I came across this SlideShare earlier today and I wanted to share it here. It’s quite an indepth presentation that covers all aspects of social media. When you have a few minutes I highly recommend flipping through it. The numbers continue to blow me away, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

A quote from the author Esteban Contreras:

There might be saturation, but social media has changed the way we live. And this means social media is no longer a question for marketers. Companies of all sizes have accepted and even embraced the importance of social media. Investments are starting to increase and companies are now building teams to tackle the new risks and opportunities that social media has created.

Following on our recent announcement of our Investor Relations iPad and iPhone apps, I’m please to report that last Friday we launched an iPad investor relations app for Stanley Black and Decker.

The Stanley iPad app supports landscape and portrait views, Stanley’s latest news and stock price, ability to subscribe to their podcasts, videos from their 2010 Year in Review as well as other IR information. This is our second IR app that has been posted to the App Store with the first being for Avion Gold Corporation

One question we get is “why do you only support Apple devices?”. The answer is simple, we looked at aggregate stats of 25 client sites that run on our Q4 Web platform and found that on average, 85% of the traffic from mobile devices was from iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod) devices.

It’s interesting given Android is leading global mobile OS installations, however Apple is gaining market share. According to Nielsen, from October 2011 – December 2011, Android market share dropped from 61.6% to 46.9% while iOS increased from 25.1% to 44.5%.

That said, I’d be interested to hear about what is your device of choice is. Take a moment and answer our poll below.

If you can’t see the embedded survey, try this link.

Last week I blogged about why we’ve decided to launch with iOS (iPad/iPhone) versions of our mobile application solutions first.   According to Nielsen, Apple made substantial gains over Q4 2011 while Android declined.  Apple’s net gain was somewhere around 36%.  I’m sure the 4S had something to do with that and I don’t know how many new Android devices launched, but at last count it was about 65 across the major US carriers.

Taking into account 85% of our mobile traffic across a sampling of our clients sites comes from iOS (iPad/iPhone/iPod) devices, we wanted to find out which device people in the IR space prefer.  We consider “in the IR space” to be IRO’s, retail investors, institutional investors and bloggers/analysts/media people.  We consider “not in the IR space” to be people who do not work in IR in any capacity and people who do not invest.

These are the results of the survey:

If you’re interested, here are the questions we asked:

1) What best describes you:

• I work in an Investor Relations office (IR manager, director, executive etc)
• I’m a retail investor
• I’m an institutional investor
• I’m an analyst, blogger or media person

What is your primary mobile device?

• Apple (iOS)
• Android
• Blackberry
• Windows Phone 7
• I don’t know/other

Do You Use and iPad?

Yes/No

Six years ago a group of us sat around a board room table thinking of what to call this exciting new company we were starting. We wanted something that was short, memorable and captured the spirit of the markets. We came up with Q4 and instantly loved it. The fourth quarter is when you put it all on the line, it’s the big push to close the year on a high note. I love this time of year.

Fast forward to today and Q4 is growing faster than ever with an exciting blur of a quarter ahead of us.

I wanted to take this opportunity to wish all our employees, clients, partners and friends all the best. Have a great  Q4 everyone!

Cheers,

Darrell Heaps, CEO
Q4 Web Systems

There is a general theory of technology adoption know as The Hype Cycle. To sum it up, the theory outlines the phases of adoption that most new technology goes through in any market.

Wikipedia’s definition: A hype cycle is a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies. The term was coined by Gartner, Inc.^[1]

Earlier this week, my colleague Sheryl shared some compelling stats around the growth of the Internet and increase use of mobile in the IR world.

Today, I’m going to discuss three different approaches that can be taken to incorporate mobile into your online communications:

1. Mobile Sites
2. Responsive Design
3. Web apps

Traditional Mobile Sites

Mobile sites were created during, what I’ll refer to as the pre-iPhone era. This is when phones were not as powerful and tablets didn’t exist. The thinking at that point of time was the mobile site should be trimmed down, with no images and give users just what (we think) they want.  An example of this type of site is EA’s mobile investor site http://investor.ea.com/common/mobile/?CompanyID=ERTS:

Although these types of sites do provide the basic information, in today’s smart phone era, these sites are not as useful and in many cases are skipped to view the full site.  Reason being, most phones can now easily navigate a full site and access whatever they are looking for. As well, these types of sites remove all ‘communication’ in terms of design, graphics, etc.

