Quantcast
Channel: Q4 Blog
Viewing all 85 articles
Browse latest View live

Q4′s Popular “3 Screens” Mobile Solution Upgraded with New Features

0
0

Upgrades include improved UI, Why Invest, Audio Webcasting and Social Integration

3Screens

We’re thrilled to announce that we are updating all of our App clients to our latest Q4 app release 3.2.1. We have been very excited to work with so many great companies to produce a great app platform and this latest update reflects new best practices that we have uncovered over the last few months. To determine how to improve the app, we spent a lot of time talking to users, clients and digging into the analytics of the apps to see what features were being used the most by investors. We then focused our energy on ensuring a tighter, fast user experience in those areas that we deemed most important.

Here’s a quick list of what’s improved, details and screenshots below:

What’s New?

  • Magazine view has been improved to increase readability, and intuitive design
  • Calendar of events included in magazine view
  • Event display has been improved in the magazine view
  • Webcast links integrated, enabling live & recorded streaming audio
  • Content can now be shared via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
  • New ‘ad’ format added to Magazine view, to entice users to access different sections of the app. First ad format is focused on ‘Why Invest’
  • Splash screen was removed for the phone so the app loads faster
  • Top bar now disappears when scrolling to create more reading area, and reappears when scrolling back up
  • Improved tracking in Google Analytics

iPhone_longDetails and ScreenShots

When updating our Q4 App (new phone screenshot to the right), our attention is always focused on what can we do to make the experience on a mobile device better. The mobile device market is very diverse and we want to make sure that our apps are taking full advantage of the functionality of each device. Below are the changes that have been made to the tablet and smartphone experience of the app.

Smartphone Updates

For anyone who has had experience with our mobile apps, the first update through this latest release is the number of new features to the magazine layout of the front page to optimize the overall viewer experience. For example, both the press release and events section of the homepage have been updated to provide improved readability and greater depth of information. When compared to the previous version you can see there has been some very significant changes in the way information is presented.

The event display in particular now features access to event webcasts, such as  investor meetings and earnings presentations. Now, investors can easily stream live audio calls directly through the app.

Along with changes, we have also made a number smaller changes to help with the usability of the phone app. We have seen that the primary function of viewing the apps from a phone is to get content quickly. The following changes have been made in order to ensure that the app experience on a phone is smooth and fast.

  • Streamlined loading when a user is first accessing the app. To do this we removed the initial splash page so that users can get quick access to the content in the app when they type into their mobile browser.
  • A simpler experience to navigate the app. Now there is a back arrow present so that users can easily return to which ever page of the app they were initially viewing.

Tablet Updates

We have added a new interstitial ‘ad’ format with the initial focus on ‘Why Invest’. As users flip through the different pages of the app on their tablet, they will come across this new ‘Why Invest’ ad page with the option to tap for more details.

To anyone familiar with our best practice studies, we put a high premium on having the IR website tell the unique story of your company. With the ‘Why Invest’ section now prominently featured when users access the app, investors are getting a meaningful look at your company’s investment proposition.

New ‘Why Invest” Ad Format

Goldcorp why

Social Content Sharing

We have also added new social content sharing capabilities to the media/document centers for both the tablet and smartphone versions of the app. This includes events, press releases, earning reports, webcasts/corporate videos and any other content that a company wishes to share with its investors through the app. The share button resides beside every piece of content listed in the various media/document centers, so users can easily select which social network they would like to share the content through. This makes it easier than ever for investors to be online ambassadors of your company and share your investor content amongst their personal and professional networks.

 New Document Center with social content sharing:

Newell Rubbermaid

We are very excited about this latest update to our app and are happy to speak with anyone further about it. If you would like to learn more  please reach us at: sales@q4websystems.com.

UPDATED:

Here’s a quick 6 second tour of the new phone app features:



Q4 Fully Responsive Design = Unlimited Screens [VIDEO]

0
0

rwd_sqOver the last few weeks, we’ve heard from a few people in the industry that there is a limit to how many screens we support at Q4. This may be due to our popular product “3 Screens” which combines a desktop IR website with browser based tablet and phone apps. Although 3 Screens is very popular, I wanted to reintroduce you to our responsive framework, called Q4 Responsive and its’ unlimited screen capability.

Q4 Responsive was released back in Aug 2013 and is a framework that runs on the Q4 platform that allows for an unlimited number of screens to be supported by using a fluid, fully responsive design layout for corporate investor websites. This responsive framework supports all of the pages on a client‘s website and all of the tools and functionality that exists on IR websites. Things such as stock quotes, charts, fundamentals, SEC filings, press releases, etc. are all displayed using a fully responsive design.

Here is a quick video of how Q4 Responsive works. In this demo we’re using the large corporate website www.barrick.com. Notice in the video how, as the browser shrinks, the entire website (images, tables, fonts) scales down and responds to any screen size.

See for yourself by visiting www.barrick.com and shrinking your browser (if you’re on a desktop) or use a tablet or phone to access it.

The difference between Q4 Responsive and Q4 3 Screens is that responsive is being used during corporate and IR website redesigns where responsive is required. 3 Screens is best suited as a mobile solution for existing corporate sites or non-responsive IR websites.

Q4 3 Screens

3 Screens is a mobile app delivered through the browser, which provides for enhanced user experience and speed. Things such as swiping and animation are more capable through a browser app. The technology that runs 3 Screens is the same as our native apps. The drawback with these, is that they are designed to take advantage of mobile devices, so they can have different functionality than the desktop. This isn’t a drawback per say, but for some a replication of the website is important. Which is where Q4 Responsive comes in.

Q4 Responsive

Q4 Responsive is a website framework that scales the website with the size of the browser and supports any size of screen. It allows for a broader set of content, and allows one site to be delivered for all screen sizes. The drawback here is because it’s based on the website (and not an app like 3 Screens) the functionality doesn’t allow for the same native app experience, like 3 Screens does.

