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Small-Cap CEO Lesson: Use Search Engines To Find AND Be Found

Posted by AGORACOM at 2:40 AM on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

This edition of Small-Cap CEO Lessons is quite simple:

“You already use search engines to find things, now start using search engines to be found!

It is amazing to see the look on a CEO’s face when I put search engine marketing into this simple context. You use search engines at Google/Yahoo/MSN to find important, mission-critical items for your business such as data, research, articles, definitions, experts, etc.  You do so because search engines have proven to be a fast and reliable way to find things you are looking for.

And yet …

… you still continue to rely on old fashioned, outdated, expensive and slow moving marketing methods such as conferences, printed materials, print advertising, road shows and buying drinks at local broker watering holes to find new investors.

Does this make sense to you?  I’ve underlined “find” to illustrate the real disconnect between how you find important things for yourself (search engines) vs. how you allow other people to find you (same old, same old).

OVER 35,000,000 ONLINE INVESTORS

With over 10,000,000 North American households now trading online and more than 35,000,000 online traders around the world, you can bet that search engines and the web play a huge role in how investors find new small-cap investments.  In fact, an AGORACOM survey of more than 850 investors earlier this year revealed the following:

  • 73% of Investors Conduct the Majority of their Research (75%+) into New Stocks Online. This is a dramatic 18.65% increase over 67% of respondents in 2007 and serves as proof positive that an online investor relations program is critical if you want to reach new investors.
  • 48% of Investors Conduct All of their Research (95%+) into New Stocks Online. No online IR program means you immediately miss out on 48% of all investors.
  • 60% of Investors Use Discussion Forums For Information and/or Research.

CONCLUSION

You already use search engines and the web to find things.  With over 35,000,000 investors now trading online, start using search engines and the web to be found.

Regards,
George

Small-Cap CEO Lesson: This Is How You Communicate With Investors During Turmoil

Posted by AGORACOM at 1:02 PM on Friday, October 24th, 2008

Pursuant to my recent post entitled “Best Investor Relations Practices During Market Turmoil” I’m pleased to provide you with a communique sent by Kim Tyler, President of Canadian Arrow Mines, to his shareholder base via AGORACOM. Take a look at my comments following his message as to why this was a simple but effective move.

======

Friends and investors;

Attached below is a link to an interview regarding the latest Canadian Arrow and Kenbridge update. We are not dissuaded by the current and ongoing financial turmoil as we believe the underlying fundamentals for economic growth, hence nickel and stainless steel, are still secure. Demand by the emergent Asian middle class may slow temporarily but will ultimately not be appeased by the current mine closures, lack of new supply coming on-stream and expected run on supply thereafter.

The current spate of high cost operations closures may well continue. This is healthy for Canadian Arrow and Kenbridge. Canadian Arrow is still perfectly poised to bring production on-stream over the next 1.5 to 2 years at a projected operating cash cost of US$3.47 per lb of nickel net of copper credits, well under current and projected prices, at a perfect time to meet the next upswing in the base metals sector.

Canadian Arrow has a competent team with a commitment to succeed, a completed positive scoping study, NI43-101 Measured and Indicated lbs in the ground, and more than all that, infrastructure in the ground by way of the existing shaft.

Thanks once again for your continued support.

Best regards,
Kim

Link To Interview

======

This was a simple but very effective message for 4 reasons.

First of all, hats off to Kim for exercising best investor relations practices during a period of market turmoil. Investors may be fearful but they are looking for leadership and confidence. Kim delivered it.

Second, I commend Kim for communicating with investors via text and video. The text message was strong and to the point. He didn’t ramble, he stuck to pertinent facts. The video, on the other hand, then creates a conversation between Kim and his shareholders.

Third, everyone should take note of the fact that Kim used this opportunity to remind investors about the long-term reasons they originally used to invest in his company. In an environment in which fear can blind investors from fundamentals, CEO’s need to make sure that fundamentals trump emotions.

Fourth – and I love this one – Kim uses market and industry weaknesses to his advantage by specifically demonstrating to investors how Canadian Arrow Mines is positioned to benefit from such weakness. Brilliant.

Simple but extremely effective. You can bet Canadian Arrow shareholders are breathing a whole lot easier today.

This is how you communicate with investors during market turmoil.

AGORACOM clients have been taping or in the process of taping their own messages to shareholders. If you have not done so, what are you waiting for?