Responsive Design

A recent trend in the corporate website market are sites based on responsive design. These are sites that reformat based on the screen size of the device accessing the site.  A desktop users sees a wide site, a tablet user sees the same site but formatted for a smaller screen, the same with a smartphone user.

The primary benefit of a responsive website is that companies are able to create and manage one site that responds to each type of device accessing that site. A responsive site ensures that your corporate website will be fully optimized to meet the specifications of any new device that is released to the market.

However there are some drawbacks to responsive websites including the fact that the screen sizes of newly released devices are not changing at the same rate.  Another drawback to responsive design is that it is more challenging to design corporate websites in this manner, especially if your site outsources its IR site and your vendor doesn’t support responsive design (Q4 does!).  In general, whether a client is redoing their corporate website using responsive design, we’re 100% supportive in either running the entire site on Q4 or just the IR section.

Finally, a third drawback of responsive design is that they cannot employ any app specific features including: gesture navigation (swipe, pinch, or zoom) or device integration such as adding to calendar, subscribing to iTunes, etc.  or enhanced integration of multimedia and social media capabilities.

Web Apps

A newer mobile option, Web Apps are created using HTML5 and provide the experience of an app that has been downloaded from the app store, but can be accessed from a mobile browser instantly.

To view the above, access via your iPad or similar tablet device:  http://q4cepheid.herokuapp.com/

This is a similar app that you would get if you downloaded Cepheid’s app from the Apple app store https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/cepheid/id562217523?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2, however it is accessed instantly through the browser.

The main benefit of a Web App is that a company can provide a complete app experience to its users accessing their site on a tablet, while at the same time providing the same app as a download from the app store (which has its own benefits below).

The main drawback of this approach is that an app for each type of device (phone and tablet) has to be created – which can drive up costs and effort. However, using the same framework for both the phone and tablet apps can easily mitigate these issues.

Native Apps

Native apps are those that are downloaded from an app store, such as Apple’s app store or Google Play. These apps are designed specifically for each type of device and have the ability to leverage the multimedia capabilities of devices like an iPad, as well as access to devices notifications, calendar and save documents to the device.

Newmount’s iPad app is a great example of a native app that makes use of multimedia to create a better user experience – it provides all of the basic IR content, along with a great amount of detail regarding their operations, sustainability, etc.

The key benefit of a native app is its ability to notify users of updates, integrate with their calendar as well as leveraging the powerful multimedia features of their devices.

The main drawback of native apps is the requirement to deploy device specific apps (iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.) – which as stated previously can significantly drive up costs.  However, based on our analytics of the market, the iPad currently accounts for more than 90% of all tablet traffic so it’s not a requirement (in our opinion) to deploy an app for all types of devices at this time.

So what does this mean?

The mobile market is evolving quickly. Soon mobile traffic will outpace desktop traffic. At this time we are advising our clients to provide a mobile experience that is beyond a basic mobile site. If they are planning on including mobile in their site redesign, we advise using a responsive design approach. If the client is creating a new IR site, we suggest creating a web app optimized for smart phones and tablets. Finally, for clients with a loyal following, looking to further strengthen their connection with investors, we feel a native app will provide the most immersive and high value experience.

We see tremendous promise with mobile and look forward to the exciting days ahead.

I just came across this image on Twitter and had to post it. The image below, posted on Instagram and shared through NBCNews Twitter account shows the incredible adoption of mobile technologies. Pretty amazing.

