Three things to consider in the IR online world (investor relations)
As an IRO of a listed company, how to run IR effortlessly, successfully, and particularly impactfully in the online world? Not to mention the topics of the day, which are among others, openness and transparency and the rise of the retail investor. Here are some things gathered together when formulating your message online. See the video.
#1 Time is THE NUMBER ONE constraint
When an investor follows hundreds of companies based in multiple countries, from multiple sources and materials, it is important to note that there is not that much time to allocate per one company. One sell-side analyst once said that he has around 2-3 hours per company to spend in a quarter. It’s not that much, whether the estimate was realistic or not! How about this: consider an investor, who typically gets hundreds of emails and invitations from companies and brokers – per day. Yes, I said per day. Not to mention for all of us, there is a limited time to allocate surfing around webpages.
#2 Easy-to-digest messaging
How to stand out in the eyes of an investor in the digital world? One answer would be catering the message to your audience in a way that is easy to digest and fast to understand. It requires a little extra effort from IR departments; however, the impact can be huge. Why? Because the attention span of all of us has shortened. And… the famous attention span in social media continues to go down as the amount of information, partly because of AI, dramatically increases. Some estimate that the amount of data in the world now two-folds every 12 hours – I do not believe that high-pitched estimate, though…. But the amount of data increases, that’s for sure. It will be harder and harder to stand out. Also as a company in the eyes of investors.
#3 Creativity
Using creativity, for example in the forms of videos or short summaries, is valued! It’s easy to see the value of a summarized quarterly newsletter for a long-term investor, who wants to have the essential – not necessarily daily - information from a company in a curated form. The more templated you can be, the better.
We all know that surfing or spending time on social media is utmost time-consuming (although it is FUN!), however, standing out in the sea of noise is crucial.
The world has become digital, and IR is not an exception. How to deliver the essential message in a way that stands out in the noise and reaches the right audience in the digital world?
You must do it in the right way. Because it’s about IR.