NIRI's IR Update
quotes IR Web Report's blogging advice
By Dominic Jones, IR Web Report
The current issue of NIRI's member magazine IR
Update asks a question many investor relations
departments have been asking: Do IR departments
need to blog?
The article, To
Blog or Not to Blog? (membership
required), quotes IR Web
Report principal Pam Agnew's advice during
a recent NIRI Virtual chapter seminar.
The short answer from Agnew is this:
"No, IR departments do not need to blog.
But they do need to manage their IR websites
better and start the process of evaluating some
of the tools and strategies of bloggers to ensure
that their IR websites remain relevant."
The tools and strategies IR departments can
borrow from bloggers include:
Companies should also use RSS and blogs
for information and intelligence. RSS is
a cheap and easy way to keep track of media
and blog mentions of your company and its competitors.
What clipping services charge a fortune for
can almost be accomplished for free using an
online RSS feed reader.
The Blogosphere also provides IROs valuable
insight into the thinking of analysts and fund
managers. Several sell-side analysts and
buy-side managers have blogs. Reading them
might help you to better understand your audience.
While surveys show that RSS and Podcasts are
still very much a peripheral part of the Web
today, they are much more likely to become mainstream
in the short-term than more exotic technologies
like XBRL. So don't ignore them.
Aside from this, we still think there's a solid
case for corporate boards to set up blogs as
an alternative to expensive and ineffective
physical annual meetings.
Related: Why
corporate boards should blog (from
January 11, 2005)
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