Regards,
George

Small-Cap CEO Lesson: Obama Uses Web To Attract 3.1 Million Investors, Smash Election Records

Posted by AGORACOM at 10:11 PM on Sunday, October 19th, 2008

As a small-cap CEO, one of your most important goals is attracting new investors to your company.  As the founder of the biggest online small-cap IR firm, I’ve tried to go beyond “selling” you by teaching you valuable small-cap CEO lessons.

Today’s lesson is perhaps the most valuable lesson of all because it serves as a clear example of how one CEO beat his corporate competitors by using the web to attract millions of individual investors.

Your personal politics aside, Barack Obama has run a simply masterful online campaign for the hearts, minds, votes and wallets of American voters, with the latter point being most relevant to you.  Specifically, the New York Times reported the Obama Campaign raised $150,000,000 in September, shattering all records in the process, including the following unbelievable data:

  • 632,000 new donors. The number of new donors added in September;
  • 3.1 million. The number of total donors;
  • $86.  The average contribution per donor.

Yes, not every one of these donors came through the web but at an average of $86 per donor, you can bet an overwhelming majority of them came via the web.

How did he do it?  We’ll save the full details for another day.  For now, the following picture is worth a thousand words.

If a newbie Senator from Illinois can use these tactics to rise from long-shot candidate to becoming the first Black President of the United States of America, what is stopping you from using them to build an incredible, winning small-cap company?

Regards,
George

Small-Cap CEO Lesson; 28-Year Old Males Are Most Bullish Investors Right Now

Posted by AGORACOM at 1:38 PM on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

If you are a small-cap CEO, then you are going to be very interested in a profound statistic that came out of CNBC just a few minutes ago. Specifically, CNBC ran a poll and determined the profile of the most bullish investor today is a 28-year old male. The most bearish are 57-year old females.

POLL SERVES AS FURTHER EVIDENCE OF POWER OF ONLINE INVESTOR RELATIONS

CNBC’s conclusion that 28-year old males are most bullish on the stock market today supports our position that online investor relations provides small-cap companies with the greatest ROI.

Why? Though internet use is broad amongst both genders and all age groups, there are still meaningful differences in the actual figures by age groups.

INTERNET USAGE GREATEST AMONGST YOUNGER INVESTORS, DISSIPATES WITH AGE

Take a look at the following internet usage statistics by age: According to the study (conducted in Canada but reflects US habist as well) internet use by age group breaks down as follows:

18- to 29-year-olds >>> 90%
30- to 44-year-olds >>> 88%

45- to 59-year-olds >>> 78%
60-year-olds and + >>> 50%

If the age profile of the most bullish investor in this environment is 28, then it follows that the sweet spot is targeting investors between 25 – 32 years old. With 90% of them on the internet, an online investor relations program is the fastest way to attract new investors to your company.

ONLINE INVESTOR RELATIONS PROVIDES COMPANIES WITH BEST ROI

Further to my post about Best Investor Relations Practices During Market Turmoil It should come as no surprise that your best Return On Investor Relations Investment because only the web can provide you with two critical functions:

1] The ability to precision target investors. If you are a widget company, you want to target investors interested in widgets and your competitors. You don’t want to waste IR dollars conducting general marketing. The web can do this. Traditional IR can’t do this.

2] The ability to measure the success of a campaign. From search engines to behavioral ads to creating an online community, you know exactly how successful each component of your online campaign is performing. If people are responding to your campaign and the result is a growing community of investors reading more and more information, the inevitable result is going to be a larger shareholder base and higher share price.

Regards,
George

Small Cap CEO Intelligence: 2008 Nobel Prize Winner For Economics Is Sharing His Thoughts

Posted by AGORACOM at 6:30 PM on Monday, October 13th, 2008

The Nobel Prize For Economics was first awarded in 1969.  They didn’t have blogs and RSS feeds back then but you’ll be happy to know the 2008 Nobel Prize For Economics went to Paul Krugman, who just happens to write a blog for the New York Times.

If you want be inside the head of a Nobel Prize winning economist, make yourself a better CEO and give your company an edge, all you have to do is subscribe to his RSS feed.

Regards,
George

p.s.  Photo is courtesy of Princeton University.
Princeton, NJ, USA.

U.S. Searches For “Agoracom” Skyrockets With Bloomberg / CNBC TV Campaign. “Gold Stocks” Too.

Posted by AGORACOM at 9:35 AM on Thursday, October 9th, 2008

On September 15, we announced the commencement of 30-second television ads on Bloomberg and CNBC in the United States, as well as, BNN in Canada.  Unlike search engine marketing, it can be used to be hard to measure the effectiveness of offline branding campaigns because potential new visitors don’t call you.  If we were specifically marketing our IR services, you could measure the number of prospect calls or web inquiries.

