Archive for category Investor Relations
How to Use Video in Your Investor Relations Strategy
Posted by admin in Investor Relations on December 17, 2011
Raising Your Profile
In this economy of depressed markets and money-conscious investors, the cost of raising capital or your stock’s profile is not only getting higher but the ROI is practically non-existent. It seems like every company is working harder and spending more on investor relations and marketing campaigns but yielding far less results.
In raising your stock’s profile, nothing is more important than building solid relationships, creating opportunities to pitch investors and differentiating your company to attract new investors. Reaching new investors is the most expensive and time consuming part of an investor relations strategy, yet it is an often fruitless process – especially for small cap companies like those listed on the Canadian TSX Venture or the US’ OTCBB exchanges.
If your company is going to spend any money on an IR or marketing campaign to raise the profile of your company’s stock, you better make sure that you have put in place the right corporate branding that targets investors and not just your clients. If you don’t, you may lose thousands of dollars in investments from investors that would have otherwise been interested in your company’s stock but invested elsewhere because your lack of a corporate image. Read the rest of this entry »
Investor Relations and Social Media – Time to Stop Denying the Apparent
Posted by admin in Investor Relations on November 5, 2011
At this point, social media has been embraced by businesses as a useful and necessary tool. Companies are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a number of other social networking sites to market their wares, locate potential employees, and connect with potential customers and partners. On the flip side, consumers have taken to the social media-sphere in droves, sharing opinions about products and companies they are loyal or connected to in some way. Until recently, companies had yet to realize how powerful social media can be from an investor relations standpoint, but it is now becoming clear that if a company doesn’t take control of IR, then investors and customers will.
The heavy regulations on disclosure coupled with the sheer speed with which information (good, bad, true or false) travels across social media platforms has kept many investor relations departments wary of using social media. There is no doubt that IR can be difficult and risky over these platforms, but if companies don’t control and monitor the information, they risk damage from the words being spread by individuals across the online community.
In 2007, Eric Jackson used social media to make waves inside one of the largest companies on the web: Yahoo. In the online world, Jackson was a relative nobody. He ran a blog that garnered less than ten visits per day, and a Twitter account with a small following. One day, he decided to voice his opinion on Yahoo, a company that he held a total of 96 shares in. He wrote a post on his blog expressing his dissatisfaction with the management performance of Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, and included a few videos with his suggestions. He asked his fellow investors to band together for change, and his post went viral. Shortly thereafter, Jackson had built a pool of Yahoo investors that represented nearly three million shares of Yahoo. It wasn’t long before Semel resigned his post as CEO, and Eric Jackson’s efforts were considered the biggest contributing factor to Semel’s demise. Read the rest of this entry »
Taking Your Company Public? Post Public Investor Relations Can Make Or Break Your Company
Posted by admin in Investor Relations on October 25, 2011
Going public is an amazing undertaking with the light anticipated at the end of the tunnel is increased market share, financial stability and of course the almighty strategy of growth through acquisition. The problem is for most companies that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t anything even remotely close to the above; instead it’s a train that will crush you under it’s weight as it’s steaming full speed ahead. That train is a personification of the ‘lack’ of solid investor relations strategies in your post public existence.
Investor relations is the process of working with broker dealers, market makers, stock alert services, press release distribution, fielding calls from the media, potential investors and others interested in your company as well as general publicity to get your executive, company name and trading symbol on as many TV screens, radio waves, social media platforms and email boxes as possible.
The above is the traditional comprehension of a ‘newbie’ public CEO. What most new public CEOs lack the understanding of the post public IR concept so they don’t know what questions to ask the IR firm and have no knowledge to compare services so they sign a crap deal, the stock price doesn’t open, then plummets and everyone begins pointing the finger and on and on with the blame game.
Here is a part of investor relations that most companies never consider. A solid IR firm will have a strong network of investors, broker dealers, private equity funds etc. to create liquidation options for pre IPO investors in a way that will not damage the stock price, to the contrary, the share price will typically go up. Read the rest of this entry »