StockTwits Launches Online Investor Relations Dashboard

JUNE 11, 2011 BY ERIC RICE LEAVE A COMMENT

Investing and investor relations have both had a tough time merging with social media for quite some time, but the day is coming when this will no longer be an issue.  Wall Street is one of the last sectors to embrace social media in any way.  However, with Morgan Stanley beta testing social media marketing with their top brokers it is becoming more apparent that Wall Street wants to be art of the online social networks more and more.  On Wednesday June 8, 2011, StockTwits, the social network-style online investment community, launched the StockTwits IR Suite, which aims to assist public companies in monitoring and measuring company news across the social media sphere. IR Suite is the first social media solution of its kind aimed at investor relations departments.

StockTwits offers verified business accounts

 

 

The launch comes on the heels of a beta period for the product in which 50 companies signed up and began using the StockTwits IR Suite to manage their presence on StockTwits and across other social networks. Fortune 500 companies such as Dell and Ford are among the companies that have already added social media to theirinvestor relations workflow through the new StockTwits solution. This is a step in the right direction, finally.

 

According to the StockTwits Blog, “The StockTwits IR Suite allows companies to claim their tickers and take control of their social presence on the leading investor focused social network through listening to, engaging and reaching the broadest possible social audience.”  This is a revolation in the financial industry for many reasons, which I will explain later in the post.

 

The StockTwits IR Suite consists of three main components: Verified Ticker Pages, Social Distribution, and the Social Dashboard. Verified Ticker Pages allow companies to claim their ticker page on StockTwits.com, and customize special panels to display a company blog, YouTube channel, and SlideShare presentation links. The Social Distribution component makes it simple for companies to disseminate information posted to StockTwits across a handful of social networks and sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo! Finance, Investopia, CNN Money, and Reuters. Finally, the Social Dashboard brings the IR Suite together via a central command center designed to aide in analytics, communications, and compliance.  This will allow companies the ability to connect with both happy and unhappy current and potential investors and make changes that the public requires.  After all these are PUBLIC companies and serving their public should be their main goal.

 

StockTwits Dashboard

The StockTwits IR Suite is available to companies free of charge, but premium add-ons will be rolled out over the next 12 months. The first available add-on is the Social Compliance upgrade, which addresses legal issues and appends disclaimers to information shared via StockTwits. Social Compliance can be added to the IR Suite for $99 per month. This small fee is one that every company will be willing to part with, but the question will be whether or not the legal teams will endorse the fee. SEC law is a very specialized practice and requires in depth understanding of not only the current law, but the trends that are occurring. In this environment, few things are more concerning than compliance and regulation.

 

 

As we discussed in my recent piece regarding investor relations and social media, IR departments have been wary to embrace the social media phenomenon for a number of reasons, loss of control, fear of regulation backlash and even fear of truly knowing what the public actually thinks about these companies.  StockTwits hopes to make the transition easier with their new product, and I think they will to an extent.  According to StockTwits CEO, Howard Lindzon, compliance concerns as well as an overall lack of social media understanding have made the jump difficult for companies. Most PR and IR teams have no clue what social media is and how it works, which is the real problem at the root of it all.  Lindzon believes the StockTwits IR Suite will help IR professionals ease their way into the social space; “This is like training wheels,” he says.

 

StockTwits has been rapidly gaining popularity since its founding three years ago, and today the site has approximately 100,000 active users, which is truly not a large number considering the numbers of other niche social networks.  The investment community aims to become the ‘Facebook’ of investing and finance.  This is really a good intention and a bad marketing phrase, as I have stated in past posts.  The StockTwits IR Suite is yet another step in the right direction for the company and I support the movement.

 

Next week I will be writing a piece on the importance of social engagement from public companies from both the company and investor side. If you would like to get a real time reminder please click here or simply sign up for the RSS feed.   To learn more about the StockTwits IR Suite, please visit http://stocktwits.com/IR

by Eric Rice