Elizabeth Blankespoor explains how public companies can use Twitter to deliver company news directly to investors, improve market liquidity and compete with bigger companies who have better access to traditional media outlets. Blankespoor is an assistant professor of accounting at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

This is especially timely with the SEC support of social media for Reg FD.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with a friend who runs a hedge fund and got a hands on look at Twitter inside of Bloomberg. My first impression was that the integration is very straightforward, with Twitter featuring all of the same capabilities as any other news source in Bloomberg. It’s a very slick integration in that it’s exactly what Bloomberg users would expect.

One of the things that caught my eye was Bloomberg’s introduction of the Twitter service. It highlights both the SEC and the growing use of Twitter by companies to share market moving information as the reasons why it has now integrated Twitter at this level.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission announcements that gave companies a green light to disseminate information via social media puts a spotlight on Twitter. Bloomberg provides investors and traders with simple solutions to follow tweets about companies, industries and markets. 

Interest in Twitter is growing in part because more and more companies and governments are using the service. Twitter provides a fast and easy way to disseminate press releases and other market moving information.” 

As with any news source inside Bloomberg, Real-time Twitter alerts can be delivered as a message, pop-up or scheduled message alerts which can be delivered daily, weekly or at customizable intervals, etc. While my friend was taking me through the features, he was pleasantly surprised at how easily he could configure Twitter to alert him on a number of things he was currently interested in.

In addition to the standard filters, Bloomberg has also included social media velocity alerts. These include trending social velocity alerts as well as velocity alerts based on a specific keyword, ticker symbol, etc. The screen below also shows a historical look at the velocity.

An interesting comment from my friend was that, although social velocity alerts were interesting, in his trading they were not very useful because they are historical and effectively old news. He said the same applied to tracking news services/wires. He said:

 “If I see something in the market I look to Twitter first to try to figure out what’s going on. Then the newswires, which typically don’t tell me much. I’m trying to understand what’s happening before it hits wires, once it breaks there, it’s too late….it’s old news”

With Twitter now integrated at this level inside Bloomberg, it’s only a matter of time until we see the same level of Twitter integration with Bloomberg’s competitor systems like Thomson One, etc.

One of the arguments against the use of social media in investor relations that I’ve heard many times is that institutional investors are not able to access Twitter on their desktops, “IT departments block Twitter so they can’t use it.” Bloomberg’s integration of Twitter completely blows that out of the water.

Goodbye argument that the Buy-Side can’t use Twitter. 

The case for why companies should be using Twitter has never been clearer. You now have a direct connection to the Bloomberg desktop.

Happy Tweeting everyone.

I came across a Twitter account today that made me laugh and I wanted to share it. “If an investor relations professional could act freely”. The tweets are all from 2012, but they are all still very relevant. Whoever you are @IROThoughts, we want you back!

You can view all of the hilarious posts here: http://investorrelationsthoughts.tumblr.com/ we selected few below to give you a taste.

When I’m adding Cool Features to My IR website.

Me While the CEO Answers Questions on @madmoneyoncnbc

The State of My Emotions Throughout an Earnings Call

At the beginning:

At the end of the prepared remarks:

After Q&A:

And finally my personal favorite:

When I see a Vendor at a #NIRI event.

Happy Friday Everyone!

An in-depth presentation on the impact mobile is having on the world of computing. The scale of what is happening is simply incredible. Have a look at the great slideshare below.

There is no denying that mobile is dramatically changing how we access information and media. In 2012, a Google study found that 38% of our daily interactions with media are through a smartphone.

In order to get a sense of how this is impacting online investor relations we wanted to do a comparison of the investor mobile web (accessing websites with mobile devices) vs. native IR apps (downloaded apps from an app store). The results very much speak to how investors access information through mobile devices today.

Mobile IR Website Traffic

Over the last few months we have seen a 15% increase in the amount of mobile devices hitting our client’s IR websites. But more importantly, is that this has virtually doubled since 2012. Our current projections are for mobile traffic to overtake desktop traffic sometime in 2014 and a balance of traffic to occur across desktops, tablets and phones.

