MUNCmedia_Retail_Investor_Targeting

MUNCmedia acquires new client: Aflac Incorporated (NYSE:AFL) - MUNCmedia's RetailInvestorConferences.com 2011 into 2012

NEW YORK, Nov. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Aflac Incorporated (NYSE: AFL) the insurance company that helps employers offer their workers a financial safety net at no direct cost to their businesses, has been declared a World's Most Ethical Company for a fifth consecutive year, today announced that their November 3rd RetailInvestorConferences.com presentation is now available for on-demand viewing.

via www.thestreet.com

MUNCmedia acquires new Digital Public Relations / Investor Relations client; Aflac Incorporated (NYSE:AFL) 2011and services will conitnue into 2012.

Aflac Details: Client Sector: "Insurance" (a worldwide leader in individual and group) Services provided: Retail Investor Targeting, Digital PR utilizing MUNCmedia's RetailInvestorConferences.com service along with supporting traditional newswire and digital PR awareness through our over 1,000 news publication which MUNCmedia exclusively powers the breaking news financial updates for. We pride ourselves n simple engagment rules; We do all the "heavy-lifting" and "pick'n shovel" work involved to make clients like Aflac experience not only as easy at possible but effective and complately turn-key. The process involves complete digital Public relations calendar identifying what the monthly or quartly objectives are. Next media relations and retail vestor targeting, capital market and tier-2 analyst coverage education on Aflac's objectives prior to the IR/PR event to ensure maxamin exposure - speak to thousands of pre-registered, qualified and interested investors, media, and analysis all at once. Casting a wider net for Aflac's Investor Relations growth initiatives through RetailInvestorConferences.com and a well co-ordinated Public Relations and Investor education canmapign that drive attendacne. More over the process also supports their corporate Aflac insurance brand. The Nov 2011 conf thousands of investors and media analysts attended, it was their 3rd presentation following their earnings announcements 3 consecutives quarters in a row.

"RetailInvestorConferences.com provided a nice way for me to be able to reach out to individual investors in a cost efficient manner. I was able to reach a group of investors that I likely would have normally not been able to do if it were not in a virtual format."

Delia H. Moore, Manager,
Investor Relations
Aflac Worldwide Headquarters

MUNCmedia's primary focus is iincorporating modern media technologies, news publishers, social media along side your traditional Public Relation and or investor relation inicatives to gnerate s sustainable regional, national and global digital exposure in as many online newspapers, magazines, portals, trade publications, TV news networks and radio stations. Ranging from national publication visibility of client corporate profiles, educating our clients on how to accelerate current social media operations, or manage for them, retail investor education (over 100 million savvy investors), and lastly keeping brand and services integrity across 1,000s of news publications by providing featured exposure. meanwhile managing any negative media pressure by counter digital pr tactics to remove or push unfavorable news off the search engines - while highlighting positive progress, your news and your Services.

 

 

MUNCmedia is here to help you get exposed to the global economy: Phone: (212) 699-0999 x801 or email clientservices@muncmedia.com ATTN Frank Lane or Matthew Bird www.muncmedia.com

RetailInvestorConferences.com is a official trademark of MUNCmedia, all rights reserved. it wouldn't be possible without the collaborative efforts of our partnerships with BetterInvesting.org, PR Newswire & Parent UBM that make RetailInvestorCnferneces.com such a sucess. 

 

 

-- 

Matthew BIRD

CEO

Market Update Network, Corp. 

MUNCmedia 

800 3rd Ave, 17th Floor

New York, NY 10022 USA

Phone: 212.699.0999 ext. 801

Mobile: 646.401.1186

Fax: 425-671-0669

SKYPE: mattbird1

Email: matt.bird@muncmedia.com 

Website: www.MUNCmedia.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-bird/6/8b/159

 

Don’t let your employees “friend” or connect with sell-side or buy-side analysts.

Ever since their IPO, I have noticed a fury of “please connect” requests in LinkedIn. Are Street analysts asking your employees to connect? Do your employees know who they are? Make sure they do. As we are all aware, analysts are looking for any insider info, as nuanced as it may seem. Your employees are talking about work in Social Media and you cannot do a damn thing about it. Except train them. Have a great day.

Any Tom, Dick or Larry (and their retail investor followers) can affect your stock - expanding on the IMAX case study

One of the more interesting sessions I attended at this year’s NIRI Annual Conference in Orlando brought to light the impact alternative research can have on a stock. Please read Michael Mayhew of Integrity Research's fine re-cap titled IMAX: A Case Study in Why Alternative Research Matters. There is a second point to this story. IMAX is 66% institutionally held. We can assume the remaining 34%... a mix of insiders and individuals... affected the 20% drop.  Does IMAX have a Retail Investor strategy? Certainly, it was individuals and perhaps even employees who reacted to this piece. The fact that any Tom, Dick or Larry can, on just ONE BLOG, affect a $30 stock is a remarkable case study for both the pervasive reach of public opinion stock research as well as the surface-level immediacy of day-trader retail investors. LINKS I assume it is this article: http://seekingalpha.com/article/273929-imax-has-a-collapse-in-its-future “Larry” http://www.pdlcapital.com/ Disclosure: I like going to IMAX at the Boston Museum of Science to hear Leonard Nimoy say “Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop bop.” Have a great day

 

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.

