Rio Tinto was one of the companies included in our report on the use of Twitter for IR by public companies.  I recently spoke with Bryan Smith Principal Adviser – Digital Media Corporate Communications the person responsible for implementing Twitter and the majority of the tweets (there are also a few others in his group with access to the account).

Rio Tinto has been using Twitter since April 2008 mainly for corporate communications supporting the media team. But one of the primary reasons was to cut back on the number of emails sent out through their distribution list.  Like most companies they have a feature on their IR website in which people can sign up for email alerts.  The rationale behind the Twitter account was to alleviate the task of sending out any news to their email list altogether and cut down on costs to use a third party provider to disseminate to the list. Bryan informed me that in a few months they hope to disable the email alert function altogether.

The company now uses Twitter for more general corporate updates particularly around their corporate site. This includes letting people know of new video or other content telling them where key documents will be placed and when and giving advance notice of important dates coming up such as the AGM.

They don’t have a set amount of hours they dedicate to tweeting each week but Bryan or someone from his group regularly monitors for @replies and direct messages.  Depending on the nature of the message they either take care of it directly or send along to the appropriate department.

In spite of using Twitter for well over a year now there has not been any confusion from shareholders thinking that Twitter is the first place to look for Rio’s news or other updates.  In a similar vein there has not been any interaction with shareholders or institutional investors asking IR-related questions on Twitter.  He did qualify that the company is over 90% institutionally held by large funds.  So requests to speak to management or the board go through the IR team as they deal primarily with institutional investors.

They do have a social media policy but it only covers internal social media tools. Externally they don’t encourage official corporate use apart from a small number of their own sites. Employees are covered by an existing IT acceptable usage policy and employment contracts for contributing to other public sites.

The company monitors its social media efforts every six months or so.  They use a paid service and use the prior six months as a benchmark for future endeavours.  The results are discussed internally amongst all in the corporate communications domain along with the IR and legal departments to gauge what works and to incorporate new ideas to enhance the overall communications strategy.

Bryan does not foresee using Twitter for anything other than they are now – a notification channel for general corporate updates specifically those items found on their website.  One of th92de main reasons is that the company is listed on the London Stock Exchange Australian Stock Exchange and is traded on the NYSE and there are strict issues around releasing news items to shareholders in all three exchanges.

When asked what advice he would give other companies thinking about using Twitter for IR Bryan offers the following “ Twitter is a communications channel – and so are email websites phones and face to face. There is no manual supplied with it so evaluate what you want to use it for and how and don’t be afraid to experiment (within legal boundaries of course). Each company has different shareholder bases so use it in ways that are appropriate to that - and don’t be afraid to say “no it’s not for us”.

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