Social media is set to become an increasingly important tool in investor relations activities. Today they are only consulted by a few professionals in the sector, but 56% of the institutional investors interviewed said they believed the importance of social media "not yet significant, but destined to grow". These are the results of an international research conducted by Ad Hoc Communication Advisors and by the partners of AMO, a network that brings together the main agencies in the world specialized in financial communication.
More than a third of those interviewed (37%) believe that social media – including investment forums and blogs – are a positive innovation with a view to a more rapid and direct dissemination of information. Furthermore, 33% of the sample believes that these tools are a useful alarm signal for disseminating and receiving information during extraordinary operations such as, for example, attempts to acquire or raid proxies.
With particular reference to the social media most frequently consulted for professional purposes, most of the interviewees indicated the investment forums (39% consult them "frequently" or "very frequently"), followed by LinkedIn (34%) and dedicated blogs to the world of finance (32%). On the other hand, only 22% declared that they consult Twitter "frequently" or "very frequently" for professional purposes, while just 10% rely on Facebook.
The company's website is still the information channel considered most reliable by institutional investors (92% of respondents consider it "always reliable" or "reliable"), followed by press agencies (87%), newspapers (79%) and from radio and TV (54%). Social networks, forums and blogs are still not considered a reliable source of information, only 17% of those interviewed said they considered them "always reliable" or "reliable".