University of Michigan connects Tweets with lower bid-ask spreads / UPDATE

The Impact of Managerial Dissemi

Per the post earlier, I am able to share the full report below. As prior, it’s nice to have such an esteemed group quantify what so many of us in investor relations instinctually know: shareholder communications ultimately builds shareholder value. Have a great day
The Impact of Managerial Dissemination of Firm Disclosure

University of Michigan connects Tweets with lower bid-ask spreads

Investor relations may have found our first social media Holy Grail. Quantitative research. Last week I was on a call with one of the lead researcher from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, discussing a joint paper regarding the impact of direct communications towards retail investors. < "Bring us......a shareholder!"

Representatives from the U of Mich were our booth neighbors at this past June's NIRI Annual Conference. (...and they still chose to speak with us. Perhaps it was beer tasting in our booth) Conversation ensued, case studies shown and viola ~ because of our unique technology, we will be able to give their research team precise data regarding the online behavior of retail investors in context to our targeting - what they label direct-access information technologies (DAITs). The work we are planning directly follows their newly released (July 2010) report that... well, read the final abstract below for yourself! This is important news for small and micro-cap companies as well as service providers like MUNCmedia. "This increase is primarily driven by tweets containing hyperlinks, which is consistent with firms using this innovative technology to disseminate firm news. We also find that greater tweeting during news event windows is associated with lower bid-ask spreads and greater depths. These relations are stronger for tweets with hyperlinks. Our results hold mainly for firms with lower visibility—that is, firms that are smaller, have lower analyst coverage and have fewer shareholders. These findings suggest that managers use this new direct-access information technology to reduce information asymmetry, particularly for those firms that are arguably most in need." It's an in-depth 53 page report that touches many aspects of web disclosure and news dissemination we've discussed with our niche in the past couple of months. I should be able to post the full report later this week. Please be sure to follow me, a humble shrubber, to get the full report! Have a great day.

 

Social media’s birth amongst the haze of pot smoke

	A VERY cool book was announced today, co-authored by my friend and Marketing Strategist David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot: Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. On several occasions, David and I have spoken about his passion for their music and his appreciation for The Dead’s “approach to marketing.” I am not going to expand on the content here too much: go buy the book. I received an advanced copy: it’s a terrific summer Marcom read.  Fun and real. Why I am mentioning the book here (besides an obvious commercial for David) is how what was once perceived as anti-business Haight –Ashbury culture has became what is now coveted by corporate communicators… direct relationship with our fans, which our niche calls “investors.”  (Certainly direct communications is the crux of our Retail Investor Targeting and our client’s needs.) Also, similar to my little post here, what we’re blogging and Tweeting about today -  labeled as “social media”, transparency and access, The Dead, over three decades ago, instinctively called chillin’ and sharin’. Whoda thunked? Have a Grateful day.

Eureka! I pronounce the end of social media for investor relations!

An vocabularific epiphany happened on last week’s MUNCmedia client conference call ( IR 101 ). While walking some folks through shareholder communications options, a client made a side statement that they were befuddled by all the talk and articles on social media and investor relations. “Can you easily explain social media for IR?” Two shots of tequila later, I began. However, my spidey-sense immediacy warned me that the call participants’ eyes were starting to glass over. So I said – “Try this. Whenever you read or hear “social media” insert the phrase “shareholder communications.” Try it. It works. What we determined on the call was that “social media” tended to be placed in a separate silo from “shareholder communications.”  To be solidly in the middle (mass adoption) of the bell curve, social media must be ubiquitous with shareholder communications. No more hand raising games. Alright, alright… this is clearly not a “cure-for-the-common-cold” or “we-can-make-more-profit-if-we-substitute-sugar-with-high-fructose-corn-syrup” type epiphany, but there was a calming sigh on the phone. Remember, I am bringing small-caps (and smaller) into the Investor Relations realm. Baby-steps for some. < Sorry about the cigar smoke, Eric