Fortunately, we now have Google Trends. Google Trends analyzes how many searches have been done for a specific term, relative to the total number of searches for that specific term over time. In this case, I wanted to see the search trend for “AGORACOM” in the United States.

In order to make comparisons easy and put them in relative terms, Google assigns the searches over time a  baseline score of 1.00.  As such, anything above 1.00 since September 15 is a good sign and anything below 1.00 is a bad sign. How good or bad would depend on how far off 1.00 the trend is.

So what is the trend for AGORACOM so far? A Google Trends chart is worth 1,000 words:

The spike is so big that the baseline of 1.00 looks like we had no searches at all in 2008 when, in fact, the spike meant the chart had to be set to increments of 10.  To put this into perspective, Imagine what the chart of a small-cap stock would look like if it was trading pretty healthy in and around $1.00 for most of the year and then suddenly spiked to almost $20.

I do concede this is still early and we will have to check this again in 30 days – but we are off to a great start.

AMERICANS SEARCHING FOR “GOLD STOCKS”

If you want to take a look at your own trends, go here.  You can view a search trend for the entire world or for a specific country.  The caveat is that Google Trends doesn’t give you reports on thinly traded search terms. As such, if your corporate name doesn’t register, try things like your industry.  For example, I queried “Gold Stocks” and the following tells me that Americans are becoming VERY interested in them!

If you are a small-cap CEO and don’t recognize the power of Web 2.0 by now, I give up 🙂

Regards,
George

Best Investor Relations Practices During Market Turmoil

Posted by AGORACOM at 8:53 AM on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

If you are a small-cap or micro-cap CEO and looking for investor relations guidance during these challenging markets, then you have come to the right place.

First, it is important to understand that during this kind of market environment, investor relations is not just about increasing your share price.  Every company is getting hit, so to think you can buck that trend isn’t realistic.

Rather, your goals in this environment are:

  • Short Term – To mitigate any further losses to your market capitalization.
  • Longer Term – To take advantage of competitors with weak or non-existent strategies and capitalize on current opportunities.

Both goals are heavily dependent on your IR communications and strategy.  A properly executed strategy will yield great long-term results, while running for cover and failing to communicate is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

With all this in mind, here is the AGORACOM recipe for success during periods of market turmoil.

1]  Silence Is Death – Have you ever had a friend or family member owe you money but suddenly become hard to get a hold of? How did you feel? Do not make your shareholders feel this way or they’ll write you off as a bad debt and was their hands clean of you. This is no time to duck for cover if you believe in your business, your plan, your management team and your board.

2]  Provide Long-Term Vision – Investors are worried by these short-term market gyrations.  It is your job to get shareholders to look beyond this gyration and remind them that you are building a long-term business that will survive and thrive beyond 2008.

3]  Accentuate Your Strengths – Provide shareholders with a press released corporate update that discusses the strength of your product / services / project / technology (depending on the business you are in).  Be sure to also address the long-term viability and strength of your industry.  Remind investors that there will always be a widget industry and you are one of the companies that will be benefiting from it.

4]  State Of The Union – Support your corporate update with a multi-media “state of the union”.  Specifically, tape an audio or video address for your shareholders that conveys confidence.  If your text based corporate update in step 2 provides the facts that assure investors, your multi-media address will provide your shareholders with confidence they are in the right hands.  No matter what the context, people need to hear from their leaders.

5]  You’re Not Bullet Proof – Be honest about any negative impacts to your operations.  Shareholders don’t expect you to be bullet-proof, so openly telling them about the 2 or 3 items in your business that have been impacted demonstrates an honest and realistic management team.

6]  Competitor Weakness – Though you should never specifically name a competitor, do to tell investors about any significant problems with your competitors, some of whom will not make it through this period due to poor planning or business models.

7]  Business As Usual – Do not hold back press releases as part of a market timing strategy.  Yes, be careful not to issue press releases on a specific morning where futures are showing significant weakness but it is business as usual, so get on with your business and continue issuing press releases.

8]  New Blood – Never, ever stop looking for new investors.  You are in a position to benefit from the following two ways:

First, we all know that a significant portion of small-cap and micro-cap stocks are unfortunately built upon unviable business models.  That is the nature of the business.  Shareholders in those companies will see the writing on the wall, take their tax losses and start looking for high-quality alternatives that can help them get back above water over the next 12-24 months. Be that alternative!

