Think you’re not on Twitter? Think again…

Some time back, following the trend set by #stocktwits, #twitter introduced a $cashtag.  For those daunted by the concept of Twitter (let alone the $cashtag) we take a moment here to demystify the cashtag feature and provide some simple tips on how to be more across what’s being said about your company on twitter, because despite whether you’re participating in social media conversation about your company, it’s most likely occurring anyway.

Many ASX listed clients of IRM are already actively engaging with investors through Twitter, using IRM Newsroom to publish their announcements there.

However, even if you “don’t  use Twitter” – you most likely are already on the forum. This is because if you’re a publicly listed company, with interested shareholders or under the scrutiny of media, you’re probably already being discussed.

Checking Twitter conversations

One way to find references where your company is being discussed is to look for a Cashtag, – a little symbol, where a ticker code is preceded by a $ sign. In the case of IRM client, Primary Healthcare, their cashtag would look like this: $PRY. The cashtag is like the conventional hashtag, where users insert a hash, or pound symbol: # in front of an important term or phrase – eg. #primaryhealthcare or #investorrelations, and the cashtag is used to specifically highlight news about particular stocks.

Many financial users are now routinely tweeting using cashtags. For example, Commsec tweets several times a day and every time they mention a stock they give it a cashtag. So almost certainly, a search of an ASX listed company’s cashtag on Twitter will reveal a number of posts. In the pic below, we searched Twitter using the code $PRY and found a list of references to Primary Healthcare, including one from Commsec, where they’ve used the cashtag to highlight and categorise their post:

Note how the top two posts actually relate to a company called Prysmian SpA, an Italian entity with the same ticker? This is a relatively common problem, where duplicate tickers are used across multiple exchanges. One easy way to differentiate between companies listed on different exchanges is to use the exchange convention when posting your cashtag. For example, here the posters could have used $PRY.AX to indicate that they were referring to Primary Healthcare, listed on the ASX.

If you are posting about your own company, and know that your ticker is shared with other companies on different exchanges, we’d recommend applying the .AX extension after your ticker – so it reads $XYZ.AX.

Why use cashtags?

Twitter introduced this functionality in July 2012 as a means of tracking investor- focused updates and it has since been used by the investor community online to save time when searching for updates regarding specific listed companies. This is what Twitter said when announcing the use of “cashtags”:

“When you’re talking about a publicly-traded company on Twitter, make sure you remember to use their new clickable stock tag. It’s also being called a “cashtag,” by some Twitter users. Whatever you call it, Twitter’s new hashtag functionality for stock symbols means that users can view streams of tweets about certain companies’ stock with ease. The cashtags work like hashtags in that they are highlighted blue and clickable. Instead of the “#” that precedes normal hashtags, “$” precedes the cashtags.”

Cashtag fast facts

• Cashtags were created so that users could more easily categorise and find stock news for a specific company or ticker symbol
• Cashtag tweets can be used to derive new insights about stocks and companies if we know how to mine the data correctly.

Essentially, cashtags are a distinct way of listing updates regarding news and financial data for a specific company and making these posts easily searchable for quick review.  You can search for and click on ticker symbols like $BHP or $BHP.AX within Twitter, to see search results about stocks and companies of interest.

Want to include cashtags in your Twitter posts?

Here are some suggestions on how you can do so:

1. Set up or activate your Twitter account
2. Choose a cashtag to use – eg. $PRY for Primary.
3. Set up IRM Newsroom to post your (selected) ASX Announcements to your Twitter account using your cashtag
4. In tandem, suggest to your contacts (such as analysts / reporters), who might be tweeting about you that they use the cashtag.
5. Take a look at your cashtag every so often to see what your overall voice looks like on Twitter.
   You may also like to consider encouraging investors to use your cashtag by noting it within your ASX announcements and other investor materials

Including cashtags to your Twitter posts as a default is something IRM can quickly and easily assist with via settings in our Newsroom product.

Get started today

Need a hand getting started?  Get in touch with our Client Relations Team via email: clientrelations@irmau.com or phone: +61 2 8705 5444. Or visit www.irmau.com for more detail.