JSE-listed companies are not making sufficient use of Twitter as a platform to help people, including those in the financial community, get a better understanding of their businesses.

That’s the finding of new research by FTI Consulting, which evaluates how effectively the JSE’s top 40 companies by market capitalisation use social media at the time of their financial results.

“Concerns about governance and about a lack of control of message dissemination are the main reasons for this reticence,” the researchers found.

Only 35% of the top 40 listed companies use Twitter as a financial communication tool, and this lags behind international benchmarks. In general, they aren’t using social media as an effective communication tool, FTI Consulting said.

“This was the second time that we researched the adoption of social media as a corporate communications tool. We found that while the number of companies with a Twitter handle has remained fairly static at 60% (compared to 59% in 2014), there has been an increase in the number tweeting their results information,” it said.

“In 2014, only 26% of the companies used Twitter as a mechanism to communicate their financial results. This figure has grown to 35% in 2015.”

Most don’t interact with stakeholders online, respond to questions, share coverage or retweet commentary.

“Our research suggests that most JSE Top 40 companies aren’t exploiting social media fully. They tend to use it to broadcast planned messages rather than to involve their audience in a genuine dialogue.”

In the UK, by contrast, FTI Consulting research shows that just 38% of FTSE 100 companies do not share their latest full or half year financial results on social media. This figure is an improvement on six and 12 months ago, when 41% and 48% of companies respectively did not share their results on Twitter.

“This failure to use Twitter as well as LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook more effectively by South African companies is particularly surprising given that South Africa as a whole has embraced social media,” the company said.

The researchers found that larger companies are more likely to use Twitter than smaller ones.

Companies often expressed concerns that they would not be able to put across a comprehensive corporate message in just 140 characters, FTI Consulting said.

“Our survey found that the majority of those companies with a Twitter handle use the social media platform merely as a distribution network, tweeting links to a static, text-heavy press release on their websites. These companies are failing to appreciate that Twitter is not a medium for distributing press releases but a platform to engage in discussion.”

Concerns about governance and regulatory requirements are another factor holding back companies from using Twitter and other social media networks.

“The JSE has made it clear that, as is the case with press releases and other media, releasing and commenting on results via Twitter is not a problem as long as the results have been posted on the stock exchange news service first.” — © 2015 NewsCentral Media