BUFFALO, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 08/27/14 -- Rand Capital Corporation (NASDAQ: RAND), a business development company (BDC) and SBIC venture capital fund notes that its New York, New York-based portfolio company, SocialFlow, Inc., (www.socialflow.com) has released a study entitled "Data Drives Social Performance: The Benchmark Study on Organic Publishing to Social Networks" (http://www.socialflow.com/data-drives-social-performance-1). The study has important implications for those engaged in Business-to-Business ("B2B") marketing.

"B2B Marketers have historically lagged behind consumer marketers in terms of effectively using social media," said Pete Grum, President of Rand Capital. "As the competition for consumer attention becomes more intense, businesses will need to alter the way they approach organic or social media publishing, which will accelerate their outcomes of marketing their products and services to buyers in a business setting."

Key themes of the research that apply to B2B marketers include:

1. Organic (non-paid) social posting can still deliver substantial reach and engagement.
2. Data-driven posts deliver 91% greater reach, and 25% greater engagement than scheduling your social posts.
3. Real-time marketing on social networks will be of limited benefit to you.

"There are precious few good options to getting a consumer's attention on a mobile device," said Jim Anderson, CEO of SocialFlow. "The Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn feeds are great options for marketers to do that. But you're competing with a lot of other content and you need a data-driven approach if you want your content to cut through the clutter."

Frank Speiser, President and Co-Founder of SocialFlow added: "If you have someone spending time to schedule your social posts, you're missing out in two ways: You're getting less effective results, because people are basically just guessing about when your audience is going to be receptive to your content, and you're paying people to make those guesses, instead of focusing on areas that would add real value to your business."

SocialFlow's study included over 1.6 million posts that reached 361 million unique users, and is the largest study to date of its kind. SocialFlow's findings represent aggregated client data from Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter between April 1 and July 31, 2014. SocialFlow clients include Wal-Mart, The Guardian, Nickelodeon, PepsiCo and Slate. Such publishers and marketers were responsible for the posts, which prompted about 1.5 billion actions from nearly 361 million users.

For more information on SocialFlow and its products, please visit www.socialflow.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Information contained in this release should be considered forward-looking, and may be subject to inherent uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions. Please see the Corporation's Form 10-Q, Item 1A, previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with the Corporation's business.

About SocialFlow:

SocialFlow's software uses Real-Time data; along with business rules you set, to determine what and when to publish to your social media properties. We allow you to manage both owned and paid social posts. We take the guesswork out of social media, replacing the scheduling of content with actionable data about when your audience is active and what they are engaging with on social right now. Our algorithms are continuously sifting through millions of rows of social data, developing predictive recommendations in real time. The results are clear: increased engagement, increased click-through rates, and less time spent by your team.

ABOUT RAND CAPITAL

Rand Capital is a publicly held Business Development Company (BDC), and its wholly owned subsidiary is licensed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) as a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC). Rand provides capital and managerial expertise to small and medium sized private companies primarily located in the Northeast U.S. Rand is traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol "RAND" and is headquartered in Buffalo, NY. www.randcapital.com

Investor Contact:
Allen F. Grum
President
716-853-0802
Email Contact

Source: Rand Capital Corporation

Released August 27, 2014