Second, investors that were smart enough to raise cash earlier in the year will be looking to come back into the markets over the next 2-3 months.  They will be looking for good companies with good management teams executing a plan that will succeed over the next 2-3 years. Be there when they come knocking!

CONCLUSION

If you need any more proof about the validity of this plan, I ask you to once again follow the AGORACOM experience.  Despite the fact markets are going through tough times, we have managed to maintain a status quo and actually grow while other investor relations firms suffer.

Why? We practice what we preach.  We communicate with and help our customers as much as ever, while continuing to market ourselves via search engines, our blog, e-mail newsletters and business television ads to attract new customers.

If you follow our plan, never lose site of the fact that you currently have great shareholders and remember there are millions of other shareholders looking for companies like yours, you will succeed in mitigating short-term losses while maximizing long-term success.

Regards,
George

UPDATE: IR Web Report picked up our story when they posted their own piece on this important subject. Take 5 minutes to read it because IRWR is a neutral, well-respected publisher of online investor relations strategies and its principal, Dominic Jones, has consulted to some pretty major companies around the world.  You will note he stresses using Web 2.0 tools to negotiate quickly, broadly and efficiently.

He also refers to another pretty good list of IR best practices during market turmoil by Johnson Communications. You will note a lot of crossover with my list, as well as, some other good points.

AGORACOM Acquires Grandich.com, Appoints Peter Grandich Chief Commentator

Posted by AGORACOM at 7:35 AM on Friday, October 3rd, 2008

TORONTO, October 3, 2008 – AGORACOM (http://www.agoracom.com), Canada’s largest small-cap investment community and only provider of monitored online communities to public companies, is proud to announce the acquisition of www.Grandich.com, the home of The Grandich Letter, a leading newsletter analyzing the metals and mining markets within global stock and bond markets. The Grandich Letter has been published since 1984, has over 11,000 subscribers and also serves as an investor relations vehicle for Grandich clients.

In addition, AGORACOM is very pleased to announce that Peter Grandich, publisher of the Grandich Letter, has been appointed Chief Commentator and can be found at http://grandich.agoracom.com

ACQUISITION COMBINES POWERFUL SMALL-CAP COMMUNITY WITH LEADING COMMENATARY

The combination of AGORACOM and Peter Grandich represents the next generation of financial communities, in which investors read in-depth leading commentary and then have the ability to interact with both management and investors in a monitored, professional and courteous environment.

Over the past 12 months, the AGORACOM small-cap community has attracted over 1,200,000 investors that have read over 101,000,000 pages of information, while Peter Grandich commentary has been quoted in major financial media such as The Wall Street Journal, Marketwatch, CNN, GlobeInvestor, Financial Post and BNN.

George Tsiolis, Founder of AGORACOM, stated “This is a momentous occasion for two reasons. First, from a personal point of view, I have admired Peter Grandich for several years for both his integrity and his analytical abilities. I’ve never met someone with such an uncanny ability to perfectly call tops and bottoms, only to then go out and publish them despite not always being in the best interests of his clients. His calls on the perilous state of the US stock market and financial industry were well documented long before the public had any hint of the problem – and don’t start me on his crystal ball for the gold market. His value to AGORACOM is immeasurable.”

“Secondly, from a business point of view, you could not find a more complementary combination. Investors need access to consistent and high-quality commentary, as well as, the ability to then collaborate and exchange ideas with other investors and CEO’s. We now have that.”

Peter Grandich, Founder of Grandich Publications stated “Today’s news marks a significant step forward for both Grandich readers and clients. The importance of not just the internet but Web 2.0 capabilities can not be overstated. We live in a world where investors demand both the ability to interact and the option to receive information on their own terms. AGORACOM provides both a blog and monitored forums format that provides the best interaction tools I have ever seen. At the same time, my commentary will now be available for consumption via web postings, e-mail, RSS Feeds and even Twitter. Moreover, through the use of tagging and search engine techniques developed by AGORACOM, my commentary will reach a new audience that I could never have dreamed of ever reaching. Grandich readers and clients should be very happy today.”

Grandich went on to add “On a personal note, I have invested a significant portion of my life, time and energy into my work. George Tsiolis and his team at AGORACOM are the perfect fit for this next step of mine because they put integrity above all else. They have mastered Web 2.0 and ushered in the next phase of communications and investor relations – but they did it by truly caring about their audience and clients first – a rare combination today. As such, I have no doubt that we are going to accomplish great things together for many years to come.”

