Members of the professional and capital markets ask me every day #whatworks in social media towards achieving effective market valuation with their publicly-listed companies. Few to none want to do the work. They want to hire someone, and they often extend this role to the junior part-time member of the company with no experience in writing, capital markets, or even – social media.

As with everything in life, you must do social media right from the onset or the damage can be irreparable. And equally as important (of course) is to ensure that when you market a public company via social media you’re erring on the side of compliance at every turn.

I remember when social media started. Firms out of Texas would charge US$10k a month, but here’s what we had right in the early days, an understanding that a great social media professional must be a great writer. But how many great writers have legal training and experience in the public market? Throw in tech-savvy, and well, over the years, many just gave up.

Today, believe it or not, social media for public markets is quite easy if you follow some simple rules:

1. Only publish News Releases.
2. Do not comment on share price or retweet anything at any time as a company unless you’re a partner with the company, and again – it’s a news release.

This morning, when I was meeting with a capital markets client, I decided, if I am going to write this down for him, why not share it with everyone? So here is my professional advice on how to deploy the minimum social media standards for your company online because you cannot be a public company and not have social media.

Why you ask? The real reason why social media is an absolute must is for emergencies. Social media is the only way to distribute news instantaneously and I have seen over the years, some extraordinary cases whereby the social media account may have saved the company. Misinformation is spread in real-time, and to counter these issues, one must be prepared.

The 1^st thing you must have in the capital markets is a Twitter and LinkedIn account for your company. You must also make sure that the CEO has a LinkedIn profile. This is the absolute minimum as most shareholders when doing due diligence on a company, take the time to review the background of the CEO.

And where do investors go to review a CEO’s background or the management team’s background? Yes, LinkedIn.

Here are the minimum requirements you need to have a social media presence in the capital markets. You must have:

1. Twitter for Company
2. LinkedIn for Company
3. LinkedIn for Company CEO

Then the strategy is simple.

1. Sell Line. Make sure the sell line you use to describe your public company is the same in your Twitter account as it is in your LinkedIn account. A sell line should be 5-7 words and quickly alert the viewer to what your company does or offers. A sell line should never be more than 7 words. While Nike is most famous for “Just Do It”, I recommend you select a sell line that integrates your SEO words. For instance, if you’re a gold company, you should include gold. If you’re a nanotech company, you should use nanotech.
2. Add Trading Symbols: It amazes me how irregularly I see trading symbols on a capital markets’ Twitter or LinkedIn account. Publish exactly like you do on a news release, so if your Jane Doe Corp. (NASDAQ: DOE | TSX: DOE), then publish it the way I just did and/or you may use the “$” prior to the symbol, but I urge you not to unless you get it right. For instance, a CSE-listed company would be $DOE.C.
3. Logo. Use the same logo on both Twitter and LinkedIn. You would be surprised how few people do this.
4. Banner Ads. Make sure that your Company Sell Line and Trading Symbol are displayed prominently on your banner ads. For Twitter, the banner ads are 1500×500 pixels and for LinkedIn, they are 1128×191 pixels.
5. Trading Symbols. Make sure that your trading symbols are prominently displayed on the banner ads on both Twitter and LinkedIn.
6. About Lines. The ‘About’ section in Twitter and LinkedIn are both approximately 12-15 words. Make sure that they are the same.
7. Add Twitter and LinkedIn logos to your website. There, you’re set up.

Now what do you post? This is where a lot of public companies get into trouble. If you’re short-staffed, create a social media protocol that reflects your schedule and need to stay active without driving your legal bills north.

What do you do?

Keep it simple and only publish your news releases within 1-hour of releasing your news through an authorized distributor. Publish the title and add a hashtag (#) before the keywords. So, if you’re an EV company, you would simply add a hashtag before EV, so you would write #EV.

Please ensure that you publish your news release within an hour of release and publish it the same way on both Twitter and LinkedIn.

I am certain you’re saying: is that it?

