In Europe and Asia, the finance director usually handles most of the function. The fundamental communications method is to communicate financial information clearly and concisely through traditional announcements and live online data.

Fixed points are important, such as quarterly or half-yearly reporting, prelims and the annual general meeting.

Other activities - such as EGMs, profit warnings, news announcements of management changes, new business or acquisitions - slot in as they occur.

In terms of content, an annual statement of prospects that includes more forecast information that smaller companies are used to is advisable.

This is because investors clamour for forward-looking information about smaller quoted companies and complain about their focus on historic data.

Quarterly trading statements can update the statement of prospects. These highlight your key value drivers, and highlight the levers management pulls to create value.

Client broker programmes 

As you strive to attract long-term reliable investors, remember that they will be ruthlessly examining your internal reporting systems, as well as your operational management capability to integrate any acquisitions you are undertaking or planning to undertake, and whether your cash and cash flow provide for the future as well as providing increased dividends.  

Road shows, meetings, financial calendar meetings and site visits are some tools used to get the message across.

So too are client broker programmes that run throughout the year, giving presentations in various cities, to build up shareholder bases.

The media is also important, but small-cap companies are at a disadvantage: they often have to compete with the big boys for the same column inches.

This means getting into the media can be among the toughest and time-consuming investor relations tasks.  The web, however, has levelled the playing field. SMEs can communicate directly with domestic and international investors as easily as the big guys.

Up-to-the-minute information 

Even local companies have an international reach.  The downside is that shareholder activism can heat up very quickly through the use of online services.

Shareholders want more of a say in companies. Internet day-traders try to move markets. Hackers break into a company site and build a look-alike site - or hack into financial information. 

With active investors now expecting to receive the same up-to-the-minute information as people who work in the City, the Internet requires companies to keep on their toes.

Also, it requires a lot of work and thought: the Internet is not a bolt-on extra but a major communication conduit and a formidable resource.

Online integration is essential so that brands are not in conflict and so that everything from corporate video and hard copy materials, through meetings to website, puts out the same messages.

Dynamic and user-friendly websites

There are two general audiences for an investor relations site - institutional investors and private investors.

Both look for good navigation, good information and timeliness. They are demanding: if they try a site once and it is not easy to use, they will not give it a second visit.

Most important, they see the site as the company's shop window, so that what really matters is how a company uses its online presence to provide up-to-the-minute data and how it communicates the role of the company in the current business climate.

Award-winning SME Internet sites have real-time news, often communicated through e-zines, with investor relations web pages transmitting real-time share price information, news, business profiles, expert opinion and interviews with board members.

Sites are dynamic and user-friendly, with ways to access broker research and track the share price against key competitors and sector indices.

This enables investors to feel part of the business, and to interact directly with it. The challenge for management is that investor relations is becoming a 24/7 exercise.

That is the name of the game these days, however, and that is how you get the long-term reliable investors you want.

Isabel Bass is a specialist on the European institutional pension fund industry and an award-winning writer whose work has appeared regularly in Time, the New York Times, the Guardian and Institutional Investor.  

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