Below is paraphrased from the call. ( I was not talking to myself. I only do that while I drive.) Q: “Twitter is just shareholder communications tool?” A: Yup, it’s a direct and lateral distribution network to investors who use Twitter. Deploy it like any other shareholder communications tactical or strategic tool. Direct shareholder communications – it’s a like..um…really  big IM. Lateral, other Twitter user may talk about you, or at least pass on your news for you to their friends and followers. Q: “Do I have to use it?” A: Shareholder communications is essential for transparency. The precise tool is up to your continuants needs. Start a Twitter account and search $ and your ticker ($ABC). (You can go to StockTwits too, but they don’t cover OTCBB) Q: “What will that do?” A: It will show you Twitter conversations about your company. You can then decide what your next steps may be within this specific shareholder communications tool. Q: “Who is on Twitter?” A: People. Nothing more, nothing less.  The Golden Rule applies. Go build investor relationships. Have a great day. PS: Sales pitch spoiler alert: Using MUNCmedia Retail Investor Targeting is a smart shareholder communications tool to build relationship with individual investors. Just add your Twitter handle /account in ALL your MUNCmedia outreach campaigns.

Here’s a new topic: Investor Relations and Social Media

This Tuesday, I participated in a panel at the well attended CCG – MZ Investor Relations Global Ranking conference. This was the umpteenth Investor Relations& Social Media panel I have attended – the first I sat on. As always, 30-second video humor aside, the question of “who is using social media” drew blank stares. Exactly the same response I heard four months ago at the Rivel Research Intelligence Council.  The IR Tweetosphere was twittering about the lack of hands at the CCG - MZ gig.

In my opinion, there are many interwoven reasons for this - at least that is what I offer to my MUNCmedia clients and ex-Shareholder.com / NASDAQ colleagues for insight). Here is the first reason. Social Media evangelists (self inclusive) and Social Media choices have confused the bageebers out of what IRO can do, let alone should do. It's overwhelming to a job that is already extremely full. Here is the first step AND IT IS REALLY REALLY EASY: A phone call. Call your IR website provider and have them enable your IR website with “share” functions. All the commercial providers have this included with their subscriptions, but you probably need to ask them to turn it on.

That's it. No philosophy or band wagon. One phone call.

This simple first step instantly enables investors, media, whoever to share and discuss your content amongst themselves. They are now a free, engaged distribution channel for you. A viral marketing channel. Don’t fuss with tracking, monitoring or “have a dialogue” with them – for now. Caveat on my opinions – I am not altruistic: my views are formed from almost 10 years making and marketing web-based IR and PR tools. I am all about creating (coughcoughsellingcough) great solutions and their practical application for companies. MUNCmedia is Retail Investors Targeting, so Social Media is a logical partner: it’s one-to-one with individuals.

Sincere thanks to CCG – MZ Investor for inviting me to join the panel.  Hope I did not suck. Have a great day.

My corporate IR knowledge adds a nice balance to social media panel

Next Tuesday, 4/6, I'm an invited panelist at the The IR Global Rankings Conference & Awards 2010,Yale Club, New York City.  I am looking forward to the event, as I have never attended this function.  Fortunately, it’s not black tie – as I'm still cleaning my tuxedo ( I just popped it into the dryer) that I wore at IR Magazine's IR Awards. The topic of IR’s role is very heavily discussed – so there’s no sense in me bantering here. However, my fellow panelists will have perspectives that I have not tuned into prior: those of “social media hubs.” All my reading and conversations have been focused on “getting IRO into the game.”      Social Media and Digital Media Campaigns Moderator:   ~  Linda Salo, Senior Financial Writer, CCG IR Panelists   ~  Brian Byrne, linkedFA   ~  Joseph Porcellini, Seeking Alpha   ~  Bradley Smith, MUNCmedia I have a couple passes left. Tweet me if you would like to attend. You can watch to me stammer in front of a live audience.  Have a great day.

Getting social over Social Media

	Big week in NYC for Investor Relations. Certainly at the center of the activity is IR magazine’s annual IR Awards. But that’s not the only event in the area. Just a Metro-North ride away, four of the industry’s most passionate Social Media evangelists are sitting together for the first time. The NIRI Connecticut / Westchester Chapter gets an A+ for arranging the Four D's. Darrell Heaps, Q4 Web Systems: @darrellheaps Dan Dykens: @meetthestreet Doug Chia, J&J: @dougchia Dennis Walsh, Sharon Merrill Associates: @DWalshIR
Follow these folks in Twitter to keep abreast - in real time - of Social Media's expanding role and successes in IR. (Follow me too @BHSmith. I occasionally have an idea.) There are a lot of us trying to help our clients build relationships with individual investors one-on-one. That's a key aspect of what we do at MUNCmedia... our Retail Investor Targeting is individual investor communications. This was the first time Darrell had a chance to sit together face-to-face and swap Social Media and IR notes. We do meet weekly at Twitter #irchat (check THAT out BTW) and we'll both be mingling at the IR Awards. This will be my 10th IR Awards... and I am proud to say my tuxedo still fits!  Um, well, it fits as long as I don't eat, drink or breath. Have a great day.