Posted by Doug Lacombe

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a group of about 30 Investor Relations types at an event, “Digital Disclosure – Pubcos in the age of the social web” co-sponsored by Valiant Trust and Kingsdale Shareholder Services.

Below are my slides from that event, but essentially my point was, stocks and management teams are being valued, recommended, and denounced on social media. Public companies need to get a strategy in place, especially to protect their brands from brand-jackers!

A lively discussion ensued in the Q&A period – it became clear that folks wanted links to resources and ammo to take back to the C-suite.

Here’s a start on a few links that may be helpful:

• Q4 Web Systems research report “How Public Companies are using Twitter for Investor Relations”
• Q4 Web Systems report on Brunswick Group LLC’s survey findings on new media use by the investment community and the slides to with it:



Brunswick Group Survey Findings on New Media Usage by the Investment Community
View more documents from Darrell Heaps.
• Investment blog/aggregator SeekingAlpha.com
• Investment Wiki, Wikinvest.com
• StockTwits stock portfolio tracker and conversation hub
• Twitter brand-jacking examples:
  • WestJet (since recovered)
  • EnCana (unofficially verified, will seek absolute verification, but official stream is here)
• Twitter IR use examples. Huge list in Q4 Web System report above, but shown in the room were:
  • Royal Dutch Shell
  • Chevron
• YouTube example, Agoracom’s small cap channel
• Slideshare presentations shared by Barrick Gold
• Dominic Jones IR Web Report on Twitter, LinkedIn (IR 2.0), and the web
• Finally, for now, a Social Media & Investor Relations Trends slideshow by Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4 Web Systems

communicatto specializes in integrating digital media with more traditional forms of communications, including Investor Relations programs. If you are a CFO or IRO considering integrating social media into a traditional IR program, you might want to look at communicatto’s service offerings. Here’s a brochure just in case you need help: