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All News | Recent News | Archived News The Piacente Group Launches Social Media Program for Investor Communications (Dec 17, 2009) The Piacente Group, Inc. ("TPG"), a full service investor relations consulting firm with offices in New York, California and Beijing, today introduced a new communications program that facilitates public company interaction with investor constituencies via social media. Among the first of its kind, the program integrates investor relations and public relations disciplines to market investment stories to targeted audiences accessible via social media channels. The program is designed to complement traditional investor relations strategies aimed at raising visibility and broadening investment community sponsorship of client equities. "Social media represents another relevant yet underutilized channel for engaging individual and institutional investor communities," said Brandi Piacente, President of The Piacente Group. "In our view, public companies that are early to realize the strategic benefits of social media marketing will be at an advantage in building supplemental value for their investment brand. Our new program offers an entirely new set of tools to facilitate interaction with individuals and online groups representing retail, institutional and analyst communities; traditional and virtual industry and trade organizations; traditional and online media forums; and customers, partners and other constituents that can influence and/or execute investment decisions." The Piacente Group's social media program for IR comprises regulatory and compliance policy, communication collateral, database mining, and active participation on various user platforms. The program is customized for individual companies based on a multitude of variables including stock ownership and trading fundamentals, investment peer characteristics, industry and sector positioning, financial performance metrics, product and service profiles and public company lifecycles. Program applications include blogging, social media platforms, SEO/SEM, voice and video podcasting, user-created content, RSS and other unique "IR 2.0" tools. "Social media's potential to broaden the scope of outreach by public companies brings an entirely new complexity to investor relations best practices," Ms. Piacente continued. "Today's investors are using information from many new sources beyond company-, institution- and media-supplied data – the most pervasive of which is each other. Companies that prompt educated social exchanges of information can tap into a highly relevant and contextual channel for investment support." Forrester Research estimates in its five-year Interactive Marketing Forecast that social media marketing will grow at an annual rate of 34 percent, compared with 17 percent for all other online mediums. Forrester also estimates that $716 million will be spent on social media marketing for 2009, increasing to $3.1 billion in annual spending by 2014. About The Piacente Group The Piacente Group, Inc. ("TPG") is a full service investor relations and financial communications consulting firm with offices in New York, California and Beijing. TPG represents a balanced portfolio of U.S. and China-based companies including the top performing IPO to date in 2009 (Lihua International, Inc.). Past achievements include two programs nominated for the "Best Investor Relations by a US-Listed Chinese Company" award by IR Magazine for 2008: Sohu.com Inc. and Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. TPG develops and implements strategic programs aimed at broadening investment community sponsorship through best practice execution. The firm is dedicated to providing clients customized solutions in a dynamic investment environment. Please visit The Piacente Group at our website, on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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