In order to provide a sense of the total number of mobile IR web users, we used the number of listed companies on the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges. Based on the total number of companies listed on these exchanges, we estimate roughly 50 million* IR website visits per month across all companies. With 15% of this being mobile, we estimate there are currently 6.5 million** mobile IR website visits per month. A sizeable audience to say the least.

* 5000 listed companies on NYSE & NASDAQ X 10,000 IR website visits per month on average = 50,000,000 IR website visits
** 15% x 50M IR Website visits = 6.5M mobile IR website visits.

Native IR Apps

In addition to the mobile IR web, we have started to see native apps offered for investor relations. Native apps are those that are downloaded from the Apple or Google App store and provide content similar to that found on IR websites, but in a downloadable app that is installed on the users device.

As IR apps have started to grow in popularity, however there has not (yet) been a large amount of investors downloading these apps. Recent research from Rivel says about 5% of investors (or 5 in their study of 222) had downloaded an IR app http://rivel.com/blog/?p=639 with upwards of 17% of investors expecting to download a company specific app in the future.

Knowing that we are still early on in the adoption curve, these lower adoption rates are not surprising. Having said that, from our IR app data usage, we have been seeing around 300 downloads per company on average. Certainly some companies have seen more than others, but we have found this is a good indication of current usage.

Doing a search on Apple’s App Store we see roughly 320 apps (iPad and iPhone combined) with the label “Investor Relations”. If we multiple 320 apps by an average of 300 downloads per company, there are 96,000 downloads.

Comparing Mobile IR Web to Native IR Apps

The chart below illustrates the adoption of the IR Mobile Web vs. IR Native Apps. 96,000 IR apps downloaded vs. 6,500,000 monthly IR website visits, equates to 99% of investor mobile use is through a browser, while 1% is through a Native App (based on our above estimates). Of course there will be overlap in this data, with investors visiting multiple websites and downloading multiple apps, and a combination of both. In addition, this doesn’t take into account apps that are downloaded and used infrequently, whereas the mobile web traffic is monthly.

We believe, the reason why the mobile web is so much larger than the adoption of native IR apps is simply that the mobile web is integrated into the workflow of how investors access information online. It’s just second nature whether they are responding to an email alert on their phone, clicking on a link on Yahoo finance, or accessing a website on a phone or a tablet.

This is not to say that there isn’t a place for native apps. Native apps provide the ability for investors to view content offline or have notifications on updates pushed directly to the device. However, the important thing to recognize is that the mobile web is significantly larger and we think will remain so for a long time.

Our view is that the best solutions are those that are integrated with how investors access information online today. Mobile is part of an investors workflow, so the best solutions are those that work within this workflow.

We are happy to announce our latest product called Q4 3 Screens™ solution.  The first of its kind in the market that will make a company’s IR content available on 3 screens – the IR website along with mobile apps for tablets and phones. This solution provides an optimal experience to all stakeholders, no matter what type of device they are using. All without the high cost and amount of time required to develop native mobile apps or a responsive website redesign.

The components of 3 Screens are laid out below.

Device Auto-Detection

3 Screens detects what device the investor is using and automatically delivers either the desktop, tablet or phone investor relations app directly through the browser. Whatever the content, 3 Screens knows the content being linked to and the device being used, and delivers the best targeted experience. This also includes links to content that is located deep within the site.

The following example is based on an investor receiving an email alert and clicking through on their iPad to the tablet version on Newell Rubbermaid’s IR website.

Desktop IR Website

The desktop version of 3 Screens is our market leading IR website platform. It provides complete creative freedom on how the site is structured. Q4’s platform is the most flexible and can support any type of layout or functionality. The benefit of 3 Screens is the desktop IR website is not restricted in any way from the other mobile display options. The desktop IR website includes the following features, plus many more!

