Tips & Distribution Service
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SOCIAL MEDIA INVESTOR RELATIONS TIPS & DISTRIBUTION SERVICE A primer on the norms, opportunities, and limitations of social media IR SOCIAL MEDIA IR WHITE PAPER Presented by NASDAQ OMX GlobeNewswire GlobeNewswire, a NASDAQ OMX company, is one of the world’s largest newswire distribution networks, specializing in the delivery of corporate press releases, financial disclosures and multimedia content to the media, investment community, individual investors and the general public. Large public corporations, small businesses, professional organizations and PR agencies rely on GlobeNewswire to broadcast their most market moving news to a worldwide audience in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner. OVERVIEW INTRODUCTION Introduction - Birth of the press release SECTION 2: SOCIAL MEDIA INVESTOR RELATIONS: - Emergence of the SEO press release you’re already doING IT! § One-way streets Section 1: SEO Press Releases § Communication, not dialogue - How Google News has changed the public relations paradigm § Example: the online press-room - The evolution of press releases and the need for SEO - How Google’s “Panda” algorithm changes SEO press releases SECTION 3: SOCIALIZATION: HOW TO MAKE (MORE) FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE (MORE) PEOPLE: Section 2: SEO Keyword Research Tools § Determining what content is appropriate for the medium - Utilizing free SEO keyword research tools § Timing and strategizing disclosures - Utilizing advanced keyword research tips § Example: Alcoa Section 3: SEO Press Release Writing Tips SECTION 4: SHARING AND OVER-SHARING: - Writing a press release THE BOUNDARIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA IR: - Including SEO keywords in the headline § Thought experiment: stock ticker as a branding opportunity - Including closely related search terms in the subhead - Including your top keywords in the first 100 words § Thought experiment: the hype-man - Including long tail keywords in anchor text links § Managing expectations CONCLUSION Section 4: SEO Press Release Distribution Service - Why you can’t submit a press release to Google News or Yahoo! News - Why you should use an SEO press release distribution service Section 5: Press Release SEO Report - Monitoring access and traffic reports - Tracking PR campaigns with web analytics - Reviewing SEO press release success stories Conclusion - Rebirth of the inverted pyramid GlobeNewswire, a NASDAQ OMX company, is one of the world’s largest newswire distribution networks, specializing in the delivery of corporate press releases, financial disclosures and multimedia content to the media, investment community, individual investors and the general public. Large public corporations, small businesses, professional organizations and PR agencies rely on GlobeNewswire to broadcast their most market moving news to a worldwide audience in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner. INTRODUCTION This white paper introduces the present state of social media investor relations This is a snapshot of the 2011 Egyptian revolution as it took place on Twitter, for beginners and intermediate practitioners in the field. If you are reading this produced by the computer scientist André Panisson. It is also a brilliant visual white paper, you have been forewarned, warned, and after warned by armies metaphor for decentralized media. Panisson made the map you’re looking at by of consultants that social media has changed everything, and that your inves- tracking the use of the hashtag #jan251. Every dot is a user entering this hashtag, tor relations strategy is now woefully outdated. That’s basically wrong. Your IR and every connection between dots is another user “retweeting” that user’s strategy likely does want some rethinking for integration with social media, but message2. One of the most compelling things about this map is its hollow center: the world has not been turned upside down. the users who make up that core are isolated, and those in the outer rim are quite interconnected. Panisson’s map shows us social media’s most powerful moment In February 2012, Jeff Corbin published an updated 2nd edition of his investor to date, but the social network in which it takes place is surprisingly stratified. relations handbook, Investor Relations: The Art of Communicating Value. His mes- sage: “The communication of a company’s valuation still remains at the core of If a celebrity is complaining about your product on a social media site, it’s prob- any successful investor relations (IR) effort.” The goals of investor relations are the ably advisable to respond in some way or other—even cheekily—if only to show same in a social media world; you have simply been given more tools to do your job. investors and business reporters that you have a social media strategy. If a small group of relatively uninfluential people begin complaining, the situation is worth As with any new communications medium, there are pitfalls and summits particu- monitoring, but not necessarily responding to; you want to weigh the upside of lar to the social media landscape. This paper will give you the lay of the land in appearing to be engaged, against the downside risk of amplifying a complaint. social media investor relations, in terms of the tools at your disposal, the ways in Should you decide that a response is necessary but are uncertain of the stance which these tools have the potential to change the flow of information between to adopt, the more conservative course is always to direct your response solely investors and corporations, and how this all fits into the current regulatory regime to the issue, not to the individuals who raised it. surrounding disclosures. Consider this a starting point and a reference point as you develop your particular strategy. It is important to remember that the social Of course, it will come as no surprise to communications professionals, and espe- media landscape is changing tectonically, and your social media investor relations cially those in IR, that some voices carry farther in the public square, and that not strategies will necessarily be particular to your situation; this paper will provide every negative comment on Facebook or Twitter is a three-alarm fire. Traditional examples of good and bad uses of social media for investor relations purposes, media organizations are understandably upset that theirs is not the only voice in and point you towards thoughtleaders in the field for further research. the room; but for IR and PR professionals, who make their living by competing to communicate messages and manage perceptions, it is hardly news that current SECTION 2: SOCIAL MEDIA INVESTOR RELATIONS: and potential investors have an opinion and want to share it. Far from being at you’re already doING IT! odds, the structure of social media and the goals of investor relations are perfectly A lot of ink (both digital and physical) has been spilled in recent years over how suited to one another. The title of Richard Levick and Jeff Morgan’s February 2011 social media will change or already has changed investor relations. It is helpful article for Fast Company puts it best: “Social Media and Investor Relations: A Match to remember, however, that at the end of day, social media is just another com- Made for the Dodd-Frank Era.” munications medium, with its own structuring of hierarchies and norms. So what Like many commentators, Levick and Morgan explicitly frame the social media/IR are these structuring principles, and how do they differ from those of traditional question as one of “two-way” communication, and their approach to integration print and broadcast media? of social media and IR is a three-pronged one: “monitoring, messaging, and dia- Social media is not, as you have likely been told, a two-way street. Instead, it is logue”. IR professionals are well-acquainted with monitoring and messaging, and more productively thought of as a multifarious tangle of one-way streets, some well-equipped to adapt these skill-sets to the social media world, but Levick and wider and faster-moving than others. Here is a particularly famous tangle of one- Morgan make “dialogue” into a mystical category of organic, two-way communica- way streets (Click to watch timelapse on YouTube): tion that is largely unhelpful from a strategic point of view—to put this more bluntly, what is “dialogue” but a finely-tuned strategy of monitoring plus messaging? Again, we can think of social networks more productively as messy tangles of one-way streets, rather than smoothly-flowing two-way grids. Why? One reason, as we saw in the Egypt example above, is that some people are more influential than others. But the answer goes beyond a simple count of Facebook “friends” about whose tweets s/he is notified. 1 A “hashtag” is a word or abbreviated phrase following a pound sign (#) on Twitter. It categorizes the tweet that contains it (say, as being about the January 25 revolution) and it links to all other tweets that use the same hashtag. 2 A “retweet” is a specific kind of tweet, in which one user repeats another’s Network Map of #jan25 tweets, via Panisson, using Gephi words verbatim, with a link back to that original user. GlobeNewswire, a NASDAQ OMX company, is one of the world’s largest newswire distribution networks, specializing in the delivery of corporate press releases, financial disclosures and multimedia content to the media, investment community, individual investors and the general public. Large public corporations, small businesses, professional organizations and PR agencies rely on GlobeNewswire to broadcast their most market moving