Social media are becoming powerful tools for financial calendar work, as they become accepted elements in the investor relations mix. The SEC’s recent ruling on financial disclosures via social media are an important milestone, and it’s only a matter of time before similar policies spread among other global financial regulators in the future.

The acceptance of social media as channels for financial disclosure can be considered broadly in two ways. Firstly, the new guidelines simply mean that IR teams have the option of adding social media channels to those they already use to disseminate information for results announcements. This is a relatively straightforward consideration and the only additional workload is to craft content that will be effectively shared by users on social media.

The second dimension is slightly more complex: communications departments need to find effective ways to respond to shares, retweets and questions posed via social media. If history is any guide, rules of the road will emerge, set by early adopters, and regulators will undoubtedly set rules that also guide adoption.

But what will IR teams need to consider before handling the multi-way conversations that will emerge on social media around results?

Handling multi-way conversations during results announcements

Each announcement event will have different characteristics and the allocation of resources in the social media team during an announcement will become more effective over time. The challenge is to balance a number of competing demands:
- Volume of relevant social media mentions during the results announcement
- Influence and reach of those posting, commenting or sharing
- Resource of the social media team

The misallocation of social media resource during financial announcements could result either in slow responses to questions or issues arising online, or over-resourcing. This second outcome is less of a reputational or regulatory risk than being under-resourced, but could easily lead internal teams to judge the entire use of social media a failure, which is a risk in itself.

Dealing with the information flow

The key to handling the flow of information during a busy announcement period is to develop a cadence that matches the resources available and the volume of conversation being handled. As a start point, a social media monitoring team might provide updates every 15 or 30 minutes, as this can allow time to aggregate questions or posts into short-form reports containing recommendations no responses. In some cases, the volume of posts or questions may require less frequent updates, but it would be better to prepare for a high frequency of reports and not need them than vice versa.

Responding to questions or issues arising online requires careful consideration. The conditions that make posts more likely to demand a response would include:
- Rumours or speculation spreading that can be valuably countered
- Questions are by highly influential individuals, such as journalists, analysts or major investors
- Errors with the potential to affect reputation or share price

Judgment will be required when it comes to responding because once a social media team starts responding to some questions, they may become culpable for failing to respond to others that were judged less important at the time. One simple solution to this is to adopt a clearly articulated position that individual questions will not be answered, but that updates may be published in response to general questions emerging from the conversation during the results announcement period.

In practical terms, responses may be best made in long-form via blog posts, live FAQs or video, and then linked to via short-form social media such as Twitter or Facebook. Creating and approving such content will require all relevant parties to be in close proximity for the duration of an announcement period, and for many organisations dealing with questions or issues arising at the pace of social media will be a new experience.

However, it is a similar approach to handling questions during investor calls or meetings, and indeed those on results days can provide much of the content required for social media responses, as long as teams are working in an integrated way.

The future adoption of social media for investor relations

We would expect social media use during financial disclosures to follow a similar pattern to its adoption in other fields, such as consumer brand marketing or corporate communication. In the first instance, adoption appears risky and a minority of early adopting organisations adopt the new protocols. However, over time, the laggards end up being in the riskiest position of all, as they lack the ability to respond effectively and immediately to issues arising. Issues that can affect reputations and share prices can arise very quickly online or via other channels such as traditional media, via influencers such as analysts, or via other digitally vocal stakeholders.

As adoption of social media in investor relations spreads, the onus on all IR teams is to test the water as soon as possible, to learn how handle the process, which will be unique for every organisation. However, those who fail to adapt at their own pace may ultimately find themselves being forced to do so in response to events outside their control.

There are as yet no firm rules. What would you consider to be the most pressing concerns facing investor relations teams as social media enter the mix?

By Pete Sigrist and Liam Thomson

Yesterday was Ed Balls Day. You may not have noticed it, but tens of thousands of people hit social media to take part in this unlikely celebration of a social media gaffe by shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls. Balls’ own response was a moment of brilliance, and we think there are lessons here for companies and brands wishing to take control of digital conversations.

