AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

THIS POST IS FROM APRIL 2009 AND IS EVEN MORE RELEVANT TODAY

I first published this story in August of 2007 – but it is worth repeating.

Now that AGORACOM Small Cap TV is approaching 500 episodes, one of the things I have noticed is that small-cap companies continue to release news just at or before the open. This might have been an acceptable practice back in the day when only brokers could access press releases on their screens but it made no sense once the web opened them up to the entire world.

It makes even less sense now. Why?

Folks, we are in a Web 2.0 world in which citizen journalism and analysis is becoming a bigger, more important research tool than Wall Street and finance portals. As a result, small-cap and micro-cap information is being analyzed and discussed by Twitter,  bloggers, podcasters, and vloggers everyday – all of which is being fed into every corner of the web via RSS feeds, other Twitter members, iTunes, blogs, podcasts etc. on your behalf – and for free!

THE LEAST THAT YOU COULD DO

However, if you want your great news covered by these incredible reporting sources, you have to give them a chance to see your news, digest it and report on it. Just like traditional news, Web 2.0 sources have deadlines as well.  AGORACOM TV, for example, has a cut-off of 9:00 AM so that we can tape at 9:20 and be up by 9:45. I’m certain others are not much different.

As such, if your press release is coming out at 9:30, you’ve robbed yourself of potential mass coverage by one or more sources that might have otherwise picked up your news and sent it right around the world.

Bottom line – put your news out by no later than 8:30 AM EST.  In fact, somewhere between 7:30 and 8:30 AM EST makes the most sense …. unless shunning free coverage is actually part of your business plan.

Best,
George

If Thurston Had Internet, He'd Be Trading From Gilligan's Island

I know this doesn’t come as a surprise to many of you but there are still a number of CEO’s out there that continue to believe online traders are – for the lack of a better word – flakes.  They fail to realize that online investors are take charge, self-directed, open minded and very intelligent.  I know this because I’ve watched them for years on AGORACOM and blogs around the web.

For those CEO’s that don’t want to take my horribly conflicted word for it, you might want to take a look at this article in the Wall Street Journal:  Some Millionaires Trade Online.

(UPDATE:  It looks like the WSJ no longer has the story available – but here is a cached version of the article)

The article specifically talks about Canada – but I think we can all agree it applies to US online traders as well.

You can continue to ignore online investor relations – but do it at your peril.

Regards,
George

For months I’ve talked about the loss of trust being the greatest risk to markets.  Specifically, investors can flow with market cycles and always come back.  However, if they lose trust, it will take a long time for Wall Street to gain them back.

Thanks to information provided by Dominic Jones over at IR Web Report, that trust is officially broken.  He cites a number of reports here, here and here – but here are some of the highlights, starting with this telling graphic:

• Nearly two-thirds of investors (62%) trust corporations less than they did a year ago.
• Only 38% said they trust business to do what is right, a 20% plunge since last year.
• Only 17% said they trust information from a company’s CEO.
• In China, the “trust in business” score actually rose from 54% to 71% among 35-to-64-year-olds.
• Specialists remain the most trusted purveyors of information about a company, with 62% globally saying an academic or expert on a company’s industry or issues would be extremely or very credible.
• Employees and peers are also considered credible sources of information about a company, with 47% trusting what they hear from “a person like yourself” and 40% trusting conversations they have with employees.

In short, investors don’t trust Wall St CEO’s – but they do still trust people like themselves.  This tells me quite clearly that there is no better time for a grassroots investor relations campaign by small-cap companies.

Need another sign of the people times?  Obama went grassroots and it resulted in the election of the first ever Black President of the United States despite daunting odds from both within his party and amongst voters in general.  Your personal politics aside, the man proved the power of connecting at the ground level when the ground level had little trust in the upper echelon.

Wall Street is out of favor … waaayyy out of favor.  Take advantage of the environment, get out there and show investors why you and your hard working small-cap company can be trusted.

Regards,
George

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt recently sat down for an interview with Charlie Rose to discuss a wide range of topics related to technology, the future, etc.   In the flurry of information, it was a great interview, the most relevant to the small-cap industry is that Bill Joy uses search engines to find new investment opportunities. An excerpt from the transcript can be found below.

What does this mean for you? If someone like Bill Joy, with every resource and ear to the ground sources accessible to him, uses search engines to find new investment opportunities, you’re simply a damn fool for not believing or understanding that small-cap investors use search engines to find their next great small-cap investment.

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Regards,
George