Whatever happened to… ?

I expect mostly the internal processes at the pubCos are not ready. You know it a cautious crowd.

“...it’s” a cautious crowd. Not sure how that crowd feels about proper grammar.

Me two.

I believe we will see the emergence of “social media disclosure”, since most companies can’t rely on IR website disclosure only.  Disclosing via IR website + social media is a healthy medium between full press release disclosure and website-only disclosure.

Curious as to how IR 2.0 is evolving at companies that market only to institutions.

AH - now we’re onto something.

@Rob - I believe companies need to have a serious plan in place before they begin to engage in two-way communications in social media.  I say this because companies do not want to be perceived as selectively answering questions.  Some companies now have people that are dedicated to social listening and responding.  For companies that do not have these resources, I advise that they announce time frames that the IR team will be answering live questions in the stream - i.e. “we will be answering live questions on StockTwits.com from after earnings from 5pm to 7pm.”  This will set expectations and not leave them exposed having to answer every incoming question outside of this time frame.

@David - IR 2.0 companies marketing only to institutions also need to be focused on social media.  Just because many institutional investors are not tweeting…yet…doesn’t mean that they are not using social media to research.  Our conversations with institutional investors have led us to believe that they are actively monitoring equities on social media both actively and passively.  Next gen IR depts need to understand what is being said about their company and become active engaged in the conversation.

Nice post Rob! I have a couple of thoughts. As you know, there are a small number of firms (5 or so) now that are using website disclosure and a slightly larger group using advisory releases. I agree with Bradley that IROs are conservative bunch which makes adoption slow. I also agree with Chris that a website on it’s own is not enough and the next wave is social media disclosure, and here’s why:

The value proposition of website disclosure is primarily about cost savings, but the savings alone do not out weigh the risks. Risks of your website not being a recognized channel of disclosure and thus being open to being sued. Or the risk of someone not seeing your news. Because the cost savings is not enough to outweigh these why change?

The integration of social media into the disclosure process (including the website and major channels) provides not only cost savings, but more importantly increased reach and awareness. And now with social content being distributed to major financial media (yahoo!finance, bloomberg, cnn money) and large scale investor networks (via Stocktwits) companies that combine website posting with broad social distribution have the ability to go beyond compliance and expand their reach and attract (and maintain connections with) investors.

For example, Dell reached 12m people during their last earnings using social media. This increased from 2m 6 mths ago. Certainly not all companies are like Dell but it really highlights the incredible reach that the proper use of social media can generate. (yes even for investor relations!)

A key point about this trend, is that it’s not about the “death of the newswire” I think most companies will continue to use a wire, if only for their CYA value. If you speak to most corporate lawyers they will advise to be conservative, and as such companies will continue with the wire for the foreseeable future. What this trend is about, is being effective. Whether you are a large or a small company, your use of social media has a much greater impact on your business and investor relations today and in the future, then press releases do. On that not, our research is now tracking about 450 companies actively using social media for IR, most in North America.

Regarding institutional investors. 1/2 of them are reading financial blogs regularly and the guys writing those financial blogs? 3/5 consider twitter as their primary news source. So if you consider the information food chain, these investors are already being heavily influenced by social media. 

Web disclosure is dead, long live web disclosure!

@Darrell - I love the “information food chain” concept - brilliant - definitely stealing that for future conversations…;)

Right DH. I think the discussion of web disclosure should not be about the money. It’s about best choices for your distribution channel - from a marketing POV.

The guidance was not intended to be anti-newswire. That’s blog spew. Commercial newswires have their role and they do it fine IF that is the right choice for your outreach strategy - even CYA.(always a good strategy!) The post-2008 difference is companies have options for compliance distribution.

Really like the post, and ensuing comments!  This topic is very dear to me as I was at Thomson Reuters during the launch of their Web Disclosure product.

I feel it important to distinguish the Thomson product (CAPITAL ‘W’ and ‘D’) Web Disclosure from what we might generically refer to as (lower-case ‘w’ and ‘d’) web disclosure.  While the latter may mean the practice of public companies issuing press releases ONLY on their website, Thomson’s product leverages major news portals.  So I agree with Brad’s point that the guidance was not intended to be anti-wire ... nor was Thomson’s offering, from one point of view.

Not sure what other vendor’s offerings entail in this regard.

Now, as for what happened to all the public point/counterpoint from competing vendors ... great point Rob, and I don’t know the answer.

Web-based disclosure is not dead at Thomson Reuters!  Hundreds of companies have signed up, and over 1,000 releases so far.

Mike are you talking about Web Disclosure or web disclosure? 

@Darrell- you raise an excellent point: the term “web disclosure” means different things to different people, and is causing confusion.  To many, it means what GOOG is doing: bypassing a traditional wire service, and only publishing their earnings release to their IR website.  Thomson Reuters, on the other hand, introduced a solution last summer that we called “Web Disclosure”, but our product DOES push a company release directly to hundreds of end points, as well as to the company IR site, plus provides robust analytics and insight into investor sentiment, AND gives the IRO complete control over the publishing process.  We have stopped calling our solution “Web Disclosure” so that people won’t mistake it for what GOOG is doing.  For more information on the topic of web-based disclsoure see the webinar (“Web-based Disclosure: Separating Fact From Fiction”)we recently hosted: http://webcast.streamlogics.com/audience/index.asp?eventid=33022707

@Rob-Jaclyn and Eric say ‘hello’, but both are so busy educating clients on our web-based disclosure solution that they suggested I reply back, hope that is OK? 

Love the shout out, Rob! Hope all is well in the CLE (how about our Tribe???). Would be happy to give you the scoop on TR’s WD. I’ll be in OH in a few weeks and will email you the dates.