An internet meme was forged on 28 April 2011 when Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, accidentally tweeted his own name to the amusement of Twitter users. This obvious mistake sparked thousands of retweets as the joke was shared around the world. At 4.26pm yesterday, almost precisely two years since the original tweet was posted, an anniversary celebration of sorts took place.
Read More »

Where do you take your rage? Do you take to Twitter and Facebook to voice a sense of injustice? Do you email your MP, or just rant to your partner over Monday night spag bol?

In the summer of 2011, Her Majesty’s Government created a place for the general electorate to take their grief and their anger – and make something productive; e-petitions.

All they ask is that there be a clear statement explaining what action you want the government to take, and at least 100,000 signatures and then your petition is passed to The Backbench Business Committee. The committee meets weekly, and can consider any subject for debate, including those raised in e-petitions or national campaigns. However, an MP must make the case for their consideration.

The site has been live for two years now, and continues to offer a potent means of protest, for example the recent petition requesting the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, to live on £53 for a week.

Initially, detractors said the e-petitions would cause MPs to spend less time in their constituencies dealing with community issues. There was also a sense that the system would waste time and taxpayers’ money, flooding the Backbench Business Committee with frivolous petitions.

In its first year, 6.4 million signatures were submitted to e-petitions, but only eleven reached the necessary 100,000 signatures. All eleven were scheduled for debated in the Commons or Westminster Hall.

Back in September the system was updated to try and ensure more petitions got a personal response even if they never reached a level where they would be put in front of the Backbenchers committee. Since the change, all the petitions reaching 10,000 signatures receive a personal response from Her Majesty’s Government that appears alongside the petition.

Today, there are still many petitions circulating the internet – everything from high profile politicians being called out, and state funerals being opposed, to local matters such as saving a local children’s cardiac surgery in Leicester.

What do you think of e-petitions as a force for change? Do you think this is an underutilised area for building communities around people’s passions and beliefs? And finally, have you signed any?

Everyone wants to know what the next big thing is going to be and in the latest of her series of posts from China, Sarah Marsh may just have found it in PaPa.

Instagram is a worldwide success. It is a fast, friendly way to upload and share photos – and let’s face it Instagram makes even the most mundane shot look edgy or even artistic,but would the photo app be better if it added voice recognition and voice notes to its format?
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We’re constantly on the lookout for the latest trends in international social media. In the latest of a series of posts on social media in China, journalist Sarah Marsh asks a leading observer of Chinese social media where to look for the next big thing likely to emerge from this exciting economy.

Q+A with YANG Lei from the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts

1. Do companies and personalities drive social media in China?

It is different here. Sina Weibo and Weixin are driven by Sina and Tencent. For smaller startups of niche social media sites, the founders are less well known.

2. Is there a Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley, where the majority of services are developed and launched?

Beijing Zhongguancun is known as the Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley. There are no secondary centers where digital media startups work, everything is quite fragmented.

3. What are the hottest start-ups on the scene at the moment, and are any of them showing signs of taking over from the incumbents?

Papa is the new one but it is in the early stages. Papa is an app that fuses social elements of Path, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Weibo together.

4. Is there any talk of Chinese social media making a bid for Western markets, or buying up start-ups in Europe or the US?

No.

5. What are the general trends in the development of digital services in China?

Location-based services are big and growing. Social music, TV and music services are also successful in terms of viewership but not in terms of making money. Some business are using social media to change the way they do business but not in the area of mobile payments, more in the area of promotion, marketing, PR and events.

Sarah is Foreign Expert at 21^st Century, a newspaper connected to China Daily and has also written for The Guardian and Wired. She blogs at sarah-marsh.co.uk

Here at 33 we specialise in offering clients and individuals big and small the best social media advice you can find – and the world is taking note. We may still be less than a week into December, but it’s been a busy month for our team as they take to print and the airwaves to offer pearls of wisdom about engaging with an audience on Twitter.

First up our very own Sam Phillips went head-to-head with Nadine Dorries on the benefits and risks that social media poses to our elected politicians. We think Sam won hands down, but decide for yourselves here. This was followed on Monday by our MD Peter Sigrist jumping in a cab and speeding across London to speak to the BBC World News about the challenges facing the Pope as he adapts to life on Twitter.

His Holiness already has over 350,000 followers without a single tweet to his name and that’s just on his English account. The Vatican has claimed that he will see every tweet issued by the account himself, but given he is managing accounts in several different languages, Pete rightly expressed scepticism about how successful the channels could be.