So whether, you’re looking to create a fully responsive website, or use 3 Screens to upgrade your current website to address mobile needs. We’ve got you covered.

If you’re interested in more examples, or have questions. Reach out, we’d be happy to talk about it.

Q4 Expands Social Media Management with LinkedIn Company Pages

0
0

LinkedIn1Today we are excited to announce the expansion of Q4’s social media management to include LinkedIn Company Pages. This major addition builds on the broad capabilities of the Q4 platform in helping public companies manage their social media outreach.

A little background on why LinkedIn has become important:

Over the last year or so, we have seen a marked increase in the amount of referral traffic coming from LinkedIn Company Pages to our network of client websites. In fact, in many cases LinkedIn has emerged to become the dominant social media channel for referral traffic, even more than all other channels combined.

In addition to being a main source of referral traffic to our client’s sites, many of our clients have also started to see a significant spike in followers to their LinkedIn Company Page ranging across all types of stakeholders. In many cases, companies have 10′s of thousands of followers on LinkedIn that include investors, employees and peers to name a few.

Based on the above, we wanted to make it easier for our clients to provide content to their Company Pages and to enhance the experience for their followers on LinkedIn. We also wanted to take the great content being published to these pages and bring it back to our client websites. Today’s release achieves both of these goals. We highlight the features next:

LinkedIn API Integration

The Q4 platform is now integrated with the LinkedIn API, which gives any Q4 client and authenticated user the ability to publish content to their LinkedIn Company Page, through the Q4 Web social media dashboard. This feature makes it easy to share any recently published item such as a press release, presentation or third party blog post. Content can be published on an ad-hoc basis or as part of Q4’s social media alerting service.

LI1

OAuth Secure Authentication

Security is a major priority at all times here at Q4. As such, when connecting the Q4 platform to LinkedIn we use a secure OAuth method. This approach is best because Q4 does not store the password for LinkedIn, while a secure connection is made.

Content Previews

When content is published from Q4 to LinkedIn Company Pages, LinkedIn can pick up the title, photo and summary text for the update. This ensures that your updates will always look great to your followers on LinkedIn. See example below, with a comment provided, link, preview image along with the title of the article and summary text:

LI2

Configuration Options

Social Media Dashboard – LinkedIn joins, Facebook, Twitter, Stocktwits, SlideShare and Google as supported API partners on our social media dashboard. As part of the Q4 social media dashboard, LinkedIn Company Page integration can be configured in a number of different ways to suit how clients prefer to use social media as part of their communications plans.

LI3

Ad-hoc updates – Put simply this is a status box in Q4 social where anything including text, links, photos and videos can be shared and published to LinkedIn Company Pages.

LI4

Recent Published Items – The last 10 things published through your site can quickly and easily be shared to your LinkedIn Company Page. By simply clicking on the send icon beside the items title, the status box is pre-filled with the item’s title, weblink and anything else configured using the social media templates (more on these below).

Social Media Alerts – An extension of the Q4 alerting system, LinkedIn Company Pages can now be automatically updated each time a new Press Release, Event, Presentation, Financial Report or SEC Filing is added to the IR website. Even if the content is updated through a data feed, such as a press release or SEC filing, it can be immediately published to the Company Page. The structure of these alerts are fully customizable through our social media templates.

Social Media Templates – A configuration setting for recently published items and social alerts, the templates allow administrators to customize Linkedin Company Page updates for 5 different content types: press releases, events, presentations, reports and pages. For each template, clients can customize the language and structure of the update, including adding specific #hashtags and $cashtags to each type of update.

LI5

Social Archiving

A component of our proprietary web disclosure records technology, all LinkedIn Company Page updates published through Q4 are recorded and stored in an archive. If required, every item published is accessible for detailed analysis.

Website Integration

With this release we also support the integration of LinkedIn Company Page updates into corporate and investor websites and newsrooms. This is an extension of our social stream product which allows for unlimited flexibility in integrating real-time social media and interactivity into website pages. Now, each time an update is published on your LinkedIn Company Page, it can also display on your website. This is a great feature for showcasing your activity on social networks, while keeping your visitors on your site.

LI6

LinkedIn Company Pages will be rolling out on the Q4 platform soon. Keep an eye out on your Q4 dashboard for the announcement. We look forward to seeing all the great content clients will be publishing on LinkedIn over the coming months.

You Don’t Have to Be Big And Powerful to Change the World [VIDEO]

0
0

vivienne-harrI came across this video from the Twitter IPO and I had to share it here. I think it captures so much of what makes Twitter so amazing. From the NYSE Big Stage blog: Twitter Users Prove Information is Power. Nine-year-old Vivienne Harr, who started a now-famous lemonade company with the goal of ending child slavery, put it best:

You don’t have to big or powerful to change the world. You can be just like me.”

I just love it.

 

Top 5 Twitter Misconceptions and What Really Matters

0
0

As you know, Twitter went public last week with a huge amount of hype and fanfare at the NYSE. There were no technical glitches and the opening was incredibly smooth and well managed.

As you would expect, there have been a ton of posts written since then about Twitter. As the evening rolled in, it seemed to me the ratio of positive to negative started to tip to frown town. The posts ranged from sour grapes from those not included in the IPO to rants about why Twitter won’t last and is another fad and as you would expect tons on valuation. I’m going to leave valuation talks to the pros and focus here on what I consider to be the top 5 Twitter misconceptions.

1. Only 18% of US Population Use It

Yes, but who is using it? The vast majority of journalists and the media use Twitter (~80% in North America). Twitter is the global real-time newswire. Anyone whose job it is to report, produce, comment or read the news simply can’t operate in today’s world without Twitter.

