On 10 October, Burson Buchanan were pleased to sponsor and host The Geological Society Business Forum event on Public & Investor Relations in the Extractive Industries – How to Attract and Manage Investors in a Social Media Driven World with speakers Ben Romney, Partner, Energy at Burson Buchanan and Alex Stella, Managing Director of Investor Hub on an engaging Q&A panel moderated by Mark Steeves.
The event brought together leaders of listed and private resources businesses to discuss how to utilise the multiple channels of information to promote their investment propositions and reach a wider stakeholder audience. With social media playing an increasingly important role in business communications, supporting the promotion of everything from brand awareness to recruitment and crisis situations, it is essential that companies understand how to use these tools, and create the short-form informative content increasingly sought by shareholders, to achieve their communications objectives. During the discussion, the panellists discussed the growing trends from stripped back management videos that help personalise leadership to promote authenticity and build trust with stakeholders, to the pitfalls to be avoided including personal political statements and “over-informality”. Also addressed was the growing role that AI would play as a tool for both IR and the investor community, with AI tools being used by investors to assess the tone and language of earnings calls to inform their investment decisions.
A key takeaway for the audience was that companies should take ownership of their shareholder relationships by using communications tools that gather data and provide analytics so that companies can understand the composition of their share register and target prospective investors directly rather than relying on external service providers. Another concluding note was that these newer communications tools (social channels, short form content, AI) complement the more traditional channels (press releases, presentations, business and trade media and sell-side research) to ensure a wider reaching and coherent communications strategy that supports business objectives, and that failure to understand and integrate them into your communications activities would reduce a company’s chances of competing for growth capital.
