Social Media Penetration and Small Public Companies - Cannabis Medical Solutions (OTCBB: CMSI)

At WMM we have been struggling to understand the effect that social media is having on small public companies for some time now. I have been pleading with companies to blog consistently on the highlights of their industry and their unique story to spark social conversation. As the Founder of a growing start-up I myself have been guilty of not doing the same. Hopefully, with some persistence, I will start to document my review of the social media penetration that I see on interesting companies that come across my desk.

Today I begin with Cannabis Medical Solutions, Inc. (OTCBB: CMSI). The WMM Editor’s Desk has previously covered this $14 million marketcap bulletin board company on May 13, 2010:

• http://www.worldmarketmedia.com/779/section.aspx/1477/post/3-market-movers-amex-evk-otcbb-cmsi-otcbb-psws
• http://www.worldmarketmedia.com/1618/section.aspx/169/tag/cmsi
  

A look at CMSI’s website (www.cannabismedsolutions.com) tells me that the Company offers a complete line of merchant services for the medical marijuana dispensary business including, Visa, MasterCard & merchant accounts, debit & credit card transaction processing, gift/loyalty card programs and POS terminals. A closer look reveals that they provide Merchant Account Service’s for high risk businesses including:

• Higher Risk Mail Order Web Sites;
• Travel Businesses/Hotels/Travel Agencies;
• Established Legal Gaming;
• Offshore/International Credit Card Processing;
• Etc…
  

I am developing a protocol to review brands and their web presence very quickly. In the future the following evaluation may change.

1 – Google:
A Google search for Cannabis Medical Solutions returned 96,000 results showing random articles based around CMSI’s news along with some interesting coverage on niche sites like marijuanastocks.com, beaconequity.com and news-medical.net.

2 – CMSI’s website (www.cannabismedsolutions.com):
CMSI has an Investor Relations section of their site but no corporate Blog.

3 – Alexa:
Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,448,063 and Traffic Rank in US: 733,504.

4 – Google Page Rank:
The page rank value is 2 from 10 possible points.

5 – Compete.com:
The site has too little traffic to be rated.

6 – Facebook:
CMSI doesn’t seem to have a Facebook fan page but a search returns a link to their stock quote on YahooFinance.

7 – Twitter:
A search for Cannabis Medical Solutions returned no real results. CMSI doesn’t seem to have a Twitter account and the handle CMSI is taken by 昼休みにtwitterに登録した with 4 followers.

8 – YouTube:
CMSI doesn’t seem to have a YouTube channel or any related videos.

9 – BlogPulse:
BlogPulse returned 55 articles related to Cannabis Medical Solutions and 124 related to CMSI, although this particular search doesn’t seem to be accurate.

10 – SocialMention.com:
I am still not certain if SocialMention gives an accurate read of the social media landscape but the results are as follows:

11 – Stock Message Boards:

• Yahoo Finance – the stock doesn’t appear to have one.
• Raging Bull – the stock had 6 total posts.
• InvestorHub.Com – showed 5,734 posts.
  

Very often while surfing I would see a Google AdWords spot from BestDamnPennyStocks.com/CMSI advertising CMSI Is A Scam - Shocking CMSI Info That Proves It! Find Out What Everyone Missed. Although I knew the outcome I had to click on it. Of course this was the typical stock promotion newsletter landing page that was just seeded there to capture e-mail addresses.

My overall review is that, with the exception of InvestorsHub.Com, CMSI has had very little social media penetration. I believe this stems from the fact that the Company has not established a Blog to initiate any online conversations around their brand. I look forward to updating this review with a follow-up evaluation in the future.