Journo use of Twitter

Via: Oriella Pr Network Global Digital Journalism Study 2013

So whether you are on Twitter or not, this is how information is being sourced and distributed before you consume it. Almost every night on TV and across the web even printed newspaper’s tweets are mentioned and used as part of reporting. I don’t know what the % of people consuming media is, but let’s assume it’s 100% (who doesn’t consume media?) and on that note, Twitter is being used by virtually everybody. Ok, that’s a little aggressive I know, but I think you get my point.

A great example is my mom (late 70s), who has never been on Twitter, knows about Twitter and has mentioned specific tweets that she’s seen on TV. I love my mom.

2. 80% of Tweets Go Unread

This is just plain silly. Of course tons of tweets go unread. People scan and if not interested, they move on. Using a press release example, how many press releases go unread each day? My guess is a vast majority. On this same note, the stat is meaningless. There are 500m tweets posted each day. So the other way to state this is over 100M tweets are read each day.

Also, the important thing to ask here is ‘what tweets are being read?.’ Carl Ichan starts tweeting and is moving markets with what he has to say. Who cares about the tweets that aren’t important? They disappear into the ether…as they should!

carlIchan

https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/status/367350206993399808

3. 140 Characters Isn’t Enough

Anyone who uses Twitter knows this, so I’m surprised it’s still being discussed. But here is the reality - It’s a 140 character headline limit. The links to articles, blog posts, videos, photos, etc. are what makes Twitter so valuable. The 140 characters does limit conversation, but does not limit the amount of information that can be shared or distributed. In fact the forced brevity and uniform size of tweets makes the stream easier to consume, allowing the speed of the network to be maintained.

And with the incision of Twitter cards and inline photos and videos, the 140 character limit is even less meaningful. Photos, Videos and even applications (like tuning into a TV station) are being written into Twitter cards. We are just starting to see what Twitter cards can do, the possibilities are endless.

HuffPost

https://twitter.com/HuffingtonPost/status/401358981119356929

4. It’s only 20% the Size of Facebook

Comparing Twitter and Facebook is wrong. Twitter is not a social network – it is an information network. Facebook consists of the people I know, friends new and old and the information shared there is about their lives. Whether you like Facebook or not, it’s utility is about personal connections. Twitter is completely different. On Twitter I know very few of the people I’m connected with AND a huge aspect of the value comes from following hashtags or search results.

Twitter is an information network and has become critical infrastructure.

At any moment, I can focus my attention to a region, a company, a news item. This can be local, national, global, etc. For example, I live in Toronto. Our mayor is a mess. If I want to know what is going on with him at any moment, all I need to do is search #robford…(don’t click on that link, things are unravelling…) on the same note, if I want to see what’s happening with #syria it’s also a click away.

Or, want to see what San Francisco did for a 5 year old cancer patient, whose wish was to be batman for the day? Search the hashtag #SFBatkid. If this doesn’t make your heart melt, you’re not human.

batkid

5. There is No Conversation, It’s All Broadcast

It is correct that Twitter is not about conversations. Due to its format and the speed that information can be exchanged, its highest utility is the distribution of information. You can (and many do) have conversations through Twitter, but it’s not the best platform. If you really like conversations, LinkedIn, Facebook or even a message board is a better format.

The misconception here is that broadcast is bad. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. When some type of news breaks about a company that I’m invested in, I want to know this information. I don’t want to have a “conversation” about it, I want to be informed. The same utility applies to any type of information and/or news.

The misconception here is that broadcast is bad. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Using a different example, my wife joined Twitter two years ago and after a couple of weeks started to love it. She since then has moved to Instagram for her daily fix. But anytime she wants to see what people are saying about Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, Rob Ford (incase you missed it, we live in Toronto) or any other current event, she turns to Twitter. As there is no other place to turn for this content, and that’s very powerful.

Final Thought: Twitter is Critical Infrastructure

As a final point, I had a meeting yesterday with some very smart guys. One opinion about Twitter is simply that it is has become critical infrastructure for all information. If you’re in the information business, producing or consuming, you have no choice. Twitter is required reading.

Netflix Shows how to Use Google Hangout for Earnings Video

0
0

Netflix-Logo-RedIf you haven’t had a chance to view Netflix’s latest earnings video I would recommend you have a look below. Using Google Hangout combined with good lighting and clean background Netflix has demonstrated that providing video for earnings does not need to use elaborate and expensive methods.  As per the prior quarter, Netflix has used a unique format with analysts hosting the call, which there has been many points of discussion around. My intent in showing the video here is more about using video than this format specifically. Have a look:


Bill Gates new CEO video demonstrates how effective simple videos can be

0
0

MSFT New CEOAs I’m sure you heard, Microsoft announced Satay Nadella as their new CEO. Today, Bill Gates posted a video welcoming Satay to the new role. Interestingly Bill also announced that he would be spending 30% of his time as a technical advisor to the new CEO. Certainly a big change to the company. The video is 1min 44secs and very simple. It’s a perfect example of how effective short, simple videos can be:

In a lot of my talks, video is discussed. Inevitably the questions come up: How produced does the video have to be? Does there need to be b-roll, voice over, etc? My advice is always that all of this “production value” is a waste.

The only thing that matters is good quality camera (iPhone is ok), good lighting and a topic that is current and interesting.

Timeliness trumps all.

Thoughts in Flight – How Web, Social and Mobile Attitudes are Changing

0
0

Onboard an early flight to NYC, I wanted to share some thoughts on my experiences traveling across the country speaking about the web, social media and mobile.

NYC Flight

My 2014 has started off with a significant pace with about 2 speaking gigs a month. Last year I logged about 30K miles travel, a new personal record. Comparatively, I know that many of our clients are traveling upwards of 100K a year so I knew I had a long way to go. Although at this pace, I should do over 60k miles this year. Nice for frequently flyer miles!

The bulk of my travel is driven by speaking engagements (although I always fit in other meetings). During these opportunities to speak with IROs from around the country, I have found that attitudes towards the web, social media and mobile have changed dramatically over the last few years.

