Who’d-a-tot?
Today we announced the delivery of an annual report and were rewarded simply for meeting expectations. Over one million shares traded and almost doubled the stock price. I must admit that even I was surprised at the reaction of the market, yet I guess that the eyeballs on us are simply expecting us to fail, based on some history which is public for all to see.
So for me the question begs….how we do we sustain shareholder value and take it even higher? Delivery, delivery, delivery. We simply cannot rest on laurels of past… we need to embrace realities of today. Modern marketing and value creation are no longer the same as even just a few years ago. We can learn from the best like Apple by taking one dollar earned and empowering our followers to help us turn it into twenty dollars of shareholder value.
Twitter is not a song about birds. Facebook is not the latest makeup technique book. Interactive video is not laughing at a VHS movie, and “flash” is not some guy opening up his raincoat. Yet there are actually still executives who don’t yet understand the power of all of these movements.
I would summarize it as follows. Nobody owns their brand anymore…the people do. They will do with it what they want. Whether your “brand” is that of a penny stock, then they will treat you as such. If your branding (and delivery) show you to be better, you will be elevated by the people, not by any old style promotional techniques. With investor boards and blogs adding to the noise, there are far too many public places for anyone to hide anymore. So if you truly want to create a company which rockets, its because the people believe it, and now drive it. Such is the power of the modern-day social media. To underestimate the value of a few well placed “peeps” is to look at those million shares traded today and believe it could have happened without an investment board, blog or securities website.
Fear the liberty of today’s investor only if you have something to hide. They are the ones who control your brand. Just take a look at my own…for weeks now many branded me one way, and today another. Did I deserve either? Absolutely…I chose to put myself in the line of fire, yet I will say that the credit associated to me belongs more to an entire team who made it happen. I’m just the current poster boy. There will be another in time, and hopefully he/she understands the power of the people well enough to treat it with the respect it deserves.
Have a great weekend. This solar blog writer is taking it off…
Sass