Almost, but you’re not quite there. To secure interest in your story, this is where someone must do some work. And allow me to explain what this means, 1 hour in front of the television with a glass of wine. Ask yourself, who do I want to read my news? If you’re a biotech company, make sure you’re following your favorite biotech journalists. You’re in the capital markets so follow the media you want following you. You cannot expect people to find you if you’re hiding.

And do not forget the fin-fluencers! You’re a public company, which means you need to follow the movers and shakers online who can draw attention to your news. After all, this is the point of this practice. You’re public, which means – you need an audience.

Stepping sideways for a moment, I was reviewing a company’s social media the other day, and thought – “what is going on here?” It took me 5-minutes to discover that they had hired a social media company that handles restaurants doing their social media. There is nothing wrong with this if the professional offering the services has experience in the public markets, but in this case, it was clear by their website and work, they did not.

When you’re interviewing someone, ask them “What time does the stock market open?” You will be quite displeased by how few can answer this question. Frankly, I think all companies should be able to easily do this themselves because once you have the infrastructure set up, it takes less than 5 minutes to distribute. This said this process can help you ascertain if you can trust the service provider as there is nothing wrong with the answer: “I do not know.” At least this professional, you can work with.

Now, don’t get me wrong – you can go to town on social media, and do everything from a metaverse account to a YouTube channel; but today, I am sharing with you the minimum that you need. And to help you see that it is important to have, easy to set up, and relatively easy to do when set up right.

As always, we wish everyone the best in the public markets.

With his takeover of Twitter, Musk has proven himself to be more of an agent of chaos than a disrupter. Disrupters have been celebrated as the innovators and drivers of the new economy, blazing new trails and finding new markets, but as Twitter users, employees and advertisers have discovered in the last few weeks there is a big difference between disruption and wholesale carnage.

Since his takeover of Twitter for $44 billion Musk has forgotten the cardinal rule of takeovers and senior management changes – don’t do anything for a few months. Unless there is an absolute crisis, the best thing new management can do is nothing at all. In a buy-out, this is the time to learn about your new toy and reassure your clients and employees that all is well. From this base of stability and knowledge, changes and innovations can be slowly introduced without destroying the company.

This is not, however, Elon Musk’s way. On day one he posted a tweet of himself walking into Twitter HQ carrying a kitchen sink, saying: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” He immediately began making untested changes to the platform, making major policy announcements in real time via tweet and then immediately reversing himself, firing and rehiring key staff, and generally trolling Twitter users and the world from his new platform. He fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy chief Vijaya Gadde in the first couple of weeks.

The result has been a rush for the door, both in long-time users and advertisers. Twitter has (or had) roughly 450 million monthly active users. In FY 2021 advertising services generated USD $4.5 billion for Twitter, or about 89% of its revenue. As a result of the chaos and criticism of Twitter’s rudderlessness, advertisers have canceled or “put on pause” their ad buys. To date these include General Mills, the Volkswagen Group, General Motors, Pfizer, United Airlines, Audi, Farvel, and Carlsberg. Their concerns are not just about a drop in Twitter users, but also “concerns about a rise in misinformation, hate speech, and other distasteful content under his watch.”

This is also a major concern for thousands of marketing specialists, investor relations professionals, journalists, media and others who support and report on the small to medium cap public markets. In a few years Twitter has become a cornerstone for companies getting their stories out to a wider audience through press releases, corporate updates, CEO interviews and presentations. Facebook and LinkedIn are also part of the social media ecosystem, but reach and serve different markets.

It is also not just about audience size. According to its public filings, Twitter:

“…creates tailored advertising opportunities by using an algorithm to make sure promoted products make it into the right users’ timelines, search results, profile pages, and Tweet conversations. Advertisers have the ability to target an audience based on multiple criteria. Twitter provides ways for advertisers to build and grow an audience interested in the products or services they are offering. Advertisers also have the option to pay for ads that will appear at the top of the trending-topics list or timeline.”