I recall not so long ago having a debate with a skeptical IRO around whether investors use websites as part of research when they, as this person argued, “can get everything from Bloomberg”

We now know how integral websites are to the research process, with 65% buy-side visiting at least monthly and close to 80% using as part of research.

I also remember having a discussion with an IRO who discovered during my talk that his company’s PR team had been live tweeting their earnings. (This has happened numerous times and is far more common than you’d think!)

In our research we now find that 72% of companies that have Twitter account are sharing investor related information. If your company has Twitter, there is a strong likelihood investor information is being shared.

Memorably, I recall an emotional response to one of my talks not to long ago. The individual said something along the lines of “none of these social networks make any money, there is no way any of them are going to be around in a few years”

We now know truly how powerful these global social networks can be. With both Twitter and Facebook now public, it’s clear they are here to stay and are very much a part of how the world communicates. 

Finally, about 18 months ago, I was speaking on the importance of mobile and a common issue that I encountered was “I can’t see an investor downloading an app for every company they follow”.  I actually agree this is the case the case for individual apps. But this does not take away from the fact that mobile traffic is eating the online world.

Our current stats reveal that 25% of investor traffic on IR websites is coming from mobile devices. The commonly held opinion of Q4 and others in our industry is that this growth is well on pace to cross over 50% in the next 12 months. 

Today, with numbers like we’re seeing above, it is absolutely clear to me that these trends are undeniable. Every public company is being impacted as investors rely more on the web, social media and mobile to make their decisions.

In my opinion, the companies that acknowledge and react to these changes faster have a distinct advantage over their peers when it comes to competing for capital and maximizing valuation.

I have many more thoughts (go figure!) let me know what you think on Twitter @darrellheaps

My flight is descending now “please stow your electronic devices…” until next time Internets.


IR Should be Smart about How To Engage on Social Media

0
0

dontengageLast week PR Newswire posted a blog titled “IR should not “engage” in social media” in reading the post I found myself shaking my head a number of times throughout the article. In my opinion the advice to not engage and use Twitter and StockTwits to broadcast compliance focused news is not advice that I think companies and IR departments should follow. That is, unless they are ok getting zero value out of Twitter, StockTwits and any other social platform.

To respond to the post, I thought I would address a few of the statements and how they differ from my view and what we’re seeing the best companies out there doing.

And that brings us back to the title of this blog: IR should not “engage” in social media. Obviously, the key word to focus on is engage. Its a great word for marketing, an excellent word for sales – but it is an unrealistic social media word for investor relations. It indicates interaction and dialog. As this survey shows, unrealistic.

The question of “Is your IR department tweeting” is not the right question to be asking. It should be “is your company Tweeting financial information?” Investors don’t care about whether an IR department is tweeting or if someone else is. It’s 100% irrelevant who “pushes the button”.

Last week at the IR Magazine awards in New York, Starbucks won the best use of social media. Do you know what the IRO said when she accepted? “This award is really for my communications team, they manage our social media channels and we work closely with them.”

This is what we are seeing as well, that a majority of mid and large cap companies are working with their communication colleagues to provide financial information through social media to investors, the media, employees, etc.

The IR awards are voted on by Buy-Side investors. Which is also highly counter to the PRN blog which says:

Another suggestion is don’t expect to find your targeted institutional investors or analysts in the stream. Privacy and intellectual (trade) property is their DNA. Institutional investors and portfolio managers don’t file their SEC 13-Fs until the last possible moment… they sure as heck are not going to tweet “I’m long on $XYZ.”

This statement is wrong first off on the use of Social Media by institutional investors. As research is ranging from 50-80% depending on the study. Institutional investors: ARE READING YOUR TWEETS. Maybe not the portfolio manager, but the research analyst sure is.

The second part of this that says they won’t tweet their interest is mostly correct. But it misses the point…The critical aspect is they are using social as part of their research process. IR departments need to understand this and be sure they understand how they are being viewed through these channels such as: what the sentiment is, who are the bloggers that have influence, and how to manage their social channels in response to those aspects. To say “they aren’t there and they don’t tweet so don’t worry about them” is way off base in my opinion.

IR should broadcast in social media. Get your news into the stream broadly and non-selectively. Especially StockTwits and Twitter. You don’t need to participate in any conversations, but you certainly should enable conversations amongst the Cashtaggers – the hipster name for investors who discuss stocks in StockTwits and Twitter. Let the Cashtaggers engage about your company.

I agree with this, in part. I agree with a company getting their information into the stream, not just press releases. However, I don’t think companies should intentionally have “Cashtaggers” (is that really the hipster term? Ugh) control the conversation. I’m not suggesting to selectively engage in conversations, there is a way to engage that is safe and effective. I’ll get to that a little further down in the post.

Also, stop looking for IR social media ROI. IR won’t find any that fits into the current investor relations success metrics.

This really depends on what you define as “current investor relations success metrics”. If you include, reducing volatility, improving volume, increasing awareness and attracting investors then YES the use of social media can absolutely drive ROI.

Have you seen the study from Elizabeth Blankespoor on the use of Twitter by Public Companies and it’s capital market benefits? Especially for small caps??

What IR department is not looking to reduce volatility and improve liquidity? In my experience the answer to this is noooobody!

(BTW, the Carl Icahn “single tweet” example is a predatory marketing example, not a capital markets example)

I really don’t understand this point. Carl Icahn is now using Twitter as the primary communication channel to announce his positions, and to influence perceptions of the positions he is taking. And it’s working in most cases. Did you see the Tweets about Apple and the impact they had??

If your company is a target by Carl or any other activist they are going to use social media to influence perceptions. Do you really want to be on the receiving end of this and not have a well built out social media program?

Want an example of a social media savvy organization that is taking Ichan to task? Check out Ebay. Their management and their board members have been actively engaging Icahn’s position.