• 100% Flexible, No Restrictions
• Best Practice IR Content
• Press Releases, SEC Filings, XBRL, Quotes & Charts, Fundamentals, Ownership, Governance, etc.
• Multi-channel Publishing
• Website, Tablet, Phone, Social
• Email Alerts & RSS Feeds
• Subscriber Management
• Integrated Social Media
• Web Disclosure Records
• Time Shifting Reports

Tablet and Phone Browser Apps

The browser apps included in 3 Screens are designed to work across all types of smart devices and provide an app experience directly inside of the users browser on their tablet or phone. There is no need to download and install an app from an app store. The app is delivered inline, while the user is looking for information. High level features include:

• Complete Set of Timely Investor Relations Content
• Magazine Style Experience
• Hi-Res Images
• Video and Multimedia
• App Analytics
• Managed via Q4 Web or Support

• Over 50 Custom Settings including:
• Background Images
• Fonts & Colors
• Highlighted Content
• Logos & Icons
• Navigation, Buttons & Tab options

Upgrading to Native Apps

The great thing about 3 Screens is that any of the browser apps are easily upgradable to a native app for either Android or iOS devices. Upgrading to native provides a number of additional features including:

• Offline viewing
• Notifications
• PDF Viewer
• In App Web Browser
• App Store Distribution
• Unlimited customization for additional fees

More Information

View a live example of 3 Screens at by viewing http://ir.newellrubbermaid.com on your Desktop, Tablet or Smartphone. If you are interested in a demo you can always contact us at sales@q4websystems.com

When we look at the investor web, it’s important to first understand that 99% of mobile usage in investor relations is happening through the mobile web, rather than through native IR apps.

This is due in part to the current workflow of how information is consumed online by investors as they are predominantly using mobile devices to access information, as opposed to downloading and installing apps.

Take for instance, when news comes out from a company there are a few ways that the information makes its way into the hands of the investor today:

1. Through a broadly disseminated press release that gets displayed across financial websites including the issuers website.
2. Through email alerts that the investor is subscribed to.
3. Through a link to the press release shared through social networks.

When an investor clicks on the alert or the shared item they are then taken to the IR website of that company. Increasingly this is happening on either a mobile phone or tablet, and soon (our projection is 2014) this will be the dominant method.

If this website is running on Q4 and our latest 3 Screens solution, the website then detects the device and delivers either the traditional IR website for desktop users or a tablet/phone investor relations app instantly through the browser (no App Store download required).

The Investor Web and Mobile Experience

Personally I am not a fan of sites that suggest I go and download an app at the moment I want to read a piece of news, I want instant access to the information.

For an example of Q4’s 3 Screens visit the Newell Rubbermaid IR website on your tablet or phone: ir.newellrubbermaid.com/. It automatically will detect your device and deliver you either a desktop IR website, tablet or phone app. We think this solution is perfectly suited to today’s investor mobile web and ensures companies provide mobile investors with instant access to a great investor relations app experience, instantly through the browser, with no downloads or installs from an app store.

The reality is the mobile web and native app experiences are merging into one. Take a look at LinkedIn on your mobile phone: https://touch.www.linkedin.com compared with the LinkedIn native app – they are virtually the same. This is the approach that we are taking. Simply a good mobile experience is just that, and we should strive to make the difference between the web and native apps invisible.

It is undeniable that mobile is dramatically changing the way the web works and how investors stay informed on their interests. Even though today we are clearly in a mobile web world, the use of native apps in investor relations is increasing and will undoubtedly continue to grow with more and more companies beginning to focus on mobile. During this period, I believe we will see a balancing of traffic across multiple devices.

I’m excited about what’s happening in the market and what we’re doing here at Q4 and look forward to the ongoing evolution of computing!

As part of our ongoing evolution to deliver the most innovative and fully featured corporate and IR website platforms in the market, we’re excited to announce that our latest version of Q4 web now fully supports responsive web design (wikipedia def) for both corporate and IR websites.

This latest release is part of our ongoing commitment of evolving our innovative corporate and IR web platform to meet the needs of global client base as the web moves from a desktop experience to one dominated by smartphones and tablets.

Responsive websites automatically adjust their layout based on the size of the screen accessing the site. A desktop displays a wide layout, a tablet more narrow and phone a single column of content. Also known as a fluid grid, responsive sites are increasing in popularity for both our corporate website and IR website redesign projects.

