KH: Even today, many companies still fear that if employees are allowed to choose and shape their own topics, they will say and write things that are incompatible with the company's view. Are such fears justified?
UK: The fear of losing control over communications is only understandable if something is generally wrong in the company. Only then do you have to worry that employees will say something that is not compatible with the company's view. But this only applies to owned media. What employees do on other platforms, however, is something a company can hardly control or even manage.
KH: So, apart from the argument that employees cannot linkedin data be controlled elsewhere anyway: How can we allay the fear of company management and communication decision-makers about harmful statements being made on their own blog?
UK: Neither in the posts themselves nor in the comments. We can still control the former to a certain extent through editorial planning and final editing, but definitely not the latter.
On the Daimler blog, each commentator publishes his or her own comment via an email link. This means that we can only delete comments after the fact. And we have only had to do that about ten times since we started.
KH: Hardly any corporate blogger in Germany can look back on as long a period of service with one employer as you. Your job title is now “Manager Daimler Blog & Corporate Website”. That already indicates that a blog alone is no longer enough these days. To what extent has your own area of responsibility changed since our first interview in 2008?
UK: I've actually had a number of different job titles over the last ten years: first there was something about a blog on my business card, then it was blog and social media, and now blog and corporate website. It seems like the responsibilities for platforms have changed here, but in reality it's about the content that is transported via them. The two belong together inextricably.