By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate
Lagos(INVESTADVOCATE)-InvestAdvocate, capital/financial market news website on Wednesday made the list of the top 12 financial information services providers/new media a report released by TheAnalyst said.
According to the report, in terms of web ranking from Alexa as at Tuesday September 16, 2014, InvestAdvocate ranked 1,058,967 beating top notch financial services providers such as BudgIT 1,395,494, BusinessWorld 1,202,200 and Economic Confidential ranking 2,462,651.
While the top five (5) leading firms on global ranking, are Bloomberg, The Economist, Financial Times, Business Day and Business Times ranking 374, 1,062, 1,297, 22,837 and 64,671 respectively. ‘’BusinessDay happens to be the only Nigerian firm making the top notch in this category,’’ TheAnalyst said.
The report said an x-ray of the twitter followership of the firms also reveals the top five (5) firms with highest number of followers are The Economist, Bloomberg, Financial Times, BudgIT and Proshare having 5.84 million, 1.7 million, 1.33 million, 15,146 and 7,295 followers respectively. InvestAdvocate has 352 followers and in this category, only two (2) Nigerian firms made the top five (5), BudgIT and Proshare.
The report affirmed that in all, Proshare, BusinessDay and BudgIT are the only Nigerian companies that made the top five (5) in at least one (1) of the three (3) different categories; thus making them the clear leaders in the industry in Nigeria.
‘’This is not unconnected with the quality, timely and relevant information they provide in their respective areas of focus. Recall also that Proshare won the CFI Award as the ‘Best Capital Market Services & Solutions Team’ 2014, Zenith Bank being the only Nigerian company to be so recognised by CFI before now. In the same vein, BudgIT received 2012 Future Awards for Best Use of Innovation while BusinessDay has also received numerous recognitions,’’ TheAnalyst said.
The report further affirmed that aside the regular print media and television stations that provide news, business information and also report general events, there are a lot of specialised firms that provide solely financial, business and economic information and news across various niches in Nigeria and beyond.
‘’Key areas of coverage among these specialised firms include capital and money market activities, economic and business information, business research, finance & allied services,,’’ the report said.
The report noted that the online presence of these firms and their use of new media channels in promoting their services. It said some of these information service providers such as Bloomberg, Proshare, BudgIT, InvestAdvocate etc are solely online businesses.
Justin Adigwe, online publication editor at InvestAdvocate reacting to the firm’s emergence on the list of financial information services providers/new media said the company is striving to remain focused in its niche area of advocating the cause of investors in the capital/financial sector of the Nigerian economy.
‘’In terms of global ranking by Alexa as at September 16, 2014, we emerged 1,058,967, beating notable players like BusinessWorld, BudgIT and Economic Confidential, we can do better if we get our IT system in order,’’ he said.
Adigwe said InvestAdvocate had initially ranked better than its current position due to its timely, factual and credible information provided in its platform. ‘’We are facing a couple of challenges over downtime on our site; the company has spent a lot of resources and gradually bringing the issue to a permanent resolution,’’ he said.
‘’As soon as this done, the site will be repackaged, reloaded, easy to navigate and the problem of downtime will be a thing of the past, people can now easily access the rich contents on it,’’ Adigwe affirmed.
As the financial services continue to evolve in Nigeria, financial information providers will continue to gain relevance and recognition while embracing social media tools in spreading their gospel.
InvestAdvocate is poised to make sure that the Nigerian financial sector and investors remain happy through its factual, timely and highly informative online media platform.
The web is a central forum for today’s capital market operator, company, investor and other stakeholders and the company’s goal is to focus, modernise and redefine through its online capital/financial market news platform the way business is conducted and place companies, regulators, market operators and investors at the centre of it all in order to ensure value for all.
