March 3, 2010 1

SmalI Circle Communicators’ Meeting, Geneva / March 3, 2010

Social Media at Daimler:Corporate Blog & Twitter

Uwe KnausManager Daimler-Blog & Social Media StrategyCommunications

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Social MediaIs Social Media a Fad?

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Social MediaDid you know?

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Any Impact on Corporate Communications?

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Social MediaWhat is it all about? – A short Idea

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Social MediaWhat is it all about? – A clear Picture

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Social Media Success Factors1. Dialog/Engagement

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Social Media Success Factors 2. Authenticity

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Social Media Success Factors 3. Transparency

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Social Media Success Factors 4. Speed

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Social MediaOpportunities

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Social Media More than only a press release

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Corporate BloggingQuestions & barriers

• What is blogging good for?

• Who will read that stuff? - Lack of relevance

• What will happen to the One Voice Policy?

• Will we loose our communication sovereignty?

- Did we ever have it?

• All interesting things are already on our website

• Criticism will become more obvious

• We are no bloggers!

• Additional effort will be required (writing/commenting)

• Who will react to comments?

• New processes will be required

• Works Council must be involved

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Corporate BloggingStill many walls to tear down

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Corporate BloggingReasons to get started

• If we want to reach “Generation Internet”, we

cannot stick to traditional channels

• Opinion leaders are online – “Word of mouth”

• Steering our own publication channel

• Journalists as gatekeepers are becoming less

important

• It’s about the tiny stories

• Dialog instead of monologue

• Employees as “ambassadors”

• Enhancing our online reputation

• Google-Relevance: “Google is every brand’s

homepage”

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Goal – Marketing, communications, CSR, recruiting…

Corporate Culture – Blogging builds on existing culture

Willingness to communicate – by the company, authors & target group

Stories – It’s about the tiny stories “to get information I do not get from other media”

Authors/Characters – Feelings, impressions, thoughts are more important than hard facts

Top down - Visible Management Commitment and Social Media Guidelines

Bottom up – Digital Natives / Generation Internet

Transparent Comment Policy – Essential for moderation and deletion of comments

Involve the Works Council – Corporate blogging is working time

Strategy to get started– Seeding or all of a sudden?

Corporate BloggingWhat do we need for Corporate Blogging?

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• Provide insights into Daimler

• Look behind the scenes

• Create transparency

• Start the public dialog

Corporate BloggingGoals of the Daimler-Blog

Employees create a public “face” for the company

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• Positive coverage by online and print media (eg. Der Standard, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Harvard Business Manager etc.)

• About 50% of readers are employees

The blog connects internal and external communication

• „Careers“ is the most popular category - since launch

• Discussion in comments is mostly self-directed – less moderation required

Corporate BloggingDaimler-Blog: lessons learned

The Daimler-Blog is perceived as authentic channel

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• 100,000 page visits/month

• 40,000 unique visitors/month

• Average visit time: 5:11 minutes

• Every blog post attracts at least 1,000 readers on the first day

• Most popular postings read by18,000 readers over the time running

• On average 9 comments per post excellent value for corporate blogs

• Out of 3,000 comments, only 8 had to be deleted (because of infringing our comment policy and not because of bashing the company/products)

• Google-Relevance: Highest ranking of blog topics on Google Search

ImpactDaimler-Blog: Statistics

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ImpactGoogle-Relevance

Google is every Brand‘s Homepage

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ImpactGoogle-Relevance

Google is every Brand‘s Homepage

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ImpactReach: TV, Print, Blogs

8-10 Mio. viewers

punctual sustainable and connected

Blog

Re-Tweets

138,000sold circulation Blog

Blog

Do you remember the news of last week? Google does!

…but only if content is online

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Original: The Economist

ImpactReach: Share of Voice

VOICESCANDIDATE‘S

BLOGGER‘SINVESTOR‘S

EVERYBODY‘S

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Gold: Best of Corporate Publishing

Finalist: PR-Reoprt Award

Finalist: Deutscher PR-Preis

Finalist: European Excellence Awards

ImpactDaimler-Blog: Awards 2008

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ImpactEuropean Best Practice: Forrester Study

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ImpactEuropean Best Practice: St. Gallen University, Switzerland

Results will be presented at NEXT Corporate Communication Conferenceon March 25, 2010

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ImpactCorporate Blog Rankings - worldwide

Financial Times Blog Index:

Blogrank Top 50:

as of February 2010

The only German-language Corporate Blog

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CorporateBlogging

Corporate Microblogging

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Twitter Social Media Success Factors

Transparency

AuthenticityDialog

Speed

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Twitter Close to the Individual

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Twitter Daimler Accounts

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Twitter @Daimler - Dialog

Faces, Names and Brand

Daimler follows back

event-related

Link to http://daimler.com/socialmedia

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Twitter @Daimler_News - Monologue

We do not follow back

Daimler Media Site RSS-Feed

/ manual filter

permanent

http://daimler.com/socialmedia

Daimler-Blog RSS Feed

Only Brand - without Faces

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Twitter Advantages

„Real-time mass medium“

- Faster than news agencies

- Faster than press photographers

No gatekeeper - directly to the addressee

Immediate feedback

Network effects through @Replies or Re-tweets

BUT: Tweets are only initial information in the form of “appetizers”

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Twitter Impact - Speed

Blackberry-Twitpic, June 17, 2009 Mercedes-Benz passion Blog, June 17, 2009

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Twitter Impact – Cross-media

Blackberry-Twitpic, June 17, 2009 Horizont Print-Version, June 25, 2009

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Twitter Impact – Reach via Twitter/TwitPic

New F1 Car & Team – first picture online (Twitter Account @Daimler = 2.200 Followers)Within the first 30 minutes: 2.500 viewsTotal: 4.100 views

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Twitter Impact – Reach on YouTube

Authentic Flip-Mino video on the Daimler-Blog Channel (self-produced within 1 hour)

Professionally produced video on Mercedes-Benz TV Channel

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Twitter for Corporate Communication Stop - wrong way!

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Thank You!