direct discussed this during his presentation. He used many real world examples of what ING Direct has done with social media to reemphasize all of the qualities that make the bank unique, fun and a leader in its category (NOTE: I am not currently an ING Direct customer). In particular, Steve showed how they are really helping customers online to learn more about saving money and promote financial advocacy. And even though ING Direct does not have bank branches they do have some of the best cafes to visit. What are you doing to reinforce your brand in social media?

Social media for investor relations is coming…are you ready?: I was pleased to hear from Phil Pearlman at StockTwits that they are soon launching an investor relations tool on their site. We’ve talked about StockTwits before on B2B Voices as an investor relations tool and this is positive news. While this isn’t live yet I’m sure given the focus of the team at StockTwits that this will be a great application and take their offering to another level. If you have yet to visit StockTwits you should check it out — especially if you work for a publicly traded company. What I like most about the potential of this tool is the ability for public relations and investor relations to collaborate more online using social media. Ironically, NIRI’s annual conference took place a few weeks ago and from people I know who attended the discussion around social media was a footnote. This could be a great opportunity for you to work with your finance team and play a key role in educating your C-suite about social media.

And now  word from the journalists. A panel of financial journalists — Felix Salmon, Reuters; Stacey-Marie Ismael, FT Alphaville; Connell McShane, FOX Business — answered questions about their use of social media. I was lucky enough to sit on the panel representing the interests of communicators. Felix blogged about the conference and his thoughts on why companies should be using Twitter. One of the key takeaways for me about the panel is that they are all connected to and use Twitter daily — not so much as a broadcast medium but for a way to monitor trends/issues and meet new people (potential sources). I commented, and I think the panel agreed, that Twitter really is not the platform to pitch reporters, but because of its simplicity and real-time information sharing it’s the place to build trust and relationships with reporters.

Enthusiasm. While I didn’t hear any breaking news from Demetrios Skalkotos of NASDAQ OMX about using social media what I did takeaway is that enthusiasm matters. That’s not to take any credibility away from him or NASDAQ OMX — he and the company know what they’re doing in social media. But it was the enthusiasm from Demetrios that really stood out to me and if you’ve ever seen him speak you know what I’m talking about. It’s this kind of passion for our work that makes a difference — whether it’s social media, advertising, writing, design or video production. His presentation was the perfect way to end the two-day event since he left all of us feeling as if we could go back to our job and make things happen. That’s just the type of leadership you need, especially when you are pursing something so new and rapidly changing as social media.

I was also fortunate to present about CME group with my colleague Michael Shore and a copy of our presentation can be found over on SlideShare. If you happened to attend the event what was your takeaway? Share your thoughts about the conference here or if you didn’t attend let us know your reaction to some of my thoughts above.

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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.

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