
Stakeholder engagement improves valuation: study
WHAT gets measured, matters. Measuring the effectiveness of stakeholder, investor and other corporate communication activities, however, has always been somewhat ambiguous. Until now.

Investors spend just 5 minutes on annual reports — stats
WEB traffic statistics compiled by Google show that investors are spending less than 5 minutes viewing annual meeting materials hosted by large vendors – and younger investors are almost entirely ignoring the documents.

European investment pros mixed on social media
AMID the hype that often surrounds the use of social media in investor relations comes a new survey that provides a valuable dose of reality on the adoption of new media by European investment professionals.

Did OXY’s “fifth analyst call” violate Reg FD?
TWO senior members of Occidental Petroleum’s (NYSE:OXY) board yesterday held a private conference call with a group of shareholders ostensibly to discuss the company’s corporate governance practices, but uninvited investors might well be wondering what was discussed on the call given the subsequent performance of the stock.

PGi makes investor relations social
WHILE many companies are using social media to push out investor relations information, global conferencing firm PGi (NYSE: PGI) is among a rare few that is also using social media in two-way conversations with investors.

Fortune firm stops tweeting, blames poor engagement
A FORTUNE Global 500 company has suspended its activity on Twitter saying that the only people who engaged the firm were social media consultants and people trying to inflate their follower numbers.

Social media advice for IR in 2011: use your own website
A COUPLE of weeks ago, investor relations pro Patrick Kiss wondered why IR has been slow to adopt social media and what can be done to “move things forward”.

Discussion: How to push social media for IR forward?
Patrick Kiss, Head of Investor & Public Relations at Deutsche EuroShop AG, sees a lack of progress in the use of social media for investor relations. He wonders if the time has come for IROs to take the next step and move beyond monitoring to active engagement — or potentially even withdraw to the sidelines.

Telegraph invites readers to quiz Unilever CFO (and his PR firm)
THE Telegraph, one of the UK’s largest newspapers, invited its readers to put questions to Unilever (NYSE:UN) Chief Financial Officer Jean-Marc Huet on the day the global consumer products company announced its half-year results last week.

Google brings transparency to the earnings call question queue
ANALYSTS and investors have long complained that management at some companies manipulate the flow of information to the market and play favorites by carefully screening which questions they take on their earnings calls. Now Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has taken the lead to bring transparency to the earnings call question queue by inviting analysts — [...]

IR Feedback 2.0
If you follow investors and analysts on Twitter you might learn something. Here’s the news release he’s referring to. I read it and didn’t see a lot of corporate-speak (OK, a little), but it frustrated me more that the financials are in PDF only. That makes them impossible to import into a spreadsheet without manually [...]
Companies source annual meeting questions from web
A GROWING number of companies are using the web to give their shareholders opportunities to pose questions to directors and executives at their annual meetings. Since many shareholders are unable to attend meetings in person, the move by companies to use the web could help to reengage apathetic retail stockholders in the annual meeting process. [...]
Microvision opens up earnings call via blog
SEVERAL months ago, Microvision (NASDAQ:MVIS) IR specialist Tiffany Bradford set out to research how small-cap companies were using blogs for investor relations. She was referred to me by Shel Holtz, ABC, one of the leading advisors on the use of technology in public relations and corporate communications. I didn’t have a lot of concrete examples [...]