Investor Relations has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry in combination with the internet. The compensation for services related to the attraction of and communication to shareholders often surpasses executive compensation as companies strive to increase their liquidity and the attractiveness of their firm for large scale investors. Traditionally, the Over the counter bulletin board and Pinksheets have been a positive place to take a firm public for both domestic and international companies due to the high liquidity which makes it easier to finance a company and also to exit those shareholders who have been invested into a company over the long term.

Just as important as your company colors, performance, and professional representation as a firm, is the importance of professional IR, PR, and social media marketing. We have all experienced the unfortunate swell of SPAM marketers who send 100 million emails a weekend on stocks, or freead and discussion forum posters, who pump news out about stocks with no understanding of the business or the market of which they are attempting to promote. Fortunately, the effectiveness of this medium of marketing has dwindled and is no longer a hot commodity or desired method of advertising. The real question across the board is how do you maximize investor awareness without being “jammed” into websites and email boxes globally.

The answer is that the very principles behind Social Media Marketing based on building a relationship, permission based following, and etiquette. How can you combine social media marketing into your business model for public relations, follow a social media business plan such as:

1. Have a blog built for your firm, such as www.otclistings.com (One can be set-up initially for free with a small monthly maintenance fee and you can begin updating the blog or hire a person to do it on behalf of your company)
2. Automate your press releases to publish on the blog
3. Automate your newsletter to publish on the blog
4. Automate investor notices, proxy notices, filings, etc, to be published as notices on the blog
5. Write one blog a week and post it within your blog on why people are investing in your industry, what is going on in the industry, all of the success stories in the industry and why you compare.
6. Set-up a Twitter account, every time you publish a press release, newsletter, notice, or post, paraphrase the title and twitter the title with a link to the website
7. Read some of your followers comments, and interact via twitter by asking them why they decided to follow your firm, and do they have a blog, etc. Create interaction. Use the twitter account for the marketing people and traveling executives to, so that you can twitter “our CEO is in Florida today speaking at a conference” or “I am at the Hard Assets Conference in Las Vegas this weekend, who else is going” etc. By putting in the personal touches, updates, and personal location, the followers have a genuine feeling of who they are reading and why.
8. Utilize youtube for loading up video’s of corporate presentations, talking heads about the most current press release launched by your CEO or executives, etc. Blog the content with a link to the video, twitter its publication.
9. Sign-up for linkedin, Friendster, etc, and link and post new blogs, comments, and updates within your profile
10. Encourage your executives to sign-up for twitter accounts and update their accounts with links to your press and posts, or have them retweet your tweets as employees and executives of the company. Ensure there is a policy in place as to what executives can and cannot discuss as ultimately the SEC is very clear about the liability of what employees say online falls upon the company.
11. Utilize newsgroups, discussion forums, and targeted postings to discuss your blogs, free and useful information, and why they should follow the company profile, blog, twitter, etc. Leave links to all of the mediums you are using and try to participate within the groups once a week, or the day of posting, whichever is sooner. This way, your forums become defacto followers of your content, but ensure you are commenting on relevant information to the groups and not just spam posting.
12. Put your twitter and blog account information in your press contact information for press releases
13. Put the blog and twitter links on your company website
14. Develop a press release related to your social media marketing campaign, and inform the investors of all the places they can follow your firm online.
15. Inform people of your blog in investor presentations, corporate presentations, etc.
16. Put the blog and the twitter account within your signature for emails
17. Send out a newsletter to your current base of contacts informing them of the new blog and twitter account following your firm, and continue to do so at the footer of your emails, newsletters, etc, so that individuals begin to follow your firm there.
18. Ensure research reports written on your firm include the blog and twitter account in the company profile
19. Spend 1 hour a day at least updating the blog and twitter account, so that the market gets a continued feeling that you want to communicate with them. Never go silent for longer than a week, it is a bad sign, like not sending out a press release. We are all aware of the cost of a press release, and the companies limiting how much and how often due to budgets, but social media is free, the company has no excuse.
20. If you hire any investor relations firms, make sure they notify people of the blog and twitter account to follow, but also make sure they are not spamming it to people or else you will lose followers and market respect.

All of these methods of deploying social media marketing can be personally customized for your public company by Knowledge Publishing Corp and the family of websites, www.otclistings.com, www.tsxlistings.com, etc.
For a limited time, we will set-up your blog, youtube, twitter account, and other networks to interlink and automate your investor relations for free with a monthly hosted blog and updates cost.

We also have monthly services broadcasted across our network of websites and online accounts, which include:

1. Online research report writing once a month
2. Industry reviews including your company
3. Stock performance reviews
4. Press release reviews and opinions
5. Broadcasting company information, similar to a newswire but via blogs
6. Interlinking of social media platforms and continued updates on behalf of the company on all mediums when a press release occurs or notice, versus your firm manually maintaining the process
7. Corporate competitions and marketing to build newsletter databases
8. Building Broker dealer, Press, and Capital firm contacts and followings
9. Syndicate development for combined posting, discussions, and communication online with other social media experts
10. Building a social media marketing plan for your firm

These additional services can be one time fees with ongoing maintenance for as long as you wish to outsource the efforts. A social media marketing plan is as detailed and important as any marketing plan, a full level of communication with your firm is important so that a plan is not just built for investor relations, but also to help all departments in communicating your company and the company objectives as a whole.
For more information, contact info@otclistings.com