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‘You’re

the W listed miners and
hile almost all ASX-

explorers have a social
LinkedIn media presence, some are

more willing than others to
embrace the medium.
guy’ Scott Williamson definitely

falls into the former
category.

The Blackstone Minerals Ltd managing director is a prolific There is definitely a bit of anger…
social media poster, appearing in videos, interviews and Especially when there is weakness in the share price. If they are
online forums across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other getting too aggressive, I’ll approach it on a personal level, DM
platforms. [direct message] them and offer to meet in person, get them away
Williamson and Blackstone corporate affairs advisor Tessa from the keyboard and talk to them in person. It works, usually
Kutscher discuss the success of the company’s social media because they close the account.
strategy and the pitfalls they try to avoid.
We are starting to split the message…
I set up the social media myself… Between investors and our stakeholders in Vietnam. We have set
I actually had to get my little brother to show me how to tweet. I up a Facebook page for our Vietnamese subsidiary where we can
knew it was important to be involved and active on social media focus on different stories. They are not different messages but just
because I’d seen guys like Tolga [Kumova] and others be so different parts of the story for different audiences.
successful and it was essentially free IR, which is crucial when
you are a young company. It does affect the way we make
announcements…
Posting my first tweet… Conventionally, if you have a big announcement
I was excited and nervous but then…. nothing, out, you will market it to the local stockbrokers and
I had no followers! We then engaged NWR they rev the price up. That’s all gone now. Instead,
Communications to help us and it went from there. we ask how we can package that message for our
We learnt together, brought Tessa onboard and Twitter army because they are more likely to move
continued learning and growing. the share price. The trading is on Commsec, you
don’t have that intermediary of the broker between
We have created… you and the investor so you have to alter the
Something of a monster [Blackstone has more message to suit.
than 2,600 Twitter and 2,800 LinkedIn followers, It also involves a lot of planning…
Williamson has 380 and 1,000 respectively]. It’s
too big for one or two people to manage alone, TK: For instance, we have been preparing for
Stocks we need a team to manage it. release of our sustainability report for six months,
TK: I don’t think it’s a monster. I think the difference Tessa Kutscher building up to it with content on social media.
between Scott and other executives is that line about ‘I knew it
was important’. Many executives still don’t see it that way. Finding If anything, we announce more than if we didn’t have
content can be a challenge and I think Blackstone is fortunate a Twitter army...
in that regard. Because we are in nickel there is a lot of content Those investors are short-term focused, they are not looking at 2-3
around EVs, and the energy revolution. That is much more year horizons, so you need to release more regularly to give them
interesting than some of the traditional mining stories and we try to the sugar hit. Once we become more institutionally-driven, we will
use that to educate investors. probably drop away
from that.
We don’t really get criticism…
About our social media presence, although I do get teased about
appearing on everyone’s LinkedIn feed every day, but that means
they probably need more connections. When we first started doing
it people would come up to me and say: ‘You’re the LinkedIn guy’.
It made me realise that for 30 minutes a day – which isn’t a lot of
time to commit – I was developing a profile and reputation for the
company which I couldn’t otherwise achieve.
TK: We are now getting a lot of approaches from companies
asking about how we do it, so people obviously pay attention and
like what we do.

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT NOVeMBeR 2021 Page 23