If Twitter crashes and burns companies and investor relations professionals will be faced with a fragmentation of their social media buys. Facebook has far more users than Twitter (with roughly 2.96 billion monthly active users as of Q3 2022) and uses its own ad targeting algorithms, but reaches a different audience than Twitter. For business, Twitter’s value in the space is as an aggregator of users, particularly journalists and media outlets, and no other similar platform comes close to its audience. Mastodon and CounterSocial are popular destinations for people fleeing Twitter, but they are both small, ad-free, appeal to different demographics, and it will be a long while before they accumulate an audience or for companies to re-create their hard-won audience of Twitter followers.

It may well be, in the phrase often attributed to Mark Twain, that reports of Twitter’s death are greatly exaggerated. The brand, the technology and the market are all valuable properties. Maybe not worth $44 billion by the time Musk is finished with his capricious vanity meddling, but a valuable property nonetheless. Musk may have put up a lot of money from the sale of his Tesla shares, but the financiers who put up the rest of the funding for the buyout will have something to say seeing their investment evaporate. Major banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Mizuho, Morgan Stanley, MUFG, and Societe Generale committed to giving Musk $13 billion for the acquisition. Morgan Stanley alone has contributed nearly $3.5 billion for the acquisition. There will be a point when they demand that Musk stop running with scissors.

Companies and their marketers are holding their collective breath as they watch one of their most useful investment relations tools speed towards the cliff, wondering what they will replace it with.

In the words of Elon Musk in a tweet addressed specifically to his “Dear Twitter Advertisers” on October 27th who were jumping ship:

“Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise… Let us build something extraordinary together.”

It may still be possible, if he can restrain himself for five minutes in his reckless campaign to tear it down.

It will come as no surprise that there are people who try to take advantage of investors and the market in creative and sometimes illegal ways. Some are as old as co-ordinated “pump and dump” market manipulation campaigns that have been around since the earliest days of the Vanderbilts. Others are new, like predatory short selling.

One of the newest has attracted the attention of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). In 2021 the ASIC announced that its was undertaking a review of the growing number of online financial influencers to understand how they operated and how the financial services law applies to them. These “finfluencers” rose to prominence in 2020 when a group used the Reddit platform to deliberately drive up the price of GameStop to punish hedge funds that had shorted the company stock. These finfluencers have also proliferated on social media and other discussion board platforms, touting “hot stocks” and quick buck promises to the new generation of young investors who can effortlessly buy and sell shares online in their self-serve brokerage accounts.

In its review, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission found that apps like TikTok, Telegram and Twitter are increasingly being used by social media influencers who are being compensated for online buy recommendations directly by the companies they promote in cash or stock. Others engage in “dealing by arranging”, where finfluencers promote a link for their followers to access an Australian financial services (AFS) licensee’s trading platform to trade financial products. The finfluencer then receives a payment from the licensee for each click-through when buying the products through the link that accompanies a glowing buy recommendation.

As a result of their review of this increasing problem, this March the Australian Securities and Investments Commission published an information sheet (INFO 269) for social media influencers who discuss financial products and services online setting out how financial services laws apply them. It concluded that these types of online activities violate Australian securities laws, and violators can face stiff penalties including hefty fines and up to five years in jail.

Some of these finfluencers have brazenly flouted their wealth and luxurious lifestyles from their unlicensed online advice-giving, making them prime targets for the ASIC, which warns that it “monitors select online financial discussion by influencers who feature or promote financial products for any misleading or deceptive representations or unlicensed financial services.” The new guidelines published in the ASIC’s information sheet make it clear it also applies to Australian financial services (AFS) licensees who use an influencer, who may also be liable for any misconduct by the influencer.

How big a chill this will place on the vast world of social media influencers is unclear, as is how deeply the rules will apply to other providers of financial information. Australia’s example seems to make a distinction between the providers of financial commentary and those recommending or touting stocks. As the ASIC explains:

“You can share factual information that describes the features or terms and conditions of a financial product (or a class of financial products) without giving financial product advice. However, if you present factual information in a way that conveys a recommendation that someone should (or should not) invest in that product or class of products, you could breach the law by providing unlicensed financial product advice.”

