Companies woo investors via social websites
Companies are increasingly using social media to communicate with investors, according to a new report from Hallvarsson&Halvarsson, a Swedish financial consultancy.
The report, by Robin Olenius, underlines that shareholders and analysts are going beyond investor-relations sites to user-generated content for news and opinions about their companies.
Companies are using social networking sites to reach a wider audience of existing or potential investors which they could not engage with through their site alone. Social networks also enable companies to exchange ideas and to deal with criticism.
H&H found in a survey of business journalists, analysts and investors that 91 per cent looked for information on listed companies beyond their corporate sites.
Conservative companies who refuse to embrace social media are likely to become culturally irrelevant to these developments if they do not wake up to these changes in investor relations behaviours. They might spend ages polishing up investor statements by committee and putting them on their corporate web sites but chances are these will not be read with as much attention as news/views and comments on social media sites.
