Hedge fund managers are Luddites when it comes to social media.
Only 11.1% of the world's 300 largest hedge funds had any sort of social media presence apart from LinkedIn in 2015, up from 9.9% the previous year, according to a survey of the Internet by Peppercomm Inc., a New York-based communications and marketing firm.
And many hedge fund firms within that group haven't updated their social media accounts in ages, Peppercomm's report showed.
Perhaps because of popular movies like “The Big Short” and Showtime's financial drama “Billions,” more than 1 million social media messages referenced hedge funds in 2015, up 46% from 2014. September was a blockbuster month for hedge fund chatter on social media outlets with 116,600 mentions in a single month, the biggest volume ever, Peppercomm researchers found.
For hedge fund hipsters with sufficient bravery to tackle social media, Peppercomm suggests that they run a Google search about their company and its executives to see what people are saying and to find out how journalists, analysts, academics and others are using social media so they can make meaningful contact with them.
