Revealed: 4 killer tips for reaching investors through social media

For any business size, in any sector, investors are drawn to companies who “get social”.

A kick-ass social presence shows you have nothing to hide and can play an important role in your company’s communications with shareholders and the general investing public. The right social strategy can raise your company’s profile with potential investors, keep exhibiting investors onboard and ultimately, build trust in your equity story. But remember, you must go where your audiences are, don’t expect them to come to you.

James Hudson from investor event and publishing company, Master Investor, shares four tips for giving your company’s social profile a lift.

1) Use Twitter search to hunt for new investors

Twitter provides a platform to connect with a huge global audience and improve your digital footprint for free at the same time. You can also use the channel to pinpoint what potential investors are saying about your company and/or sector.

Twitter has its own limited search tool but free apps like Tweet Deck let you filter keywords and phrases that match your company or industry. Armed with this information and with the right staffing resources, you can then start to engage with prospects online or at events and grow your social follower network.

Let’s look at an example with the made-up company ‘Gold Mining Plc’. Entering the keywords “Gold mining Plc” or “Gold mining” in the Tweet Deck search bar displays a large array of tweet results and not just those associated with a hashtag or handle. Refine your search by adding filters like location, user activity and level of engagement. Use the filtered results to take part in conversations and develop profiles for lead generation activities.

You can also use Twitter search to see what your competitors are up to and who they are talking to.  If you aren’t using Twitter for this purpose, it’s worth remembering that your rivals might well be!

2) Go beyond the boring corporate document: Get creative with your investor content.

We all know the importance of year-end reports, profit and loss and chairman statements to attract new investors. But believe it or not, investors are normal people with a thirst for exciting, engaging content. Social media is the perfect vehicle for driving inspirational content campaigns to potential and current investors.

Think about the kinds of content your target audience wants to see on social media, not necessarily what your CEO finds enthralling. In today’s digital age the average human attention span is now shorter than your average goldfish. Your content must stand out from the crowd or it will be missed. A few examples of engaging content ideas:

– Infographics that visually present industry trends or company successes

– Thought leadership style white papers

– Case studies of successful projects

– Blogs containing high impacting images or video

– Webinars where investors get to meet your key staff online

– Competitions or giveaways (but keep it on-brand to attract the right kind of entrant)

Make sure to optimise your content pieces for each social media channel (as we cover in the next tip).

3) Keep it simple, varied and tailored

“Doing less better” should be the mantra for companies with limited resources for social media. There is no point launching new social channels if updates are sparse. And if you have lots of content, you equally don’t want to spam your followers. Also, carefully consider your target audience when thinking about launching new channels. Instagram is flavour of the day but that doesn’t mean it fits with your investor profile and company ethos.

Try and avoid automating the same postings across all your social channels – it bores people who follow you on multiple platforms. Take time to adapt your content for each individual channel as this will maximise shares, comments and likes.  Use ‘cheat sheets’ on Hubspot to optimise image dimensions by device and post type (e.g. carousal images, shared link image, cover image etc.).

Video is huge across social and when done well, can bag you loads of engagement. Use the Twitter Periscope and Facebook Live tools to capture exciting moments from your company events as they happen. But think about the content you want to broadcast live– once it’s out there, it’s out there so carefully consider suitability in advance.

4) Reach the right people through targeted social advertising

Long gone are the days when every company’s posts turned up in everybody’s social feed. Today, a Facebook post that doesn’t have any “boosted” advertising spend behind it may reach only 2% of your total followers. Clearly, Facebook hasn’t become one of the most profitable companies in the world by giving things away for free. Like any other form of promotion, you need to pay to get more people to see your content.

Facebook as well as LinkedIn and Twitter can help you reach your ideal investor persona through highly targeted advertising. Use social media advertising spend to “boost” your posts and tweets around audience profiles that target demographics, behaviour and interests. You can also build ‘custom audiences’ from your imported email lists and tracked website visitors. Use ‘Lookalike audiences’ tools to create similar targeted lists of customers/prospects. Set your budget at the start and keep track of spending and metrics.

But remember, “content is king” and if your content doesn’t hit the right note (see point 2), you might as well be throwing your social media advertising budget down the drain.

Click here to watch a 3-minute highlights video of Master Investor Show 2017 and see how Master Investor’s event and digital platform packages can help your company reach new investors. For exhibitor enquiries, please contact Master Investor CEO, Swen Lorenz: swen@masterinvestor.co.uk