The key challenge for the Vatican will be engagement – how can they use the tool to converse with followers across the world rather than simply broadcasting soundbites to them. So if anyone from the Vatican or David Cameron’s office reads this – you know where to find us, Pete’s ready and waiting for your call.

UPDATE: Would you believe it? Total Politics read this piece below and then got in touch. They invited us to contribute an opinion piece alongside none other than Nadine Dorries of jungle mania fame. The piece, “Does social media do more harm than good to politicians?” can be read over here, right now. Take a look and let us know what you think.

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This morning, the issue of David Cameron’s new Twitter account divided the 33 office right down the middle. A useful tool for a Prime Minister, or an empty-shirt exercise destined for failure? Here, Peter Sigrist and Sam Philips battle it out:

The case FOR David Cameron’s Twitter feed – Peter Sigrist

At the time of writing this, Team Dave isn’t off to the most auspicious start on Twitter.  Follower numbers are looking strong, but content is lacking spirit.  ‘I promise there won’t be “too many tweets…”’ was slightly funny for Team Dave insiders but suggests a man who sees this as a hobby.  And yet…

Twitter shouldn’t be a hobby for a politician.  It’s the real deal.  The chance to shape the debate, unfiltered access to the electorate.  You may get roughed up for your undiluted views but you have the chance immediately to respond to objections, painting your reasons in colours of your choosing.  Twitter’s never going to be a place for quick consensus, but it has the potential to give Team Cameron an unprecedented sense of the spread of opinions in the country.

For a politician of Cameron’s stature, this should have him salivating.  No one ever became great except through many and great mistakes, and Twitter could and should be the perfect proving ground for bold ideas, gently floated, some to prosper and many to die.  Anyone with the confidence and deftness to engage in that sort of debate will possess stronger opinions and better ideas at the far end, with ambiguity and vagueness forced out through honest argument.

A politician of Cameron’s stature should relish the opportunity to dip his cup right into the middle of the fast-flowing stream of Twitter, with all its head and heart, emotion and ideas, inspiration and stupidity.  From Cameron’s point of view, as we all knew when we started using Twitter, it’s about who he follows.  Reward those making valid arguments with your attention, ignore the idiots.  Sometimes, perhaps regularly, he will face opprobrium and abuse.  But what walkabout on a street in Middle England does not come with its fair share?  Most of all, Cameron the tweeter should gain from closeness to the British populace; gain from the authenticity of the imperfect argument; gain from the ability to tell the people he Governs – “this is what I believe”.

Twitter should be the perfect place for a man of the stature of the Prime Minister to tread carefully, get some things right and some things wrong, and gain respect.  But in order to get anywhere at all, he needs to tread.  It’s fine if the drumbeat of the Official David Cameron Twitter feed is prosaic: ‘About to appear on @MarrShow‘.  But the real value to him as a politician and a leader, and to us as the British people, will be realised when he’s himself, for better or worse.

People and the media these days are more accepting of gaffes if you are honest about them and deal with them in a human way.  You need the stomach for the odd mistake, but which politician hasn’t always known that?

Let’s see if David Cameron takes this opportunity to have his voice heard.

The case AGAINST David Cameron’s Twitter feed – Sam Philips

Why shouldn’t David Cameron have a bash at Twitter? No reason at all, he absolutely should give it a go if he’s genuinely interested in it.

He probably shouldn’t do it, just because the other kids are doing it though. It’s much harder to establish and maintain an interesting, informative Twitter feed, than it is a blog for example. Twitter is live 24/7, there’s the expectation to be reactive and responsive, to show the real version of the world you live in, while a blog allows the user to be more considered and less ‘on’.

And so if this new way of sharing doesn’t come naturally, then it could become a problem. You might appear as disingenuous or perhaps worse still for a leader, disconnected.

For a Prime Minister, image and character perception is everything. Every step a leader takes has been well considered and he or she knows a slight error could seriously affect public perception and opinion ratings.

