While adoption rates have lagged so far, social media will be an important tool for investor relations in the near future,. Overall, 56% of institutional investors surveyed said that social media was
“not yet significant but growing in importance” as a professional tool.
Those findings, per a global survey of institutional investors by National Public Relations and the
AMO network of financial communications agencies, also noted a smaller proportion (37%) said that they welcomed social media, including investment forums and blogs, as a new way for disseminating news
and information. In addition, 33% said they consider social sites useful as a “heads up,” especially during fast-moving events, like takeover bids or proxy fights.
No surprise, investment pros were most likely to visit investment forums, with 39% saying they visit these frequently or very frequently. Next up was LinkedIn, at 34%, followed by investment and
financial services blogs at 32%. Some 22% said they consult Twitter frequently or very frequently for professional purposes; just 10% said they use Facebook this way.
It’s worth
noting that social media lags behind other sources of information in terms of its perceived trustworthiness: 76% of investors said they considered newswires their main source of information, and 87%
said newswires are always or usually reliable, versus just 17% for social media sites.
On the other hand, just 17% of investors dismissed social media as irrelevant to their work.
Back in March 2013, I wrote about the results of a survey by Accenture showing that 50% of financial advisors use social media to communicate with clients on a daily basis. The Accenture
survey also found that 74% of financial advisors believe social media is helping them build their asset portfolio, while half have used social media to gain new clients. Further, 49% said they think
firms that fail to use social media will lose clients as a result
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Funny you should write this, Business Wire just published a free guide this week on the dos and don'ts for social media and investor relations/financial communications. It's a topic I have been talking about since 2006 - it can be both a great and terrible tool. But once folks know the real pros and cons, not just what people advocate but the actual facts, it can be highly successful.