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A Panel Discussion
Podcasts as an Investor Relations Tool
Wing Yu, Scott Whitney, Ken Balog
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[runtime: 00:49:13, 22.5 mb, recorded 2006-09-30]
Until sometime ago, companies used to appoint a corporate communications office to respond to investor queries. It was tedious to send out mailers to each investor. With the proliferation of investor population, this medium just didn't scale. With so many stakeholders — investors, analysts, brokers, hedge funds, mutual funds, the government — getting the right message, the same message and at the same time to all the stakeholders became ever more important. Then, the Internet happened.
Now, a new office called the Investor Relations Office (IRO) uses online communication to manage the same, conveying relevant and timely information to all investors, building brand equity with this population, and meeting the regulatory requirements of full-disclosure mandated under the Regulatory FD policy. In this direction, podcasting and RSS have helped a good measure. Podcasting has been around for almost ten years now and off late has been discovered as the key to building a successful investor relations program. It enables companies to connect to their stakeholders, to reply to grievances, to get their end of the story out to the investors and to address issues that affect the strength of the stock in the market place.
Even from a search engine optimization perspective, podcasting helps get a lot of cross-pollination. For companies into publishing whose job is to increase the probability of engagement, this avenue has an enormous revenue potential. This three member panel comprised of Wing Yu, the editor-in-chief of StreetIQ.com, Scott Whitney, the President and CEO of PodWorx, and Ken Balog, the VP of Sales at VCall, discusses the advantages of leveraging this media and how to setup your organization for implementing this channel of communication.
Wing Yu is the editor-in-chief of StreetIQ.com, a leading directory of business podcasts, and the CEO of FinancialContent, a leading provider of stock market data and news to online media and financial services portals. Previously, he worked for Cosmoz Infrastructure Solutions, Cosmoz.com and Ticketmaster CitySearch and founded several online financial communities. He was also an educator with a Master of Arts degree in Instructional Technology.
Scott Whitney is the President & CEO of PodWorx, LLC the first pure-play podcast consulting firm in the Las Vegas Valley. PodWorx developed The Four P's of PodcastingTM which sets out to educate sales, marketing, advertising and branding professionals about how to effectively Plan, Produce, Publish and Promote their business or corporate podcast. PodWorx broadcasts the Podcasting for Business podcast as an additional educational tool for these professionals. Prior to the launch of PodWorx, Scott implemented an internally developed sales and marketing technique that helped him sell over 40,000 copies of his own music CDs to started TimbreWorx Music, Inc., which sells branded music CDs performed by the best undiscovered artists in the country. Before jumping into the entrepreneurial waters in 1998 (with Whitney Communications, Inc., a high-end website development firm), Scott was Director of Financial Services & Electronic Commerce Marketing for Compaq Computer Company and Director of Channel Development for NeFRAME Systems.
Ken Balog is the VP of Sales at Web Events, VCall. Earlier, he was COO and partner at Communicast, a web conferencing service designed for web events. Prior to this Ken spent seven years at American Teleconferencing Services, Ltd. where he created ATS' business development department and was responsible for launching the first streaming audio and web conferencing services in the teleconferencing industry. He is a graduate of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where he studied international business and marketing. He is an avid sports player, golf and racquetball, and fan. He is married, has two children and resides in the Richmond, Virginia area.
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