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?

B2B Creativity is Not an Oxymoron

Filed under Discussion, Resources, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 28 November 2011 at 07:39 {2 comments}

One of the myths around B2B communications is that the industry lacks creativity – or the drive to be creative. I can’t think of anything that’s farther from the truth. And while it’s true that B2B companies don’t buy the flashy Super Bowl ads or use various mascots to win over customers, we are challenged day in and day out to think differently.

Another Lego creation at home.

Just like with B2C companies, creativity can be driven by a company’s culture. We’ve always been focused as an organization on innovation, which is why we’ve been so successful at trying new things, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and mobile devices. Ben Parr over at Mashable posted last year how B2B companies will be using social media as part of their creative campaigns. And Aaron Pearson just posted here on B2B Voices a post on world-class B2B social practices that’s a must read.

But there are some rules and guidelines to follow.

  1. Your ideas should always be in line with the brand you are trying to convey. Don’t be creative just for the sake of being creative. While this can work more in the B2C space, it rarely works with B2B companies. We have fewer opportunities to sell our products and services and every opportunity counts. In addition, B2B purchases are usually long-term investments by companies and they want to trust you. Any creativity — whether its very smart and interesting or immature and insulting — will reflect back on your organization.
  2. Study the competition — and be better — don’t copy or instigate them. Your competitors can always give you new ideas and thoughts, but I’ve seen B2B companies try to take on their competition head to head in ads and direct mail. That’s hard to pull off successfully (it can be done) and I always feel it’s better to focus on your strengths than your competitors weaknesses in paid campaigns. Save your competitive arguments for non-paid mediums such as your website and the media.
  3. Always be thinking about driving sales for the organization — this means being fully integrated. We know in B2B the sales process and cycle is much longer than in most B2C decisions, so you will need to think long-term for your campaign. If you are thinking of a new creative campaign it needs to play out online, at trades shows, through direct mail and in person. “One hit wonders”, like a weekend sale, are simply not the norm for B2B campaigns.
  4. Take risks, but know your limits. Good creativity helps you to stand out, but as you think about how creative you should be and how you will use the ideas read points 1 – 3 above.

Here are some other ideas from Marketo on being creative in B2B communications. It’s worth a read if you are looking to learn more about this topic.

I’ve been lucky to work on both national and international B2B and B2C campaigns in my career and personally I’m glad I’ve gravitated into strictly B2B. The creative challenges are different. They are more demanding. They require more time to succeed. And they need more buy-in from the organization. Not to take anything away from B2C creativity, it’s still demanding, but I’ve always liked that challenges and pressure as a professional of being more creative in B2B communications.

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?

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

Business Tech Buyers Are Using Social Media, But Twitter? Not So Much

Filed under Discussion by Aaron Pearson on 5 September 2011 at 22:06 {no comments}

I’m at least a month late in reviewing Forrester’s annual 2011 Social Technographics for Business Technology Buyers report, by Kim Celestre (@kcelestre). As I was last year. :-)  It’s still worth doing. Forrester has conducted this survey for three years running and for those of us looking for the impact of social and digital media on B2B tech, this is about as good a study as we have available to us.

Here’s Forrester’s blog post.

This year’s report appears to show a real maturity in the behavior of technology buyers in social media. Basically, there was no substantive change in what percentage of their audience were social media spectators, critics, conversationalists, creators, etc. I’d venture to say that the average buyer here has pretty much found their comfort zone with social media engagement and is settling in on a specific style of engagement.

Twitter and Facebook are at the bottom of about a dozen online and offline sources.

The good news is that the average level of engagement is higher than for a typical consumer. For example, nearly a third are content creators online (for business purposes), while only 23% of the general population describes itself as such.

Where are they, though?  Forrester also looked at the sources of information these business technology buyers use, and guess what?  Twitter and Facebook are at the bottom of about a dozen online and offline information sources. (Only 5% claim they use Twitter for business purchase decisions.) It turns out more traditional channels like your website or conferences remain hugely important, if someone less so each year.  However, there are real opportunities to find larger segments of your target audiences if you can find niche communities online (LinkedIn does a bit better for instance) or if you can create a private community of your own customers.  For what it’s worth, e-newsletters remain important too.

I would also note that blogs appear to be fairly important sources of information. (Of course, I would say that!) This longer-format, “old-school” social media channel may be particularly well suited for discussing the complexity of B2B technologies. I would also argue Twitter is often a great channel for reaching influencers and opinion-leaders.

Bottom line:  Technology marketers should assume their target audiences are using social media, and probably more than just for consumption. However, they should consider nurturing more targeted online communities and ensure social media engagement efforts are seamlessly integrated with other marketing channels, including media relations, events, advertising and the website.