Twitter places notable people under a lens for inspection. It’s a curious and wonderful thing, this new access to that human side to those who were previously presented to the world with an airbrushed finish. It’s a new world, and with it there is a new order to be understood and respected…

Stephen Fry used this brilliantly, to raise awareness of mental health issues. And he exposed his personal mental health challenges in front of an enormous audience – that news travelled across Twitter, on to blogs, and then ended up in national papers and across broadcast. That’s quite some impact. But what can David Cameron do with this space, if he uses it effectively?

Can David Cameron, as leader of this country, present himself on Twitter in such a way as to inspire and encourage a nation, to fill us with confidence? Can he smash down the old order of formality, help to disassociate people from the sense that politicians are disconnected and dishonest?

An interesting debate broke earlier at 33 Digital – some people felt disappointed that celebrities they had previously liked had betrayed themselves with tweets that exposed their true selves. When it comes to a politician, that kind of exposure could cause serious problems. Especially during a time of political apathy, the populous vote may be easily swayed.

The alternative to diving in to Twitter is to take on a safe approach. Employ a team to manage that feed for you, keep it factual, and avoid the crowd where you can. Especially if they’re a bit bitey.  And for now, at least, that seems to be what we have over @David_Cameron.

The tweets with twitpics are like micro press releases, the tone of voice is slightly off. I’ll be watching eagerly for the first question Mr Cameron asks his 94.6K following, and the first time he engages directly with a follower. For now I’m not convinced David Cameron knows how to make the most of this medium, or indeed has the inclination. And for me, having the inclination to, is essential for truly getting involved with the Twitter community.

So, there you have it folks – what do you think? Fodder for The Thick of It? Or savvy PR move?

Operation Growth continues here at 33 Digital. After three years establishing a kick-ass team and client base in the UK, we’re excited to be able to begin talking publicly about the opening of our first overseas office with the appointment of Phil Sheard at Country Manager, 33 Digital Australia. 

Phil was part of the team that launched 33 Digital in London back in 2009, most recently acting as a Director in the UK team. He leaves this week to take on his new position as employee number one of the new 33 Digital office in Sydney.

Through the new Sydney operation, 33 Digital will be working with its global clients helping them to extend their social media campaigns into the Asia Pacific region, in addition to setting up a new, local client base. Phil will also be building a new team and working closely with 33 Digital’s parent company Hotwire, and with the existing 33 Digital UK team. 

The last 12 months in the UK have been transformative to our business. We’ve doubled in size and worked on some of the most innovative and the most mainstream client briefs. Social media has come a long way. It’s now time to expand our horizons and we can see huge potential in establishing a new team for us in Australia. It’s also part of the wider global strategy for Hotwire group, of which 33 Digital is an essential part, to be at the forefront of digital.

Please do get in touch if we can help you down under. Our details are on this site or drop Phil a line on @philsheard. 

(TL;DR version ↓)

Forget the flurry of September phone announcements, this was the news I’ve been waiting for. Yesterday Twitter announced the details of version 1.1 of their API.

These changes represent the “stricter guidelines about how the Twitter API is used” that Michael Sippy notified us of back in June.

Twitter’s own overview calls out a few of the major changes:

• They’ve qualified that the limit of 10k ‘tokens’ (roughly equivalent to number of users or connected devices per app) is only for end-user clients (eg Tweetbot). Apps in the analytics or influence areas shouldn’t worry. For now
• Developers can only use the JSON format to retrieve data. In practice, this won’t cause a problem for any serious developer but I’m sentimentally sad to see RSS being totally removed and we may see another rash of ‘RSS is dead‘ posts
• All interactions with the APIs need to be authenticated. This only affects some types of request that don’t currently need authentication (particularly search) but could affect any apps which are scraping large amounts of data out Twitter but which aren’t linked to a user account.

I think a lot of people with existing apps will be relieved that the changes could have been worse based on the early warnings from Twitter. That said, for many the damage has already been done.

→ My takeaway: the new API effectively means there will be no future developer-led innovations in the user experience of Twitter, only those that come out of the business itself. This won’t worry the mainstream audience the platform now enjoys, but those innovations instead will find a home on new, emerging platforms. App.net anyone?

The 2008 US presidential election was hailed by many as the first digital election – but in truth, it was more of an online massacre than a competition. Where Obama and the democrats innovated and engaged with a new generation, McCain and the republicans looked and acted like they had no idea how to engage with new media.