About AGORACOM – No Profanity, No Spam, No Stock Bashing, No Stock Hyping

AGORACOM (http://www.Agoracom.com) is North America’s only small-cap community built to serve the needs of serious small-cap and micro-cap investors. No rumours, profanity, stock bashing or hyping. Over the past 12 months, AGORACOM has attracted over 1,200,000 that have read over 100,000,000 pages of information.

AGORACOM Investor Relations (http://www.AgoracomIR.com) is North America’s largest online investor relations firm for small-cap companies. We have partnered with the world’s biggest internet companies, including Globe Investor, Yahoo, AOL, Google and Blackberry to market our clients to a massive audience of new small-cap investors. We have served over 250 companies since 1997.

About Peter Grandich

With no formal education or training, Peter Grandich entered Wall Street and within three years was appointed Vice President of Investment Strategy for a leading New York Stock Exchange member firm. A prolific and often-quoted writer, he edited and published four investment newsletters.

Labeled the Wall Street Whiz Kid, Grandich gained national notoriety by being among the very few who not only forecasted the 1987 stock market crash just weeks before it happened, but on the very next day he predicted that within two years the market would reach a new all-time high – which it did. Proving his 1987 forecast was no fluke, Mr. Grandich said in January 2000 that the year 2000 will go down as the year the great mega bull market of the 80s and 90s came to an end.

He appears almost daily in the financial media on TV, radio, the web and in print. Grandich also speaks at major investment conferences worldwide and has been awarded Best Speaker Award eight times. His company, Grandich Publications, also provides a variety of services to publicly-held corporations on a compensation basis.

CONTACT INFORMATION

MEDIA INQUIRIES

Mitchell Fanning
Director of Marketing / Communications
[email protected]

Jo Schloeder
Creative Approach, inc.
Phone 732-751-1004
E-Mail: [email protected]

CORPORATE INQUIRIES

George Tsiolis, LL.B
President
AGORACOM
[email protected]

SEC Charges California Biotech For Fraudulent Stock Scheme

Posted by AGORACOM at 3:59 PM on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

For all the heat the SEC has taken lately, you have to give them full marks for cracking down on the micro-cap pump and dump schemes. Here is the latest:

Washington, D.C., Sept. 25, 2008 – The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Rancho Cordova, Calif.-based Telomolecular Corp. and two of its former executives for their roles in a stock scheme based on false claims to investors that the biotechnology start-up company was on the verge of financial and scientific success in developing anti-aging treatments and cancer cures. (FULL STORY)

SMALL-CAP AND MICRO-CAP CEO’S HAVE TO MAKE REALISTIC CLAIMS

The Telomolecular offense isn’t as far off the beaten path as you would think. We still continue to receive calls from companies that make some pretty outrageous claims. Yes, some are complete scams but some are from well-meaning CEO’s that have simply fallen too far in love with their company and waayyyy overestimate their capabilities.

If you fall into the latter, don’t think you’re too far off from getting yourself busted by the SEC. Having evil intentions isn’t a necessary pre-requisite to charges being laid by the SEC.

“Companies raising capital from investors need to provide realistic and
accurate information
about their resources and prospects for future
success,” said Marc Fagel, Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office.”

CONCLUSION

Keep it real. There is nothing wrong with being super enthusiastic about your product or service – but you have to separate that from your public communications and performance expectations. Google wasn’t built in a day, so neither will your company.

Regards,
George

IR Lesson From Bailout Crisis – Main Street Matters!

Posted by AGORACOM at 3:26 PM on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

My friend and colleague, Dominic Jones, publishes the best research and information about online investor relations practices through the IR Web Report. He has counseled some of the world’s biggest and best-known corporations across every sector and in more than a dozen different countries. As such, when he writes, I listen.

A couple of days ago he posted a must read article about the the single most important lesson we all can learn from the current crisis: Main Street matters.

Given the fact he wrote the article prior to voting and rejection on the bailout bill thanks to the people’s revolt, it’s safe to assume this important lesson has now graduated to a commandment.

Since I’ve already declared it a must read, I won’t ruin it by re-hashing it here – but I would like to give you a couple of his best quotes”

“Investor relations shouldn’t only be about hobnobbing with analysts
and portfolio managers, it must also support strategically important
retail investor communications.”

“Companies that don’t have dedicated IR website managers in-house can’t take advantage of even a fraction of the opportunities available to them to build and maintain relationships with their investors.”

Regards,
George