IchanTweetEbay

Pmarca_IchanEbay

So on that note, let’s move onto how companies are engaging with investors. (Yes real investors! )

The companies to watch on this front include @Zillow #Zearnings, @TwitterIR #TWTREarnings and @Ford #FordEarnings (and others but I’ll keep the examples to these 3). Before I get to how they engage with investors I wanted to share a few tweets I posted the other day about why Tweeting earnings works:

dh_1

dh_2

dh_3

dh_4

dh_5

For @Zillow #Zearnings, @TwitterIR #TWTREarnings and @Ford #FordEarnings each of them use Twitter to Tweet their earnings and provide an explicit period for investors to ask questions. Which are then answered either during the call, or via Twitter. Here are a few examples:

Zillow

Ford

Approaching engagement in this manner provides access to management that is unprecedented. Being specific as to when questions can be asked and answered also takes care of the selective disclosure risk. Here is a snippet of an exchange with Ford on StockTwits:

FordEngage

I was on a panel in Atlanta the other week with Dan Aldridge, Sr. Mgr Investor Relations & Meghan Basinger, Corp Comm from Home Depot. They have recently started Tweeting their earnings, but have not yet begun to open Twitter up for questions. They are a fantastic example of gradually using Twitter, the IR department works closely with PR, who is there “pushing the button”. During the session we talked about soliciting questions and the following question came up:

“What happens if someone has a question that falls outside the established time? Do they get ignored?”

The answer from the Dan the IRO at Home Depot was to offer all those that have additional questions to contact the IR department via email, phone or other traditional methods. I really like this advice. And it’s a great example of how you can engage with investors, yes through social and traditional channels. (does the channel really matter anymore?)

The primary advice I have for all IR departments is this:

Twitter is being used by the majority of the media, investors and activists. At a minimum, you need to understand how Twitter and other platforms like StockTwits work and how your company is being viewed in these channels. You need to start evolving your communication and following the leaders like those I’ve mentioned. The reason is simple, this is only moving one direction and you risk becoming irrelevant in your job if you don’t.

“Engaging” or also known as speaking to people, is a big part of investor relations and the examples that I’ve outlined in this post provide a roadmap for how the smallest and largest companies can use these channels to drive real world benefits for your investor relations efforts.

If you have a question I’m always happy to chat about it. Tweet me at @darrellheaps, or email me at darrellh@q4websystems.com

Come on let’s engage!

The Internet in Real-Time is Mind Blowing

0
0

I came across this live infographic this morning and wanted to share it here. In the 131 seconds I viewed the infographic, approximately 2,957,194 GB of data was transferred over the internet. Take a minute and check out the Internet in Real-Time.


Click the image to open the interactive version (via Penny Stocks Lab).

Q4 Eats It’s Own Dog Food – Releases New Responsive Corporate Website

0
0

Since we launched our mobile web solution 3 Screens last year, we’ve been constantly focused on mobile. Talking to our clients, the industry (and anyone else who would listen!) about how big of a change mobile is to computing and to corporate websites.

Today, we’re very happy to release our brand new Q4 website, which is fully responsive and looks simply amazing across all phones, tablets and desktops. Please have a look and let us know what you think. www.q4websystems.com

Q4 Responsive Website. Designed for Phone, Tablet and Desktop

Q4 Responsive Website. Designed for Phone, Tablet and Desktop

Why Every Public Company Should be Live Tweeting #Earnings

0
0

Tweet megaphone conceptA few weeks ago, I attended the NIRI National conference in Las Vegas. Q4 was a big sponsor this year and we had an amazing experience, getting the chance to catch up with old friends and launching our new Big Data initiative and Q4 Surveillance & Analytics product.

This year at the conference, I had the opportunity to attend a number of great breakout sessions as well as sit on a panel discussing social media and capital markets. A common theme I noticed amongst the breakout sessions as well as conversations I had with people in general was the topic of investor activism. This was not a huge surprise given the recent accelerated activity of investor activism in the market and the fury of media attention it has attracted.

One panel discussion I attended looked into the inner workings of a major activist investor and a tech company. It was fascinating discussion that really drove home in my eyes the reality that investor activism is going to have a huge impact on how public companies communicate over the web.   The whole discussion got me thinking, in terms of social media, it’s all about blogs and Twitter. Below are a few stats shared by Jason Golz from Brunswick Group at the conference that I think really resonate with this discussion and drive the point home:

  • Today 60% of Institutional Investors have read a blog and prompted them to research further, 25% invested on the blog post.
  • 33% reached further based off Twitter, 12% invested off Twitter. But it’s generally accepted this is under reported, because of Twitter integration into Bloomberg and now TR Eikon.

The key thing to appreciate is that these are 2014 numbers. What is the adoption today? My predication is simply more across the board.

Here’s my view:

News drives the market. This has always been the case, and it’s no different today. What is different is the medium where news breaks.

News breaks on Twitter. If there is something important driving the market, it’s going to spread on Twitter first.

I spoke to someone who’s firm provides media monitoring: broadcast, radio, print, social, etc and provides reports on how it’s impacting the stocks….my thought was “does any of that matter anymore?” If it’s moving markets it’s going to break and spread on Twitter. Full stop. TV, radio, print all follow news that breaks and spreads on Twitter.

To illustrate this point, have a look at this list of the top 25 influencers on Fedex stock $FDX (on a side note, Natalie Heard from FedEx was on the panel with me at NIRI and she was awesome). 80% of the top 25 influencers on FedEx are members of the financial media and Fedex is #2.

FedEx Shot

Want to know what’s about to be reported on TV before it happens? You can only get that through Twitter. Twitter is the news.

So what does this mean for investor relations? 

If you look at companies like FedEx and Home Depot, they are the #1 and #2 influencers on their own stock, which is very powerful. If I told you that you could have as much influence on your stock as anyone in the financial media, what would you say? Maybe; “Sure, but it’ll costs a ton.” But in today’s world, it’s possible and easily achievable goal for a company to be the primary influencer of their stock performance with no cost. Here’s how:

Live tweet your earnings!

