Tuesday June 8, I hosted a breakfast seminar in Stockholm on the theme “IR and Social media”. The seminar was organised in cooperation with Mikael Zillén from Box IR.
View presentation (in Swedish)
30 Swedish IR professionals attended the seminar and several of the presentations created multifaceted discussions about the challenges and benefits of using social media platforms as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for investor relations
During the seminar Sculptor IR and Box IR presented our mapping of Nordic companies use of new media for IR. From an IR perspective, Twitter is the most popular social media platform. Twitter is also the easiest channel to learn and is also less resource demanding than for example starting up a corporate blog.
A quarter (26 %) of the 374 Nordic mid and large cap companies included in the survey had a Twitter account, one third (27 %) had a Facebook fan page (often used as an intranet), another 24 % had an YouTube channel, often packed with commercials or product videos.
Åsa Wesshagen and Maria Stoetzer from the The Swedish Shareholders’ Association have been live tweeting from 30 Swedish AGMs during the spring. Åsa and Maria explained the importance of educating the “live-tweeters” and setting up policies. For example, only official company representative as CEO or chairman is identified by name in the tweets, they never disclose names of private shareholders asking questions.
Next speaker was Sandra Lundberg, web manager at SSAB. The company use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for search engine optimising. Sandra killed the myth about social media demanding a lot of time and resources:
“Since we recycle existing company information that automatically is published in our new channels, we save time and can work more effective.”
Adrian Westman, IR Manager at Nordnet, a Swedish Internet broker in the mid cap segment stated that using social media is a part of the company’s corner stones: “keep it simple, be modern, stay active”. Nordnet is a pioneer in using new media for corporate and IR communication. The CEO is twittering at ViggoNordnet, they have Nordnetbloggen and the IR team has been live tweeting from the Q4 and Q1 presentations at twitter.com/Nordnet. Adrian finished his presentation by giving the audience some useful advices on how to start using social media for corporate communication and IR:
- Identify and use in-house i.e. colleagues knowledge about new media
- When live tweeting, introduce the person behind the tweets
- Keep it simple
A transcript of all live-tweets #irse #ir from the presentations and Q&A session is available here (in Swedish): Transcript Breakfast Seminar
Pingback: Tweets that mention Advice from Swedish IR pioneers in Social Media: ”Keep it simple” | Sculptor Investor Relations -- Topsy.com
Pingback: IR and Social Media in the Nordics – Part 4: Corporate/IR blogs, a disclosure risk or context provider and time saver? | Sculptor Investor Relations
Pingback: Swedish IROs still skeptical about social media | IR Web Report
Pingback: Swedish IROs still skeptical about social media: risks bigger than opportunities, ROI | Sculptor Investor Relations