How Well Do You Know Your Social Network? Probably Poorly

Filed under Application by Aaron Pearson on 26 October 2010 at 23:49 {2 comments}

I had a great time at MarketingProf’s Social Tech 2010 conference today, getting a lot out of every session I was in.  I have a rather diverse client base, so pretty much name the challenge and I have a client dealing with it.  Getting so many different perspectives seriously helped.

The biggest eye opener for me today had to be the session on “Using Social Network Analysis to Leverage the Dynamics of Social Media Interactions Inside and Outside Your Organization.” In addition for winning the award for longest and most awkwardly named session, I’m sure it was also probably the most baffling for anyone trying to follow on Twitter. But the message I took away is that most of us have been flying practically blind when it comes to understanding our social networks, and that’s sure not going to cut it in the future.

Tweets of #futureofbirth by marc_smith created in NodeXL

Talk about a brainy line-up of speakers: Dr. Marc Smith is chief social scientist for the Connected Action Consulting Group and the author of Analyzing Social Media Networks With Node XL. Lawrence Liu is a product manager for Cisco’s Enterprise Collaboration Platform business unit. Thomas Lento is a data scientist for Facebook where he builds statistical models to understand the behavior of Facebook networks. And Michael Wu is principal scientist of analytics at Lithium Technologies and a Ph.D. in biophysics from U.C. Berkeley. I was in awe of these people but really had to concentrate to keep up with them.  They know each other well and the interplay among them was fun.

Social network analysis (SNA) is very comparable to past references I’ve made to what our partner Community Analytics does to map influence networks.  In this context, we’re talking specifically about influencer maps in an online social media setting. You can read the Wikipedia definition here but what we’re talking about is a network map per the image here of nodes, which are typically people, but sometimes ideas, and edges or ties that connect them, which might represent advocacy or simple education but are very topic-specific. Software like the open source and free Excel add-on NodeXL lets you take social media data sources and create these maps (give it a try if you’re geeky enough). Ultimately, they enable you to spot the real influencers in your network and identify the roles they are playing. One example from Marc Smith:  Let’s say you have a node, an influencer, with lots of other people connecting to that influencer. That’s good, that’s a key person. But if none of those other people are connected to each other, then if the influencer were to withdraw, the whole network would collapse.  Another example from Lawrence Liu: You can find a cluster of connections suggesting a virtual “echo chamber,” which is notable. But if someone in that echo chamber is also well-connected with others outside the echo chamber, that makes them the key to extending your reach beyond your usual suspects. 

Smith warns that it’s not enough to just count the number of connections. As in real estate, where it’s about location, location, location – in the social network world, it’s about those critical people who have the connections others don’t, who can be the gatekeepers to key new relationships. He described the job of the community manager as a park ranger. You’re really talking about nurturing a social network ecosystem. Continuing to add more bears doesn’t necessarily make a nature ecosystem healthier and just ramping up connections doesn’t make a social ecosystem automatically better either.

There’s a lot more to this and I won’t go on about it but the fact is we no longer need to just guess about what these influencer networks look like and as social media programs continue to scale up, we’re really going to need to take a hard look at these more sophisticated, automated ways to analyze what’s happening out there. Gut feel won’t be enough.

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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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Are your spokespeople social media trained?

Filed under Application, Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 13 August 2010 at 12:34 {5 comments}

As the use of social media by journalists and non-journalists has continued to grow we’ve been making the shift at the exchange to integrate the risks of social media with our spokespeople. Here are the areas that we have now included in all of our spokesperson training:

  • Understand that your interview with a reporter may also end up being referenced in blogs, Twitter or Facebook.
  • Know that when you are giving a speech at an industry event the audience may now be using Twitter, Twitpic or will use the material in blog posts — in addition to the journalists in the audience who may use your comments in a story.
  • Keep in mind that even in “customer only” meetings that information could be sent out via Twitter.

Adding these new communication risks has been a challenge since not everyone uses these new tools. We’ve been able to talk with our consultants who work with our executives to integrate this into their training. I’ve found there still is a challenge in balancing the “fear factor” of saying something damaging at a conference versus staying on message. There also is the need to provide an overview of the various social media tools, but over time our use of social media to promote the exchange has helped bridge that gap.

Is this a topic you’re addressing at your organization and with clients? Do you think that people are more aware of the risks/opportunities or is this an ongoing process? Let us know your thoughts and success stories.

Allan

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Social Media Won’t Kill Your Brand – Just Be Strategic

Filed under Discussion by Aaron Pearson on 4 March 2010 at 21:07 {3 comments}
I wanted to respond to this video from Loren Feldman at 1938 Media, at least from a B2B marketing standpoint. It’s provocatively titled, “Social Media Will Kill Your Brand,” though that isn’t quite what he says.  His premise, however self-serving, actually seems to be that a) social media is only a tool, and b) if you’re driving traffic to Facebook or some other place, you’re not driving traffic to the web site your brand owns, and therefore you’re letting that social network control your brand.