The first think I recommend is to talk to your PR or Corp Comm group about live tweeting earnings. They can help and (in my experience) are going to be very keen to help. From this I would also strongly recommend using your primary Twitter account, not a dedicated IR account. (See Home Depot as an example)

Using your primary Twitter account is key in order to take advantage of your company’s full Twitter  reach. Let your followers know that you will be live tweeting your earnings ahead of time so they know when to tune in as well as build up anticipation. Earnings announcements are important and you want to communicate their importance and build on that energy.

Using your company’s primary Twitter Account runs counter to previous advice that I have stressed in the past about having a dedicated IR account. I don’t recommend this anymore, as I think it just makes it harder for the company and IR team to generate awareness and value from live tweeting their earnings. Leverage the company channels that have the most reach in order to expand the reach of your earnings.

Stephanie Harig over at Dix and Eaton wrote an excellent post yesterday, sharing a 10 point check list for live tweeting during earnings. It’s an excellent post that I highly recommend checking out in full. Here are Stephanie’s 10 point check list:

  1. Choose your channel (but also cross-promote)
  2. Draft tweets ahead of time
  3. Incorporate a “cashtag” into the tweets – and maybe a hashtag
  4. Check tweets for tone
  5. Images, images, images
  6. Secure necessary approvals – in advance
  7. Publicize that you are live-tweeting ahead of the event
  8. Post when you’re starting and stopping the live-tweeting
  9. Tweet your safe harbor
  10. Maintain flexibility

From a return on investment perspective, here are the top 5 reason why every single public company should be live tweeting:

  1. It’s the information that investors and the media is most interested in.
  2. Your executives and your legal team will easily understand and get their head around it, it’s actually the perfect way to start using Twitter in IR
  3. Live tweeting creates a live transcript summary of the call. It’s a real-time brief.
  4. Your investors, employees and other stakeholders will retweet and favourite tweets, establishing your corporate account as a influencer on the stock
  5. Being the top influencer enables you to drive the news cycle, rather than it driving you.

Circling back to my original comments in this post. By live tweeting your earnings you will establish you primary Twitter account as a influencer on your stock. Achieving this provides a communication channel on par with the financial media and gives you the ability to shape the news that is effecting your company. This is critical in today’s market, where news and it’s impact move faster than ever.

Happy Tweeting!

Scaling a Culture of Service at Q4

0
0

Growth!Over the last couple of years, Q4 has seen a tremendous amount of client growth in the IR services market. The reason for this growth is due to a combination of our technology, products and most importantly, our commitment to customer service.

A few years ago, a client shared with me an experience she had working with one of our support reps early one morning. “He was so committed to helping me, I swear he took the call while in the shower!”

While we generally aim to take our client calls out of the shower… :-) this story does speak to the emphasis we place on customer service at Q4. We will do everything possible to provide exceptional service to our clients, no matter what it takes!

With close to 500 clients (many blue chip) and almost 20 new clients joining each month, Q4 is growing quickly and becoming a formidable competitor to the current market incumbents.

In order to grow at this rate and maintain the culture of service we have worked hard to cultivate, we have been investing heavily in growing our service teams faster than our client base. Doing so successfully requires not only recruiting, but also training, mentoring and rewarding the leaders of client service.

To give you an idea how we’re scaling, I wanted to share the following infographic on our client, team and service level growth:

 

Moving forward, we’re going to start introducing you (through this blog) to the new faces at Q4. With the addition of 60 people this year alone there are a lot of great new people to meet.

On a final note, I wanted to thank all of our team members, partners and clients for all the things you do that contribute to our success.  We believe that Q4 has a bright future and I’m personally excited to continue building Q4 for the long term.

62% of Analysts Use Mobile to Help Analyze the Companies They Cover.

0
0

AnalystUseOfMobileI was just spending time catching up on twitter and came across this great infographic, shared by Serena Ehrlich. This infographic is based on a survey of 50 buy-side, sell-side and independents analysts. Very interesting.

When looking at the use of mobile during research, 34% responded that they use it sometimes and 28% extensively, for a combined total of 62%. The world has certainly changed.

Analyst use of Mobile and Social

NIRI Research 2014 Highlights [INFOGRAPHIC]

0
0

I came across this NIRI infographic on Twitter earlier today. It highlights a number of interesting points from NIRI’s research projects over the past year. What I find most interesting is the average number of IR employees by market-cap, which is a great sign about the growing importance of IR in the corporation.

You can learn more about the research at http://niri.org/analytics

Enjoy!

NIRI Infographic 2014 Highlights


Q4 Web Systems Closes $5 million Venture Round to Fuel Expansion

0
0

q4web-environmental-109

This past year has been an extremely exciting one at Q4. In 2014 we doubled our US client base, including almost 20% of the S&P 500 – the world’s most respected brands such as  Nike, Salesforce, FedEx and McDonald’s use Q4 delivered websites, mobile applications and market intelligence solutions to redefine how they interact with capital markets. As a result we have undergone a large scale expansion of our North American team, adding over 46 new employees and doubling our office space in Toronto to 8,000 square feet.

In order to keep up with the growing needs of our client base and the expansion of our investor relations’ SaaS platform, we are pleased to announce that we have just closed a $5 Million venture round with Plaza Ventures, Atlas Venture and Silicon Valley Bank. As part of this announcement, we also are excited to welcome Matthew Leibowitz, Partner, Plaza Ventures to our Board. This funding will be used to accelerate our product development and to grow our engineering team in our Toronto office as well as add to our growing US sales team which are spread out across the North America.

Please take a look at our careers page to see the current positions we are hiring for and be sure to check out our new team members blogs to see the recent hires that we have brought on that reflect the unique corporate culture we strive for, and to see if Q4 is the right fit for you.

