An initial public offering (IPO) is an incredibly exciting moment in a company’s development. But how should a digital marketer message an IPO on social media?

On April 4th, online food delivery company GrubHub and energy software company Opower both debuted on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). We took a look at how each company announced, celebrated, and chronicled their respective IPOs, and the strategies that worked best on various social networks.

GRUBHUB

Chicago-based GrubHub – which owns food-delivery services Seamless.com and Menupages.com – commemorated its IPO on Twitter with 5 live-tweets throughout the day on April 4th, all of which sustained their playful brand voice with colloquial copy (not to mention the photos of men dressed in pizza and sushi costumes).

GrubHub’s IPO tweet with the highest engagement, however, was their first tweet of the day. Unlike the tweets that followed, GrubHub’s inaugural IPO tweet had a sentiment of honest gratitude.

While the use of pictures tend to correlate with increased engagement across social networks, this simple, non-congratulatory tweet seemed to speak for itself without an image as it garnered 63 retweets, 3.71 times as many retweets as GrubHub’s average. (GrubHub also appears to be the only entity to employ the hashtag #IPWhooa – bonus points for originality?)

By later that night, the IPO Twitter fanfare was over for GrubHub, and it was back to business as usual.

GrubHub kept the IPO fun going on Instagram by repurposing a picture from the floor of the stock exchange with an on-brand pun: “Now for public consumption.”

GrubHub skipped any IPO mention on Facebook, opting to feed their fans’ appetites for food rather than post a stock market update, but saw below average engagement with their post for the day as a result.

OPOWER

Energy efficiency company Opower went big with their IPO on Twitter with 11 IPO-related tweets over the course of their April 4th opening day. Opower’s top tweet paired a picture from inside the stock exchange with a simple message of gratitude.

This formula worked for Opower as it did for GrubHub, although by pairing the message with a picture, Opower saw higher relative engagement; the tweet garnered 52 total retweets, 12.32 times Opower’s average engagement on Twitter.

Opower also published a blog post reflecting on their journey from start-up to publicly-traded company, penned by cofounders Dan Yates and Alex Laskey. The post itself garnered 1,243 social shares across Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn combined, but resonated differently across social media channels.

When distributed on Twitter, the blog post still saw above-average engagement with 26 retweets, 6 times Opower’s average engagement on the network.

However, when Opower posted the same blog post on Facebook with the same copy, the post saw much higher relative engagement. The Facebook post garnered 136 total interactions – 20 times their average social interactions on the channel.

When it comes to maximizing the digital marketing momentum of an IPO, time is of the essence. When Opower posted a few additional IPO photos to Facebook just a few days later, the posts performed only marginally better than their average engagement on the channel.

Comparable to their top tweet, Opower’s IPO Instagram win was another photo from inside the NYSE, but the IPO fervor only translated to marginal engagement above Opower’s average on the network.

On LinkedIn, Opower again shared their IPO blog post, but repurposed the content with different copy to appeal more to the professionally-minded network.

Opower’s top LinkedIn post, however, bucked all traditional advice about how to write engaging company updates on the network. With just a picture – no links, no copy – this LinkedIn IPO update garnered 158 total interactions, nearly 16 times Opower’s average LinkedIn engagement.

So if your company is preparing for an IPO and you’ve been tasked with messaging the momentous event across social media, try taking a cue from what worked from GrubHub and Opower: take pictures, keep it simple, play to your strengths, and be timely. Oh, and say thank you.

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