Social media advice for investor relations: install TweetDeck and lurk, listen and learn.

StockTwits exhibited for the first time at NIRI 2011

To use Twitter vocabulary, social media was a “trending topic” at this year’s NIRI 2011 Annual Conference. As MUNCmedia’s focus is retail investors, I have a deep, vested interest in SoMe. (that’s the hip Twitter slang. Only requires 4 characters) Personally, I attended the Thomson Reuter’s Social Media Lunch & Learn ( I confirmed with Darrel Heaps, CEO of Q4 Websystms that his session is video archived). I also had several formal meetings with attendees and other service providers on the topic as well and numerous coffee and cocktail conversations. My observation is investor relations folks are still in the bell curve phase, absolutely advanced since NIRI 2010; with more larger pubcos embracing the sides of the curve, but most in the middle not engaged. The Thomson Reuter’s panel had Campbell’s and Alcoa present their engagement experiences. Both firms came into SoMe at an “ah-hah” epiphany moment. Although their epiphany’s were different, they both had a common ground: START WITH LISTENING. The trepidation most investor relations officers I spoke with is still rooted on two-way engagement. This is the 100% tactical advice I give MUNCmedia clients who are hesitant (or just learning) social media...

...use TweetDeck and lurk, listen and learn. Here's how. Open a listening-only Twitter account. (I use “HotGirl3154”) Don’t add any profile data. Install TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a separate Twitter application that allows you to create filtered keyword columns. Set-up a column with your company name (no spaces). Set-up a column with your company ticker WITH a dollar sign before it = $ABC. The dollar sign is a Twitter identifier for stock symbols. Set-up a column for each of your peers and competitors with their tickers. Set-up a column for any people (@BHSMITH) you know are important to your company or industry: trade publications, etc.  If you see hashtags ( # poundsigns) before words, those are discussion threads. You can filter those too. #irchat is an example. Now, just start reading the streams. Consider what is being said. Practice “engagement” in your head. If you WERE to speak, what do these SoMe Stakeholders want to hear from you?  After a while, not only will you find your SoMe voice, but you will have identified the top influencers that affect/effect the conversations germane to your company. Then, when you DO start two-way engagement, you’ll already have a base. Do NOT EVER EVER Tweet from this account. Do not “follow” anyone either. This is for intelligence only. Zero engagement. Just listening and leaning the SoMo-flow. Oh! The BEST advice from the Thomson Reuters panel? Get a summer intern-student to set-up all this. It will take them all of five minutes. Have a great day.

Comments

[Andrew Freedman]

Great post Brad. Many thanks for sharing. I can't agree more.

Many IROs I hear from dismiss SoMe because they decide they don't want to engage in the two-way stuff, and use that to rationalize their approach of ignoring the trend altogether.

I frequently remind them that just because your company may not speak on social media channels, that does not mean OTHER PEOPLE are not speaking about YOUR COMPANY. Tweet Deck would be a great way to check in on this.

[John]

Ok, call me a twitter idiot, but if I already have a twitter account, how do I set up a separate listen-only account? When I tried to set up another account, it recognized my email address and wouldn't let me proceed. thanks.