Getting the Most out of Investor Relations with Social Media

Nearly 80% of institutional investors use social media to research potential investments, with one in five investors exclusively using social media to research new investments, according to a recent report published by J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. Therefore, it’s important to know how to utilize each social media platform to get the most out of your investor relations strategy. In this blog post we will look at IR on the most popular social media platforms, provide best practices for investor relations on social media, and discuss paid services for IR and social media. 

Platforms

The most popular social media platforms for investing are YouTube (21%), Facebook (16%), and Twitter (14%). TikTok has also been gaining popularity with younger investors. We will go over each platform and how to get the most out them when communicating with investors or collecting data. 

YouTube: IR teams can partner with ‘finfluencers’ (financial influencers) to share company information. Sofia Macias’ YouTube channel, Pequeño Cerdo Capitalista, has amassed 301,000 subscribers and is a specialist in financial education. Her curriculum has been used in some of the most recognized universities in Mexico.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofia-macias-11566b8/?originalSubdomain=mx

Facebook is a good tool to gauge public sentiment, with nearly 3 billion monthly active users worldwide.  Facebook offers Audience Insights, which aggregates demographic and activity data on your Facebook followers and Facebook users in general. This data can help analyze your audience and reaction to posts and news (and even correlations to stock movements).

Twitter is often a faster source of news than more traditional large news sources.  @CNBC’s 4.8 million Twitter followers often get news from the company on their Twitter feed first before it hits the wires. It is important to share company news quickly on your Twitter account to be your investors’ first line of important company news. 

TikTok’s short-form videos allow content creators to share short and memorable tips and advice. Most accounts on this platform focus on easy to digest personal finance information for individuals. We’ve shared some of the most famous Mexican finfluencers on TikTok below.

• @emparejandotusfinanzas are a Mexican couple with 748,000 TikTok followers that help others learn about investing and give general finance tips.
• Carlos Cárdenas @soycarloscardenas helps his 486,000 followers with general finance advice, including when and how to invest.
• Diego Cedillo @elcedillo shares investing tips with his 112,000 TikTok followers.

Best practices for social media

Now that we’ve discussed the different social media platforms and ways to utilize them for Investor Relations, it’s important to have a list of best practices for using social media. It’s important not only to be using social media, but to use it effectively to relay messages and connect with investors in the way that best fits your organization. For example, a small tech start-up will communicate differently with investors than a well-established financial firm. Below we’ve shared 5 top tips to keep in mind when posting on your social media accounts.

1. Understand your audiences across different platforms while keeping a consistent voice. You should be active on each of the different social media sites, but also remember that your audience will differ based on what platform you’re using and tailor your content for each. YouTube is used for long-form, detailed investment guides, while TikTok videos offer short and sweet information to younger viewers. While it’s important to keep in mind the different audiences you have across your social media accounts, also make sure to keep a consistent style and voice while tailoring your content. You want your content to be memorable to your audience and having a recognizable style will help with that.
2. Create a schedule for posting on your social media accounts and have a designated social media poster. It’s important to find a sweet spot for how often to post on your social media accounts. Post too infrequently and you’ll lose engagement with your followers and run the risk of getting lost on the homepage of your followers. However, if you post too frequently it can annoy your followers who want diversity on their newsfeeds. Look to competitors and leaders in your industry to create a posting schedule and have one or very few employees oversee managing and posting on the social media accounts so it doesn’t get forgotten.
3. Create interactive and visually pleasing content. For social media, the way you present your content is just as important as what it says. It doesn’t matter how good your content is if your followers don’t read your content. Using a varied structure and utilizing videos, pictures and infographics in your posts will keep your news page visually interesting. 
4. Analyze engagement across your different accounts. To improve something, you need to know how you perform first. Use historical data (like Facebook analytics) to see how many views and clicks your posts typically get. Having an idea of how your content typically performs will help you identify successful posts, along with posts with little interaction and identify the reason why. 
5. Utilize your team for organic growth. The key to social media success is engagement and natural growth, which is where your employees can help. Having team members share posts on their personal social media accounts helps drive organic engagement with their followers. According to Peregrine, a communications and marketing firm, 84% of people trust recommendations made by their friends and family over other types of marketing, so having employees share your content with their personal networks will also drive engagement.

Paid social media services

As with any tool for your business, there are paid services and solutions that your team can utilize to maximize the benefit of social media for your IR team. There are online platforms your company can pay for that aggregate data for both individual and institutional investors. The main goal of these aggregators is to have important investor information in one visually pleasing platform. 

BRON, a leading digital information and aggregation bridge service offers a portal for IR teams to target new investors and to get information to both institutional and individual investors. They offer a visually pleasing digital platform that aggregates data from the web to one easy-to-use platform. 

Xemoto is a network of finfluencers that contract their services to companies to post sponsored content about a brand to reach more (primarily) retail investors. 

If your company has small followings on your social media accounts and struggles getting information out to investors, it may be worth it to invest in a platform like this to relay information to your investors and find potential new investors. If your business is smaller or has a niche market, it may also make sense to contract one of these services so your content reaches more current and potential investors. Even if your team does decide to use a paid service or platform, it needs to be combined with strong content and strategy across different social media platforms. 

Here at Miranda Partners we specialize in helping companies get the most out of their digital marketing campaigns and platforms and are ready to assist you in strategizing your investor relations social media strategy. We specialize in helping companies get the most out of their digital marketing campaigns and platforms and are ready to assist you in strategizing your investor relations social media strategy.

We are also happy to announce our recent merger with leading Mexican digital marketing agency Sacapuntas. With the ongoing convergence of digital communication and marketing, Miranda Partners and Sacapuntas offers to enhance the brand, reputation and market position of its clients, offering a broad slate of services including Branding, Design, SOE optimization, Content Creation and Marketing-led Data Science.

Sources:

https://www.chase.com/personal/investments/learning-and-insights/article/social-medias-influence-on-the-investing-community 

https://ifamagazine.com/article/1-in-5-investors-are-only-using-social-media-to-research-new-investments/ 

https://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media/why-investors-need-social-media/ 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ 

https://www.peregrinecommunications.com/insights/investors-social-media-engagement