Where does this leave legitimate reporters and other financial sector commentators? While the new ASIC interpretation bulletin casts a seemingly wide net, writers and publications who do not give investment advice, recommendations, or receive compensation for positive reviews or driving clicks to a trading site, do not appear to be the ASIC’s intended target. Analysis and reporting on corporate news (provided that it is not misleading) is an important part of educating investors so they can make their own informed investment decisions. The ASIC’s purpose is to protect investors and promote market integrity by controlling online influencers who profit from featuring or promoting financial products using aggressive, misleading or deceptive representations. The result will be that you may see fewer breathless “It’s a buy!” quotes in financial reporting.

Australia is not the only jurisdiction concerned about the problem posed by social media tipsters, promoters, pumpers and finfluencers who have a direct financial interest in driving stock activity, commissions, or manipulating the market. Other security commissions are looking at the issue and making efforts to educate and curb the wild west of social media stock promoters, especially in the hot and overly-hyped areas of crypto and cannabis, and it may not be long before they too start to take a harder stance along the lines of Australia.

The web is a big place with lots of dark corners and bad actors, and has provided fast buck artists with the opportunity to reinvent and use old pump and dump or other market manipulation tricks on a whole new generation of young or gullible investors. It is overdue for a clean-up that separates financial information from naked and self-serving promotion by the so-called finfluencers.

“Compliance and social media is really easy. People get carried away because it is a new platform of communicating but the old rules (of compliance in communication for public companies) still apply.” States Peter Clausi, InvestorIntel’s Advisor stated in an interview with InvestorIntel’s Tracy Weslosky during PDAC 2020.

Peter went on to say that public companies report on Sedar through press releases, financial statements, material change statements, etc. If a piece of information is in those documents, is factually true and has been publicly disclosed, companies can share it on social media. He also said that public companies should not share any news on social media before they have made an official public announcement.

To access the complete interview, click here

March 14, 2018 — “Once you say something or you write a tweet you are responsible for that knowledge if you are sharing it, or for the action which you are thinking will be for the best benefit of shareholders of your own company,” states Kirill Klip in an interview with InvestorIntel’s Jeff Wareham. 

Jeff Wareham: Kirill is really the number one online media influencer I think in this space today. Kirill you are all over social media. Our industry should probably give you a big thank you. What drove you to get so involved? 

Kirill Klip: Thank you very much for this praise. It is a lot of very hard work. When I started my blog it was very interesting. What I found, of course, English is not my native language. But what was very interesting was, before you can write even a very short article, you have to really study the subject. Twitter is great in the sense that it disciplines your mind because you are communicating with very short messages, so you have to know your subject. You have to be there frequently, otherwise people will not be following you and you have to be interesting, otherwise people will get bored. I love this way of communicating, of explaining this education. It is very easy, but very hard when your investors can always hit you back and ask you questions about the company. 

Jeff Wareham: You certainly are out there and accountable for what you have to say, are you not? 

Kirill Klip: Exactly. You know what I found? Maybe the first time, 10 years ago, and then it became crystalized for me 5 years ago, why a lot of mining executives or executives are shy of this kind of public stance on a lot of things. Now I know because once you say something or you write a tweet you are responsible for that knowledge if you are sharing it, or for the actions which you are thinking will be for the best benefit of shareholders of your own company. Then shareholders or others can show you the tweet. Kirill you were talking about this, where is it? It is very, very interesting, this fear, when you have an almost immediate response from your core investors or participants in our industry.

Jeff Wareham: I have been on Twitter a long time, but LinkedIn not so long. I am amazed on how much information you get out on LinkedIn.

Kirill Klip: You know what is very interesting? Sometimes I do not know 100% about a particular subject. For example, I am quite good about lithium, lithium batteries, electric cars. But, for example, I do not have a clue how many electric buses are sold in China. I can just fly one question out and I will receive, like, 10 top experts tweeting me back. Then I can check the source, and within half an hour I know the best knowledge maybe from another person all across the world. It is fascinating how social media really opens us in the sense, that we can not only educate other people with our knowledge, but also we can gain and crystalize the knowledge in the industry very fast…to access the complete interview, click here.