Agnes Happich is responsible for communicating with bloggers at Audi. In conversation with us, she provides insights into the daily social media relations work.
Frau Happich, Audi AG has been investing heavily in online communications and blogger relations for two years. What motivated Audi AG to take this step?
We want the network to be talked about Audi. Bloggers do exactly that. An Autoblogger writes because he has gasoline in the blood because he loves cars so much that he wants to share with others. Bloggers are mostly not journalists, but are always experts in their field with an often impressive fan base on the net. If we want these multipliers to talk about us, we must give them the opportunity to drive our cars and experience our technologies. At the beginning of 2012, we invited bloggers to a media event for the first time - with great success. Since the end of last year, I have been the exclusive spokesman for blogger relations. The bloggers bring us new perspectives and create credible reporting on the web.
Why is it no longer enough to travel alone in the classic communication areas (TV, print, radio)?
We must be there where interested people want to know about Audi. This is usually the case with Google. If you are looking for one of our cars there, you will find blogs alongside our own pages and those of the classic media. Search engines weight blogs for various reasons very highly. And people who get informed before the autokauf find the contributions in the blogs and forums particularly helpful. This is the result of an international survey conducted by the consultancy company Capgemini.
The American blogs may not be as big as those in the US, but for a company that wants to get a new one, it still looks unclear. How did you identify the blogs and bloggers that are important to Audi AG?
We just started. You already come across the Google Blogs search from a blog to the next. There are also Rankings, Charts, Lists for Autoblogger, Techblogger, Reiseblogger, Modeblogger. If you have a selection together, the work begins however only. We then evaluate the importance of the blogs for our communication. There are various tools that give a clue as to the reach of a blog. These include the Google PageRank and Alexa Rank. The individual values are not yet very meaningful for themselves. A comparison, however, provides at least an orientation. Just as important as the reach of a blog is for me the quality of the contributions. You have to read the blogs. Only when I know how a blogger writes, what interests him, I know if he fits the company. All these values flow into a formula that we have developed ourselves. From the results, we then form a ranking. In the meantime, we have developed a distributor of more than 70 blogs focusing on automotive, technology, lifestyle, design and travel.
What is the difference between working with bloggers and working with journalists?
Bloggers look differently at our products. They are the protagonists of their stories, they usually write in the I-perspective and about what they like and experience. That is why I offer not only information, but experiences. One example is the Audi Efficiency Road Trip. Six bloggers have entered a race against the tank needle. The task was to drive as fast as possible and still as fast as possible in the Audi A3 from Ingolstadt to the fair Geneva. The bloggers have lived the competition, the fans and readers have fevered and helped with fuel tips. So I prepare the information differently, find a language different from the colleagues who communicate with journalists. There are also some communication measures. Bloggers want more than press releases and attach much importance to personal exchanges. This happens with us mainly on Facebook in a closed group. Again and again, we invite bloggers to write guest contributions for our Audi Blog (blog.audi.de). In this we link to the pages of the bloggers. Links are an important currency in the world of bloggers, the blogosphere. That is why we link blog contributions to the Audi newsroom.
We evaluate how classic media reach, tonality and the messages in the contributions. However, this is more complex than in the print area. Who
The success of a blogger wants to evaluate, not only the blog itself. A blogger usually prepares a topic in several channels. He writes, for example, a driving report on the Audi RS 7 in his blog. On Facebook he posts pictures of the car and asks the fans what they think of it. On Instagram, he shows photos of the rims or the headlights. A Techblogger might explain in a YouTube video how our infotainment system works.
First, find out what blogs are in your area and read them. Ensure that there is a reliable contact person in your company for the bloggers. Just download the most important bloggers in your industry, introduce your company. Go into an open exchange and listen to. Only those who know the wishes and requirements of their target group can communicate well. And do not use Blogger by any means as free brand ambassadors or second-class journalists. Blogger Relations only work if you take the bloggers seriously and give them access to their own products, let them take a look behind the scenes. And last but not least: Dare to make unusual stories, to allow new perspectives. A blog contribution can not be equated with a journalistic report. It may contain one or other spelling mistakes, but it can give you many points of sympathy through the authentic view of the blogger.
The conversation was conducted by Don Dahlmann. The free journalist blogs on his homepage and can be reached on Twitter at @dondahlmann. He also runs the Racing blog.
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