Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Alliance Trust
Posted on 17. Nov, 2008 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Social Media Strategies
This article forms part of a study on social media usage amongst FTSE 100 companies.
Each company in the FTSE 100 index was reviewed on its usage of such social media tools as RSS feeds*, blogs, online video, podcasts and social media platforms like Flickr and Facebook on its main website and on occasion, on websites of well-known subsidiary companies.
*RSS feeds are a simple way of delivering fresh versions of a website’s content to online readers automatically.
According to the Guardian.co.uk Business Glossary:
“The FTSE 100 index comprises the 100 most highly capitalised blue chip companies on the London Stock Exchange, representing approximately 81% of the UK market.”
………………
Here’s how the UK’s largest generalist investment trust, Alliance Trust (ATST.L) fared.
| FTSE 100 Company | RSS | Podcast | Blog | Online Video | Audio | Facebook, Flickr, etc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alliance Trust | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
………………
Online Video/Webcasts: Yes
Usage of Social Media platforms: No
(Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg etc)
According to Yahoo! Finance:
“The aim of The Alliance Trust is to offer investments to those who know the value of the long-term. Its investment policy, which is extremely diversified, is chiefly based on gilt-edged securities, the famous Blue Chips.”
My pre-evaluation expectation of how the company will fare:
Not sure about this one. Can an investment trust be social media friendly, even in these ‘uncertain economic times’? I haven’t heard of one yet. We’ll see…
Commentary:
Clean, clear homepage with a nice picture of a bridge. The design is rather blog like. I almost expect to see a comment count next to the items in the right sidebar which happen to be links to other Alliance Trust web properties.
There are webcasts for private and institutional investors provided in Windows Media Video format. That ticks the ‘online video’ box.
Intriguingly, a series of adviser roadshow videos are also available. Filmed at Alliance Trust adviser roadshows, they provide advice on a range of financial matters including the impact of the Basic tax rate change on pensions.
A question of feeds?
There are no RSS feeds available for Alliance Trust news which is a shame as they have a fantastic News page.
Some of those articles would make fantastic blog posts, more of this in my recommendation below.
Recommendations:
- Provide RSS feeds - Alliance Trust create a fair bit of content, from investor webcasts to adviser roadshow videos to videos advising on recent global events. Providing a feed for some of this content would allow more people to receive fresh content without having to visit the Alliance Trust website.
- Use Flash video - with the ubiquity of Flash video players on sites like YouTube, you would think most online video would be Flash-powered by now. The advantage of using Flash is that pretty much every browser can play the content and viewers are empowered to share useful content with others using the ever present ‘Embed Video’ link.
- Blog, please – some of the news articles on Alliance Trust’s Press Room would make fantastic blog articles. Clearly they are a company who care about their customers and strive to provide useful guidance about global economic events whenever possible.
An accompanying blog would significantly improve the Trust’s search engine rankings for keywords they choose to target and provided they continue to publish useful content, position them as approachable thought leaders in their field.
………………
What do you think?
Are you a customer, employee, shareholder or stakeholder of Alliance Trust? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this review. What would you like to see Alliance Trust doing more of in terms of social media? More online video? A CEO blog, perhaps?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Need any help?
Do you work for Alliance Trust and want some insight into some of the ideas published here?
Or perhaps you look after marketing for Alliance Trust and would like a quick chat about putting some of those recommendations into practice. Contact us.
Related posts:
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Alliance and Leicester
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Cairn Energy
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Amlin
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Centrica
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Bunzl
Chi-Chi
Surely for the Alliance Trust to meet the threshold of “UK company using social media to market itself”, the video would need at least to be hosted on a web-hosted, social media app’ such as Vimeo, YouTube or Ustream.tv (my favourite!). Without it, surely Alliance Trust is just making corporate videos. Or have I missed something.
Cheers
@John Welsh
Yes, those are indeed corporate videos; it appears that providing webcasts of annual reports or investor reports is de rigeur amongst FTSE 100 companies.
Having said that, not all companies covered so far even go as far as providing corporate video: Alliance & Leicester, natural gas giant BG Group and outsourcing and distribution company Bunzl are three examples of FTSE 100 companies without online video of any kind on their corporate websites.
It would seem that using video sharing platforms like YouTube, Vimeo etc is a step too far at the moment for these organisations.
That’s great performance!