Following on our 3 Screens^TM release in June of this year, responsive is now an additional option for clients during website redesign projects.  With our responsive option now available, we offer a complete line of mobile solutions to suit all listed company requirements globally.

Progressive Waste is our first IR website client to utilize the responsive capability as part of their recent corporate website redesign http://investor.progressivewaste.com/.  The experience of moving through the corporate website and into the IR section, hosted on Q4 is completely seamless, no matter what device is being used.

Tablet View

Smart Phone View

Q4’s responsive solution is an example of our commitment to lead the evolution and innovation of global investor communications.  With a ton of responsive projects in our pipeline, along with huge adoption of our 3 Screens^TM product we’re excited about the transition of the market from desktop to mobile.

Yesterday, IR magazine posted “IR websites: overpriced and underused” which reports on a study that PRNewswire recently did about the use of IR website by (mostly) retail investors. The post focuses on the statement that “only 25% of investors use IR websites once a quarter”. Hence the ‘underused’ aspect of the title.

My issue with this point of view is that it doesn’t include the % of investors who use the IR website weekly, monthly or when they receive news about the company. If the question was asked “how many investors access the IR website at least once a quarter” the number (according to PRN) is 43.6%…and if you add “when I get news about the company” – which I think it’s fair to say is going to be at least quarterly, the number increases to 61.5%.

Here is screenshot from the actual study published by PR Newswire:

As you can see, the numbers are 7.1% ‘at least weekly’, 12% ‘at least monthly’, 24.5% ‘Once a quarter’ and 17.9% ‘When I receive news about the company.’ When we group these together (into a group I would call ‘regular users’) the number is 61.5%

The study also asked if the IR website was used during the investment research process. The result being a range of 45.6% to 62% of investors use the IR website during the research process. Again here’s the details from the study which breaks out the different percentages:

For more insight into the use of IR websites by investors, I like to point to the fine work done by Rivel Research (a leader in this space, who has been conducting these studies for many years). In November 2012 they polled 404 global buy-side investors asking them about their use of corporate websites. They found that 65% visit at least monthly. Here is a chart from that study:

Finally, regarding the importance of the IR website. Rivel also asked about how information is validated if there is a discrepancy between a corporate website and an external financial website. They found that 79% said the company website is the one they believe.

I hope this helps to clarify the critical role that company websites play in the market today. The vast majority of your investors are accessing them regularly and they are viewed as the authoritative source of information over general financial websites.

With less than 4 months left in 2013 I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the great work that the NYSE has been doing this year with IPOs. As of June 2013 NYSE Euronext raised $28.5 billion in total global proceeds on 72 IPOs (65 U.S. IPOs, 7 Euronext IPO).

We’re proud to be able to work with a large segment of the NYSE listed IPOs as well as those listed on other exchanges.  In fact, over the first 9 months of this year Q4 has been selected by more than 25 companies to be their IR website and mobile app provider on the day they go public. In response to this demand we have expanded our senior client engagement team, refined our process and offer a full suite of design and consulting services for IPO clients. With the goal of producing great websites and mobile apps, while making it seamless and easy for our clients, most going public for the very first time!

Here is a selection of our IPO clients that have come online during 2013:

Going public is never easy and requires a ton of work for investor relations’ team and their executives. Our top 7 recommendations for IPO investor websites are:

1. IR CONTACT: Make sure you have an IR contact featured prominently on your site. Analysts and investors are going to be very active on keeping up with corporate activity from the first day of trading. By providing an IR contact you are showing that your company is ready to have a dialogue.
2. RELEVANT CONTENT: Investors are looking for material to give them an overall history of the company as well as the structure. Sharing info like press releases, stock information, SEC filings, and Corporate Governance documents are all essential.
3. CURRENT INFORMATION: You want to make sure that you are consistently updating the site. If investors keep returning to find that nothing has changed, eventually they will start looking elsewhere and your website will not be a trusted source for information.
4. CONTEXT: Tell the full story of your company. Include corporate bios, pictures from projects or anything that will give investors the “inside look” of what goes on at your company.
5. FAQ’S: An FAQ section is essential because it can alleviate repetitive calls into the IR department.
6. MOBILE: Make sure you’re delivering a great mobile experience. Having a mobile focused site (either responsive or browser app) ensure all those interested are going to be able to easily access your information.
7. INTEGRATION OF ALL COMMUNICATION CHANNELS: Finally, integrating your social communications on the site is a great way to maximize your online communications efforts. Not only can it aggregate all of your activity on channels investors may not be watching. It shows them that they can find your information on a variety of channels that they may use.

