So it’s pretty clear that the internet generally is an essential means for anyone in the IR field to find and use information.

In the conext of the discussion in this post and all the comments, what your comment I referenced means to me is that a company with a blog enables investment pros such as you mention to find information about a company in a way that fits with how they want to use the net. It can also mean that those pros could engage in conversation with a company.

If that helps build a closer relationship and aid understanding by both sides, well, I see no downside from that.

We’re also seeing evidence that money managers, sell-side analysts, investment bankers etc are increasingly using blogs and the Internet to research stocks —- especially small-cap stocks. Since we rolled out our opt-in e-mail option recently hundreds of fund managers have signed up to receive articles daily. (They’re signing up under their real names and e-mails — so it’s been easy to verify their identities.)

We also informally polled some of our institutional readers recently and found that they use the Internet for 90% of their small-cap research. And that makes sense considering that RegFD limits the opportunities companies have to communicate. Again, the internet is critical for any investor relations effort.

In conclusion, conference calls help companies tell their stories. And at Seeking Alpha, transcripts help put companies’ stories on investors’ radar screens. Also, our contributing bloggers (many of whom are investment professionals) have been known to write articles on companies whose transcripts were posted on Seeking Alpha (see Hollywood Media - HOLL - for example) thus increasing high-quality discussion of the company’s stock. They might have never discovered the company had it not been for Seeking Alpha and the conference call transcript.

The article on Seeking Alpha I referred to above:

Seeking Alpha is the only site on the Internet to publish hundreds of conference call transcripts for free each quarter.

Why do we feel it’s important to do this?

Companies present their case to investors on their conference calls. Since the introduction of Reg. FD, companies are not allowed to communicate with investors via non-public or privileged-access channels. As a result, the volume of communication between companies and investors has fallen sharply. The most important forum left for most public companies to “tell their story” to investors is their quarterly conference call. As a result, conference call transcripts are the best way for investors to discover and research new stock ideas and to track the progress of companies they are already invested in.

Conference calls alert investors to key investment issues. The question and answer session at the end of every conference call is an opportunity for analysts to question a company about anything surprising, impressive or concerning. The Q&A session in a conference call therefore gives an instantaneous view of what analysts will focus on in their earnings coverage reports. Because Q&A sessions are unscripted, they offer a rare occasion for investors and analysts to question companies about what matters to them.

Transcripts are more useful than audio recordings. Audio has one key benefit: you can hear a speaker’s tone of voice, confidence or hesitation. But aside from that, transcripts are far more useful. First, multiple companies often conduct conference calls at the same time, so the only way to track them all is to quickly read transcripts. Second, transcripts are more usable, allowing investors to focus on key sections and skip, for example, the standard legal disclaimers at the start of each call. Third, transcripts can also be printed out and read anywhere, whereas audio requires a phone or PC connection. For these reasons, institutional investors have long preferred transcripts to audio versions of conference calls.

Freely available transcripts provide access to journalists and bloggers. Seeking Alpha is the largest community of stock-market bloggers on the Internet. We provide transcripts for free so that money managers and other bloggers can quote from them and discuss them without fear of copyright infringement. Journalists also take advantage of our free transcripts; they have been quoted and linked to by publications as diverse as The New York Times and The Motley Fool.

Transcripts on web pages are more useful than transcripts in Word or PDF format. By publishing conference call transcripts on regular, open-access Web pages, Seeking Alpha allows other sites to link to the transcripts, and allows search engines to point users to the transcripts. As a result, the conference call transcripts on Seeking Alpha are read not only by stock investors, but also by investment bankers, private equity investors, sell-side analysts and potential partners. Seeking Alpha welcomes this readership because we pride ourselves on being the Internet destination of choice for investment professionals, serious retail investors and industry experts.

I can see no value in my responding with a tit-for-tat commentary here. So just a couple of response points.

I’m afraid that you continue to miss a clear point on using social media in the investor relations context. IBM’s use of podcasting illustrates how you can without falling foul of regulatory and related issues. It is a very good example. But you still say it’s a waste of time.

Again you miss the point in focusing part of your subjective critcism on what I said about audience size for podcasts being irrelevant. Audience size is irrelevant even in the IR context if the information the recordings contain is broadly available elsewhere and in other formats. That is the case in the IBM example. No selective disclosure there. If there had been, you can be sure we’d know about that by now.

