Recently, I was asked to let someone know what sort of sites I look at when researching a company for a pitch. I’ve put this together and thought it may be of use to you It is not an extensive list, but it should help and once you get into the swing of using them, a competitive search can generate some pretty useful results. Please note that some of the sites you will need to sign up to, but they are all freeware.

First port of call is the corporate site – specifically the media or investor section. This will contain the Annual Report, which will provide an indication of the strategic ambitions within the company, plus a useful outline of who is who and which business units hold the big cards. I tend to only read the Chairman’s summary. The next things to look for are the analysts reports, again within the media or investor section – these are industry presentations (just look for the PPTs)  that the Board make to stakeholders and can be a minefield of useful information. It is amazing how few people within companies are actually aware about the commitments that are being made by their Boards to shareholders.

Next, it is worth going to the independent analysts e.g. Interactive Investor, Yahoo! Finance etc. as they tend to have a view on the company and its position within its competitive set. What you are looking for here are snippets or souundbites – useful things that give you an indication as to where the industry is going and how well placed the company is to deliver. If you can get hold of a paid for analysts report (e.g. a Deutsche Bank report on the industry) they are worth their weight in gold.

For employee views, I tend to look at Glassdoor and LinkedIn; the former gives you an indication as to what the employees are feeling, the former tells you what they are actually doing. Slideshare can be a great resource of presentations that people within a company have given, and tends to cover a much broader suite than the analysts reports.

Twitscoop, Google Insights, and BlogPulse can provide a huge amount of insight into publications, conversations, issues about the company etc., whilst LinkedIn Answers and Yahoo! Answers can also be useful for seeing what the buzz is on any particular roles etc.

Google Ad Planner is a great freeware tool for media planning, but it does have its limitations – Patrick may be able to give you a broader list. The two aspects to look at are the Site Planner tool, which gives you information related to a particular site (e.g. usage, visitor demographics, keyword usage and similar sites used) and the audience search tool, which helps create a list of the sites that tend to be used by particular audiences.

Finally, Being Peter Kim is a great wiki that contains a list of Social Media Activity for organisations, industries, countries etc.