The reasons why IPO clients choose Q4 comes down to our technology and ability to deliver a web and mobile experience to their investors that is simply unmatched in the market. Combined with a dedicated team of IPO experts, we make it easy for our clients to deliver an amazing solution for their newly listed company.

Happy Pricing Everyone!

I came across a great post on LinkedIn today, shared by Matt Sonefeldt, head of IR at LinkedIn about Storytelling and how important it is in building long-term relationships with your investors.

The post, by Burberry’s CEO Audrey Ahrendts “Does Your Brand Tell a Powerful Story?” looks at the broad use of storytelling from a brand and communications perspective. It has many applications in our world of communication with corporate stakeholders and investors. Audrey shares the following 5 key take away’s:

1. Know thyself. What’s your core, your passion, your reason for being? Young or old, all great brands and individuals stand for something – it’s the starting point for every story.
2. Dream. Stories are where dreams can become realities. Be brave, audacious, take risks.
3. Be authentic. Share a consistent, pure vision – write your next (or your first) chapter, not a new book every time.
4. Trust – your instincts, each other. Trust engenders belief, the basis on which all stories live or die.
5. Engage, entertain, excite. Emotion is at the heart of every story, in every age, in every context – round a campfire, on the printed page, in a movie theater, online. Today, digital is opening up a whole new era of opportunity, putting the power to create emotive content and share it widely in everyone’s hands. Use it smartly, and wisely.

Here is the video from the post, very inspiring. I hope you like it:

Back in 2011, I was a part of a group of industry players working together on the message about the NYSE subsidy program and the merits of opening the program up to allow for other vendors to compete and drive innovation.

In February 2012, the NYSE opened the program up and Q4 along with a number of other vendors in the investor communication space were added to the subsidy program. Since our inclusion into the program, I’m pleased to say that Q4 has been a leading vendor for companies in the subsidy switching from Thomson’s IR website hosting to a better solution.

The inclusion of other vendors in the subsidy has been a huge component to opening the IR market up to alternative and superior solutions. From Q4’s perspective, we’ve been able to bring innovative technology to a market that companies simply didn’t have access to prior to the subsidy being opened up to other vendors.

This technology includes, a non-template IR website CMS platform that delivers listed companies complete flexibility to tell their story in a compelling manner. More recently we released a product called ‘3-Screens’, which combines a desktop, as well as tablet and smartphone apps together in one integrated solution. 3 Screens has been our best selling product in our history, and a huge success within the subsidy program – with just about 1 new client added per day since it’s launch in June of this year.

Without the multiple vendor, open structure of the subsidy program these innovations would not have been available to top companies listed on the NYSE. We’re thrilled to be a part of driving innovation in the market and we look forward to the numerous products we’re planning for release this quarter and in early 2014.

In regards to the subsidy, last week the NYSE announced that it will stop paying for New York Stock Exchange-listed companies to receive services provided by a former unit of Thomson Reuters Corp. that is now owned by rival Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. More details on this announcements can be found on the Wall Street Journal blog: “NYSE to End Subsidies for Nasdaq-Owned Market Services” or via IR Magazine at “NYSE pulls plug on NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions“.

I’m excited about the future for the NYSE program and the IR market in general. Competition breeds excellence and we’re proud to be part of driving the web, mobile and social aspects of the market forward.

Have a great day!

I’ve been travelling a lot lately, back and forth across the country talking about the web, social media, mobile and everything in between. I’ve been fortunate to speak to IR and corporate communication pros and have some great discussions with them about all these trends and best practices.