To be sure, Loren is right that social media is overhyped. I suspected we’d see the social media bubble pop a little in 2010 and in fact early signs give me confidence in that prediction. He contends that these various social network channels are just tools.  This is unquestionably true. We have not found a silver bullet to neverending sales and marketing nirvana, to solve all our customer relations challenges, to connect with all potential buyers through the magical bonds of Internet conversation. Yet read the breathless tweets and blog posts of many social media experts, and you’d think it were not so. Suddenly, the 4 Ps of marketing – product, promotion, place and price – have been replaced, as I’ve read, simply by People. It’s kind of an interesting concept (and 4 Ps as a concept is simplistic itself) but it isn’t true.

There’s no silver bullet, my friends.  Especially in business-to-business marketing, accept that different communications sources, different tools, each play a role in moving someone from need awareness through brand awareness and interest, through purchase, and hopefully brand advocate. Twitter might play a role somewhere along that journey, but Twitter isn’t a marketing strategy. A blog isn’t a sales strategy.  You need to start with a strategic assessment of your market opportunity and your competitive position and creatively arrive at an approach that will help you capitalize on that opportunity, and it’s at least conceivable that there’s no social media component.

But I doubt it, and this is where the video rant goes too far.

The fact is that social media should probably find its way into most B2B marketing programs in some way or another. Loren says, “If you are focusing so much on social media, you are making a big, big mistake.”  Now how does he know?  Just because it’s not a silver bullet doesn’t mean social media can  be discounted as a potentially critical component of the communications mix.   

I’m kind of skeptical of Facebook for most B2B environments because Facebook has generally become a place for personal and consumer conversations (though anyone doing B2C should note a real sales corrolation in this Harvard Business Review study resulting from a Facebook site). But it’s not because Facebook destroys brands. New BPO analyst firm Horses for Sources was able to launch itself this week in part because of its powerful 9,000 member forum of BPO experts and executives called The BPO and Offshoring Best Practices Forum.  It’s hard to see how using social media to better listen to your customer needs will send your brand off course.

Twitter is a little different in that it isn’t really a destination and, in my opinion, shouldn’t really be compared to Facebook. It’s a network of people exchanging information via scores of user interfaces and devices. They may not want to go to your web site. But they’re also not so cynical that you can’t establish trusted relationships with them through social media channels.  In fact, taking Loren’s argument to its logical extreme – that you should only work to drive people to your web site – it’s therefore a waste of time to secure a New York Times feature story profiling one of your customers because the traffic goes to NYTimes.com.

Here’s the big issue the video misses, I think: You don’t really own your brand anyway. A colleague of mine reminded me that it’s really customers and employees who own the brand. It’s true, and they can build it up, reinforce it, grow it, or tear it apart and show it to be lacking in integrity or value. Coming up with a brand message doesn’t make it true. Making a cool web site doesn’t mean your customer service is any good. If your employees think your ad campaign is full of crap, their silent abstention from supporting your big mega marketing campaign online will be deafeningly obvious. But if it rings true to them and to your customers, they will heartily, voluntarily reinforce it. Without even asking.

So let’s get over our breathless excitement over social media as marketing messiah, fine. But make no mistake, we can listen to customers and other stakeholders better than ever before, faster, less expensively. Customers can unleash their own power as advocates – or badvocates – far easier than ever before. That’s not something email marketing or Google Adwords campaigns can do.

Leverage Partnerships in B2B Social Media Too

Filed under Application, Case Study by Allan Schoenberg on 29 October 2009 at 02:13 {no comments}

It seems that partnerships in social media are an overlooked asset. We often rely in traditional strategies and tactics to partner with our customers for case studies, analysts for white papers and media for events. So why not take this approach to social media? This is in fact what we did at CME Group.

I blogged here two weeks ago about the value of using StockTwits for investor relations. Last week we officially announced via video from out trading floor in Chicago that we are going to work closely with StockTwits to partner in our social media efforts to reach traders. With approximately 100,000 users on its network discussing stocks, futures and forex, this partnership is a great social media match for us.

 

Initially we are focusing on some basic, traditional sponsorship activities, such as adding a CME Group logo to your Twitter avatar and placing banners within specific product streams. The real value of our partnership though is to connect the exchange with traders in order to further enhance relationships with our customers. In the coming weeks we are planning to work more closely with StockTwits on an event in Chicago with the goal that in person events will be replicated in other cities. Ultimately, our partnership allows us to build credibility with our customers since we are endorsed by a brand they trust — StockTwits. In addition, StockTwits, which is nine months old, can build its credibility through the endorsement by the exchange, a 150-year-old and trusted organization. I hope to report back on the success of our relationship in 2010.

So what about you? What partnerships — big or small –  have you launched? What other B2B partnerships in social media have you noticed?

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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