I thought things were pretty clear that no one is suggesting doing anything that would contravene regulatory requirements.

Re BloggingStocks and live blogging, well, it is relevant. You’re going to see more of that, both by third parties as in this example as well as by employees within organizations. You’d want to include such activity in your overall communication planning, eg, in how to engage with those bloggers.

You had a good tip on executive boards blogging. I did note that although I didn’t comment on it here. You might recall my posting about that topic in January 2005 (”Using blogs for informal relationship-building with shareholders“) referencing your two reports on it on IRWebReport.com.

Anyway I appreciate all your comments, I really do. This essay as well as your earlier ones. Fodder for the discussion on social media and IR that will be a theme in FIR this coming Thursday. I hope you tune in.

My point is that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Your original post is weak and lacks substance and strays from the topic. You haven’t offered any concrete ways, other than one stale example of IBM, of how you think social media can be applied in the investor relations arena.

You mention BloggingStocks live blogging earnings calls. What’s that got to do with companies using social media? BloggingStocks is a network of blogs about public companies. It has nothing to do with companies using social media for investor relations. So that example is not germane to Anton’s question. He wants to know how he can use blogs, not how bloggers are using them.

Then, for some reason, you go on to talk about earnings calls and control:

There are also events to do with investor/financial topics over which you have no complete control. Earnings announcements, for instance. You issue the press release and schedule a conference call with the financial analysts where the company spokesperson reads a script (that’s the part you do control). Then everyone has that starched and formal Q&A session that make for dire listening most of the time (and dire reading when you then read the transcript).

What has this got to do with the topic. Using blogs or podcasts or RSS in IR is not about control of lack of it. You have more control on a blog or podcast than on a conference call. And by the way, companies have control over who gets to ask questions on the conference call, so it’s not a free for all as you suggest.

The issue is equal access to the same information. It is about avoiding selective disclosure of material nonpublic information.

Immediately after I posted the stats on analysts and portfolio managers’ use of RSS, Podcasts and Blogs, you suggested that I was saying you shouldn’t use them. Actually, I said emphatically that you should use them and provided several suggestions for how they could be used to add value – including board of directors blogs. That’s an original idea. Again, what have you actually offered in terms of concrete or even modestly useful suggestions?

Later you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding for one of the core principals of investor relations communications when you say:

If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that audience size is the primary consideration. Not so.
Audience size is, largely, irrelevant. It’s who the audience is that’s far more important (as is often so with blogging).

To say that in an investor relations context is astonishingly poor form. Broad dissemination is absolutely critical. It is never who, but how many. There’s a law about this.

Then a short while later you get it wrong again and show that you don’t have experience in this field. You say:

Of course, you can always offer your MP3s as downloadable audio requiring registration and all that, so you would know who’s downloading your files. I have no problem with that if making available content that way could measurably contribute to the overall success of your communication.

Let me get this straight, no problem with making people register to access the information if doing so can “measurably contribute to the overall success of your communication.”

Huh? How can discouraging people from using your content measurably contribute to your success? Please tell. The very same survey that I referred you and Shel to on podcasts, RSS and blog use by analysts and portfolio managers, said that one-third of investors and portfolio managers dislike having to register to obtain information. Or didn’t you read that far? That’s not the only study which says people dislike registering for information they are otherwise entitled to.

Finally, lets look at the IBM podcasts, because that’s really the only example you have to offer.

Are they really successful and what do they achieve relative to the effort that goes into them. Now the important thing to remember about IBM’s “The future of” podcasts are that they are unique content. They are not existing content – like an earnings conference call converted to MP3 and delivered via RSS.

They are custom produced and involve an investment of time by fairly senior people in the company. Time is money, as they say, so these podcasts are not free by any stretch.

Ben Edwards at IBM who produces them tells me they’ve had well over 300,000 downloads or something, and I still say that’s a waste of time. A very big chunk of that usage is people just downloading out of curiosity, not because they’re actually interested.

But more importantly, could that time have been better spent. Could IBM have reached 2 million people with a more interactive, more inclusive communication activity for the same or lower cost? Yes, they could have if they had wanted to. Instead, they opted for a one-way channel that involved minimal risk. Excuse me if I don’t fall off my chair.

There you go, your one example of how Anton can use social media is not a good one, and it isn’t even social.