Best Practice Examples of IR Blogs

In the first part of this IR blog series, we provided some suggestions for incorporating an IR blog into your communications mix. In this post (based on our research), we will discuss what sectors and size of companies (based on their market cap) are the most prevalent users of IR blogs, and what country has the highest adoption rates. We will also include what we consider some best practice examples of companies who use IR blogs to help tell their investment story.
Sector, Market Cap and Country
Technology companies are the most prevalent users of IR blogs followed by the services sector. Companies in the U.S. are the most dominant users of blogs for investor-related material, with Canada next, closely followed by Europe. Small cap companies use blogs for investor-related material most frequently, followed by large cap and then mid cap companies.
Our research has largely found greater use of social media for IR in the U.S., although it should be noted that our sample includes a large percentage of U.S. companies.
Of the companies in our study, we found the majority is using IR blogs to:

• Provide insight into news, industry developments and the company – not just regurgitating information in press releases or other company materials.
• Compile questions solicited from shareholders (in most cases) in advance of a quarterly earnings call.
• Post videos – again in particular for additional commentary around quarterly earnings call.

Best Practice Examples
Microvision has a great blog and uses it well to engage with investors. They were one of the first companies to solicit potential questions in advance of quarterly call and ask they be submitted on their blog. They have also interviewed their CEO to address questions received on behalf of investors about an upcoming industry-related conference.
Cisco’s blog ‘The Platform‘ is all encompassing and has a stream of posts from technology to a review of the quarterly report by the CFO. They have a great use of video that is evidenced by the recording of their CFO to discuss earnings.
Instead of providing specific context around their earnings, Johnson & Johnson uses their blog to provide commentary on their strategy as outlined by the company’s CEO and Chairman on the quarterly call.
They also use their blog to share the key ideas discussed at their annual meeting, as well as posting the shareholder results.
Earlier this year, their legal counsel, Doug Chia shared a post about how they joined Moxy Vote so that shareholders can directly cast shareholder votes through the site:

Accelyrs Software’s blog is geared toward customers with contributions by product managers, developers and research staff. However, in spite of being mainly used to discuss product and industry information, the company did post the details of their merger with Symyx Technologies.
In January 2010, China Wind Power launched their IR Blog. For a small cap Canadian company, China Wind does a great job of keeping their stakeholders apprised of their business strategy and company developments. For example, the image below provides an overview of one of their development projects:

http://chinawindpower.posterous.com/tag/developmentphases

Emulex has four blogs that cover off all aspects of their business including marketing, R&D and the technology industry in general. They also have a “CEO Blog” which is authored by Jim McCluney, the company’s president and CEO. McCluney uses the blog to convey his expertise of the company’s business through detailed commentary on company news.
Rackspace has a corporate blog that covers a diverse range of topics including corporate strategy, company news, industry events and investor-centric information. For example, recent posts pertained to an overview of a strategic partnership, while another covered an analyst day at the NYSE.
They also posted a video in which Patrick Walravens, an on-demand and enterprise software analyst at JMP Securities (who covers the company) interviewed Lew Moorman, President, Cloud and Chief Strategy Officer.
We are in the midst of updating our research and will be issuing a new whitepaper series in mid-June. Stay tuned!