We would like to thank our venture partners and look forward to the coming months of team expansion and providing the very best tools for Investor Relations in the market.

To find out more about our recent venture funding, please see our official press release.

Why Mobile is Core to Delivering An Amazing Customer Experience

0
0

Q4App_SignUpFormImageX2Over the last couple of years we have made customer experience our number one priority here at Q4. Providing outstanding customer service, across all of our customer interactions takes continuous effort and a commitment to improvement. Growing at triple digits makes this more challenging as we add clients and team members on a weekly basis.

When looking at how to take our customer’s experience to the next level, we started to look at all the points of interactions that our clients have with us (sales, service, project management) and with our products. As we dug into this we saw an opportunity to make things easier for our clients and help them focus on their core efforts at work, rather than managing their workflow with Q4.

When thinking about workflow, we focus on mobile. The reason for this is that in the past (and still some today), software vendors would talk about the mobile use case as being able to access information while the user is “on the go”, the thinking was to provide a trimmed back experience, because people don’t want to access a lot of information on their phone. Well, this has completely changed, the phone is everything.

Today, people use their phone from the moment they wake up, throughout the business day, until they go to bed. This includes while in transit, sitting at their desk, in meetings, getting lunch, etc. The phone is the primary computing device. Yes – the desktop/laptop is still used for certain things, but the majority of time is spent on the phone, it is the go-to device.

Today, we look at the process of running a report, and having to log into a desktop application as archaic. You should have access to complete and detailed information on your phone at all times. If you’re sitting in a meeting and need an answer, it should be a few taps away on your phone. The objective is not a trimmed back experience, the objective is a better and more useful experience than the desktop.

This is the context by which we designed Q4 Touch, a new product that we launched today (available for iOS, Android coming soon). Q4 Touch is designed to bring together all of our customer touch points into one place. Our objective in designing it is to make it easy for our clients to access every aspect of their relationship with Q4 from their phone. Whether that is contacting someone at Q4, getting an update on a support ticket, or preparing for earnings. Q4 Touch brings all of these points together in a easy to use and slick application.

To further improve the experience we spent a lot of time thinking about notifications, when to notify the client of a change and what type of alert should be sent. The idea is that, Q4 and your team is always working and only when you need to pay attention to something will we notify you. This is part of our bigger effort of autonomous service that we’ll be talking about more in the weeks to come.

Finally, as part of this new release we also upgraded our big data analytics product. Based on client feedback we focused the data available and simplified the dashboards to highlight the data that IROs are most interested in. All of this is designed specifically for the phone. No need to log into a desktop to understand your investor’s behaviour on your IR website, everything is now just a couple taps away on your phone.

If you’re a Q4 customer, download the app and let me know what you think. We are early in the evolution of this platform and excited about our plans for the future!

Bill Gates new CEO video demonstrates how effective simple videos can be

0
0

MSFT New CEOAs I’m sure you heard, Microsoft announced Satay Nadella as their new CEO. Today, Bill Gates posted a video welcoming Satay to the new role. Interestingly Bill also announced that he would be spending 30% of his time as a technical advisor to the new CEO. Certainly a big change to the company. The video is 1min 44secs and very simple. It’s a perfect example of how effective short, simple videos can be:

In a lot of my talks, video is discussed. Inevitably the questions come up: How produced does the video have to be? Does there need to be b-roll, voice over, etc? My advice is always that all of this “production value” is a waste.

The only thing that matters is good quality camera (iPhone is ok), good lighting and a topic that is current and interesting.

Timeliness trumps all.

The True Story Behind The Twitter Earnings Leak

0
0

Following Twitter’s earnings leak this week there has been a huge amount of speculation about what happened. Numerous media outlets and blogs speculated (and others) that it was a URL sniffing bot that guessed the filename of the earnings release.

TwitterLeakComment

It’s not surprising that they went this route, because this has happened before (4 in 2011). Yes, there have been URL sniffing breaches before. Yes, there are bots out on the web guessing URLs and trying to download documents. However, any reputable IR website vendor protects against this, including NASDAQ.

The truth is that this was not URL sniffing, this was human error. According to NASDAQ’s statement:

“Yesterday at 3:07 pm EDT, Shareholder.com inadvertently posted Twitter’s (TWTR) earnings release prematurely on its investor relations website. The posting was caused by an operational issue that exposed the release on Twitter’s IR website for approximately 45 seconds. During those seconds the site was scraped by a third party that publicly disseminated the earnings information….”

It was simply that someone posted the PDF 1 hour early  by mistake. (at 3:07pm and 57 seconds exactly). The person quickly realized the mistake and pulled the document down within 45 seconds. My guess is they thought they moved quickly enough….but no.

What happened next was incredible…

Image2

And then instantly…

 Image3

Within seconds of the PDF and link to it being posted, a website scraping bot, (which was deployed by a firm named Selerity and designed to watch the site) saw the new link, followed it to the PDF, downloaded the document, parsed the data and started tweeting the earnings. You can see from the chart above, the reaction on the stock was instant.

In today’s world, with 80% of Institutional Investors using social media the news spread instantly across the market and investors started selling. The reaction was immediate, as soon as the first Tweet hit.

UPDATE: The first Selerity tweet went out at 3:07 and 57secs. Selling of Twitter started at 3:08. It took less than 3 seconds for trading bots to read the tweet and start selling. That is how fast things move these days.

Here is an interview with Selerity’s CTO, describing the bot and how it worked.

Ahead of the earnings release, Selerity analysts reviewed the site for the locations most likely to be used for publication of the release based on where prior releases were published. The one where the early document was published was found this way:

1) Start from Twitter’s investor relations website: [https://investor.twitterinc.com/]

2) Follow the link for “Quarterly results” under “Financial information” in the left side bar. That takes you here: [https://investor.twitterinc.com/results.cfm]

3) Select “First Quarter” and “2015″ from the drop-down filter at the top of the page. That takes you here: [https://investor.twitterinc.com/results.cfm?Quarter=1&Year=2015]

That URL was then handed off to the dev team which configured our web monitor to poll that URL and look for the earnings release as a link.

