A social media club for German-speaking members of the IR community has been launched by Deutsche EuroShop’s Patrick Kiss.
The club – located at www.irclub.de – is open to any professional involved in investor relations, such as IROs, consultants, academics, investors, analysts, journalists and IR society staff.
The club’s homepage
The only prerequisite, aside from involvement in IR, is a working knowledge of German, as that is the language the site operates in (although non-German speakers may be able to get by with the help of Google translate).
Launched yesterday, the club already has more than 100 registrants, including members of the German and Swiss IR associations.
Kiss – who is well known in the IR community for his innovative approach to using social media – says he launched the site because he felt a pure networking platform was missing in Germany.
‘And it’s maybe a good way to introduce social media to IR colleagues,’ he adds in an email.
The club’s homepage incorporates numerous features from other social media sites, such as an activity feed, chat box, RSS and Twitter feeds, events, a forum for discussion and even a Facebook-style birthday box, so you know when to congratulate fellow IROs on their special day.
The site includes a chat box
Kiss hopes the new club will promote networking, discussion and the transfer of knowledge in the IR community. He would also like to see members meet up in person to form local networking circles.
The head of IR at Deutsche EuroShop built the site at night and on weekends, using the Ning platform developed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. The logo was developed with input from Hamburg, Germany-based communications agency Whitepark.
Creating a Facebook page or LinkedIn group for the club’s home did not appeal to Kiss as it would just be one group among thousands, and because traditional social media sites may be blocked at many companies. ‘Hopefully, it will take some time before IT admins block the IR Club social network,’ Kiss jokes.
