Some recent consulting work led us to investigate the impact that social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn will have on the worlds of investing, investor relations and corporate governance. We found a surprising number of misconceptions–but also a huge amount of opportunity.

While we can’t give away all the secrets, we do have clearance to provide a public version of our work. Read the report below, or download a PDF of it: Social Media and Investing–Misconceptions and Opportunities–6-2010. (Although we tuned the report for investing and those dealing with investors, some of the insights also apply to social media in other sectors. If you’re interested in exploring the implications for those sectors–or investing, of course–let us know.)

A New York Times article on the overuse and misuse of PowerPoint by U.S. military leaders in Afghanistan caught our eye because it dramatizes what we’ve said about how PowerPoint can contribute to bad decisions on corporate strategy. The problems in the military are, of course, more important than those we’ve described, because the military is dealing in life and death while we’re just writing about dollars and cents–albeit lots of dollars and sense. But we’ll take lessons wherever we can find them.

PowerPoint can lead to oversimplification and lack of analysis. If someone is justifying an acquisition by saying there will be synergies and economies of scale, those ideas may make intuitive sense, and people viewing them as bulletpoints may just nod their heads and move on. If someone is forced to write a memo justifying the ideas, they’ll have to lay out the exact synergies they’re expecting–who will buy what, when, where and why–and it may become clear that the synergies are imaginary…

Chunka Mui gave the closing keynote at the recent annual meeting of NIRI, the National Investor Relations Institute. Following that address, he engaged in a wide-ranging interview conducted by Michael Santoli, a senior editor of Barron’s. Santoli writes the “Streetwise” column, offering a forward-looking take on the financial markets, illuminating market trends and themes and identifying investment opportunities. Below is the video of that interview, divided into five parts.