On Tuesday afternoon the system polled that page [https://investor.twitterinc.com/results.cfm?Quarter=1&Year=2015] periodically until at around 3:07:56 EDT it found a new link.

That new link was to a PDF document with the earnings press release. The system downloaded the press release and verified that it matched the patterns of a valid Twitter earnings release. Then it parsed out the financial data and published it to our clients and to Twitter.

The key thing to understand here is that Selerity didn’t hack or do anything crazy to get this information. If you (a human) were looking at the Twitter IR website during those 45 seconds you would have seen the link to their earnings too.

Image4

In today’s world, 45 seconds is plenty for the information to be discover and distributed to the entire market. The speed of Twitter is mind blowing.

Some recent IR industry posts following the incident took the position that if a newswire had been used to disseminate the news this wouldn’t have happened (because Twitter doesn’t use a newswire). However, in reality using just a wire to release earnings material is no longer best practice. Most companies provide supplemental information during earnings on their website, such as PDFs of the release, investor presentations, financial models, etc. Most companies use the wire but they also post this material to their websites. In each of these cases, documents are staged, and then published once the earnings have been released. Whether Twitter used a wire or not, it wouldn’t have mattered.

So, the key take aways from the Twitter leak are:

  1. Bots are everywhere and they will find your mistake and publish it on Twitter.

  1. Your Investors are using Twitter and will react instantly. 80% investors now using social.

  1. Documents on IR websites have to be secure, this is table stakes for IR website vendors. Although this isn’t what happened to Twitter.

  1. Disclosure controls and procedures both at your IR website vendor and within your own company are paramount in making sure sensitive information is handled correctly. This is what happened to Twitter.

  1. There is no silver bullet. Web technology such as bots, sniffers, Twitter, etc. are all evolving quickly. You need to understand these changes and evolve how your firm and your partners handle sensitive information. This is a moving target.

When something like Twitter’s leak happens it brings a great deal of security to the entire IR website industry. This is not just about one vendor (I can attest to this by how many calls from clients we received moments after this occurred). This is about how the web has changed, how fast information travels today and what technology vendors and companies are doing to address it.

All of us in the IR website market need to be constantly improving our technology, our processes and protocols. IR websites are a critical component to the capital markets, more so today than ever. The days of “it’s just a website, it’s fine” are very far behind us.

I’ve had conversations recently with two people that had the view “IR websites are a commodity“. To those who feel that way, I advise to look deeper at what happened with Twitter. Yes, basic websites are commoditized, but IR websites are an entirely different animal, and the differences among vendors is vast when you look under the hood. These differences are critical to the protection of public company information and share value. Underestimating the difference is a big mistake.

I’m not cheering about what happened with Twitter or NASDAQ, in fact I feel the opposite. But it has brought a spotlight to how integral and important investor websites are to the market, and how critical both technology and operations are, and that I think, is a good thing.

Where we go from here is up to all of us.

Happy Friday everyone!

Why True Market Surveillance Is More Science than Art

0
0

Screen Shot 2015-06-11 at 7.21.40 AMThis morning we announced a partnership with Oxford Intelligence Partners. I’m excited about this partnership and working with the team at Oxford on bringing next generation market intelligence and surveillance products to the industry.

To those that may ask, “why is Q4 getting into the intelligence business?” Well, the answer is simple. Just like every other product category we have entered, we believe the industry deserves better and we believe we have the capability to deliver it.

Some background to consider:

The investor relations intelligence market is dominated by two firms. Both large and respectable in their own right. However, as both have focused efforts on their desktop solutions,  studies report that client satisfaction for market surveillance has been on a steady decline for the last few years. With the market becoming more complex and opaque, combined with the speed and prevalence of programmatic and high speed trading, the message from these traditional providers is that surveillance is more art than science and that getting it right about half of the time is as good as it gets.

We simply don’t think this is good enough. Delivering true market surveillance has to be more about science than art. Here’s how we’re doing it:

For those willing and able there are a vast amount of datasets available in the market today. Some you have to partner for and some have to be built by super smart people. Even more have to be created by combining data into new datasets. The power of big data and predictive analytics is incredibly robust and offers tremendous potential for market intelligence and stock surveillance.

Earlier this year, I talked about predictive analytics and how we came to create our first intelligence product: Trade Indicator. Well, this was just the beginning. Our partnership with Oxford unlocks additional predictive datasets focused on activism, volatility, sentiment and options intelligence. Combined, these datasets provide a level of predictability and accuracy that has never been seen before in the investor relations market.

We’re excited to work closely with Oxford to make this a reality.

You see, the founding partners at Oxford include guys like Adam Frederick and John Vogt, pioneers in surveillance and arguably the best in the business. Joining them at Oxford are PHD quantitative data scientists and programmatic options traders. This level of surveillance expertise and algorithmic programming capability are very unique and powerful. When combined with our proprietary data, mobile,desktop SaaS platform and visualization capability, the end result is an entirely new type of Predictive Intelligence.

The big difference with our approach is that we are able to inform our clients about what is likely to happen, before it happens and track the activity of ownership changes through to settlement. If you work in investor relations you know the value of being ahead of an issue, whether in simply reporting to management or being able to actively head off an issue.

Executing surveillance with a more science than art ideology is just the beginning of our plans for reimagining market intelligence and the value it can provide to IROs and the C-suite. We will be demo’ing these solutions at the NIRI National conference in Chicago June 12-15. If you’re attending, please drop by our booth to experience it. Following NIRI we’ll be rolling out the full solution over the coming weeks.

I’m really looking forward to the value these products are going to bring to our clients and the impact raising the bar will inevitability have on the industry as a whole.

Exciting times indeed!

Darrell

 

Viewing all 85 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images