Since the book was published, as described above, a lot has happened in this area, as has my own perspective and the way I implement it in my work. I give many lectures on this topic and often provide advice on it. I have initiated brand ambassador strategies in several medium-sized and larger companies and supported their implementation. Since the end of August, I have seen a surprisingly strong increase in demand for such advice.
Obviously, the influencer discussion has contributed a lot to this, although – as we have seen above – it only has a very limited direct connection to it.
content strategy first
However, the majority of my consulting work still consists of helping to develop new communication and content strategies. At the same time, it can be stated that many German companies still have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to content strategy.
Despite all the awareness and despite a lot of talk about it, a really well-designed and consistently maintained corporate blog or online magazine with high-quality editorial content is still a thing of the future for a large part of the German middle class and even several corporations. There is often still a lot of development work to be done here and, above all, awareness to be raised.
This does not mean that the topic of employees as brand linkedin data ambassadors cannot and should not be considered at the same time - but there is often a lack of resources to tackle everything at the same time. What is essential in these times, regardless of where the company stands in its own digital communication, are social media guidelines, but ones that work.
Fortunately, I have noticed that employees from across the company are often involved in the development of content strategy, implementation in content marketing and social media strategy (which I always consider to be part of the content strategy). The resistance of board members and C-level executives to engage in digital activities or at least to approve of corresponding developments also seems to be decreasing overall - but not across the board. Even today, I still meet CEOs who are very digitally competent, but also those who would prefer nothing to do with Facebook, XING or LinkedIn.
However, one thing has changed a lot in my observation, especially in recent times: there are now almost no managers who refuse to use mobile communication and quick exchanges via messenger - even if some of them only use it privately, in communication with family and friends. This makes it easier to find a starting point for getting into professional digital communication, and technical understanding is also more widespread today than it was quite recently.