Recently I moderated a panel in Fort Worth, Texas for NIRI South West region called Digital Cross Training. The panel consisted of:

• James K. Wicklund, Managing Director, Energy Research, Credit Suisse LLC;
• Vikram Taneja, Associate Director, Orix Ventures; &
• Anne Hedrich, Manager, e-Communications Public and International Affairs, Apache Corporation.

As the panel was set to be 45 minutes we decided to focus on four aspects of the digital landscape:

1. Websites
2. Twitter
3. Linkedin
4. Mobile.

The session wasn’t recorded, so I’m going to do my best to recall my introductions to the topics and the key takeaways. I really enjoyed the dynamic on the panel, if I sell it short I hope my fellow panelists chime in to correct me!

1) Corporate Investor Websites

With the rise of social media, there was some discussion that corporate websites would be replaced by things like Facebook. As well, a common theme I hear from some folks in IR is that investors don’t “need” to access websites, and instead that they can get all the information they want from Bloomberg or Yahoo.

With this back drop I put the question to the panel:

Are corporate websites rising in importance or dwindling? What role do they play from an investor perspective?

The answer and discussion that followed was that websites play a critical role in telling the companies story. It’s not just about the normalized data that you can get from Bloomberg or Yahoo, it’s about understanding what the company does, and it’s overall corporate strategy. Content such as presentations, videos of management, operational data, information on products, etc. all contribute to forming a better understanding of the business – and from a long term investor standpoint this is critical.

I then referenced Rivel Research’s 2012 that found 65% of the buy-side visit corporate websites at least monthly and asked Vikram and Jim if this echoed their experience with how websites are used. The answer was unequivocally yes. I forget who said this, but it really resonated with me:

“Story matters, context matters, if your corporate website is a filing cabinet its as useful as saying to check you out on Yahoo”

2) Twitter

Today, Twitter is well known to most people. Albeit with a low percentage of adoption, I believe that 18% of Internet users are on Twitter. However, the impact of Twitter in the capital markets seems to just continue to increase. Most recently with Carl Ichan joining Twitter, filing with the SEC about using it for disclosure. The fact that he joined Twitter indicates that Twitter is continuing its rise as the world’s primary information network.

I then asked Jim, about how he uses Twitter, because access to it is blocked at Credit Suisse. His response was very interesting, in that he and others at his firm do not post information to Twitter. Not due to IT restrictions, but rather compliance being the issue. And with Twitter being public anything they put out there could be used against them. However, they do read Twitter and follow smart people on the channel.

This perspective was echoed by Vikram who stated the same, that following smart people on Twitter and Stocktwits is considered a requirement these days. And that waiting for the media to pick up and report on a story simply took too long. If you want to be in the know, you have to use it.

As well, Vikram mentioned that live tweeting earnings calls was very useful. Whether you’re not able to attend the call and follow the tweets live, or being able to go back for key messages, data points, the tweets are very useful.

Apache’s Twitter account has a broad range of information being shared, including financials, corporate responsibility and third party posts. So I then asked Ann: ‘Can you talk about how you use Twitter and it’s value?’

Anne’s perspective (managing social media at Apache Corp) was that Twitter helped her share a broad range of information about the company. Both news and updates from the company and other third party posts. Simply, it allows her to push way more information out to stakeholders than using press releases, which they would naturally limit how many they publish due to cost.

“Using Twitter allows me to share a broad set of information, way more than I ever would using press releases alone”

When I asked the panel: ‘Should companies be using Twitter to communicate with investors?’ The answer was a resounding yes. It simply makes it easier to follow a company if they are using Twitter.

3. LinkedIn & Mobile

The discussion then moved to LinkedIn and Mobile. As there have been a lot of developments on these two topics, I will be doing a separate post to discuss the significant rise in use and impact of LinkedIn and Mobile in the corporate communications and investor world.

I wanted to include in this post, but I’ve run out of time!

I’ll be back. #terminator