Florian Koch, Head of Area Digital Media at BITKOM association, on the use of social media not only in sales and web conferences. BITKOM is the mouthpiece of the IT, telecommunication and new media industry in Germany. Its 950 direct members generate 135 billion Euros turnover annually.
CIM: You have just tweeted “The majority of cellular phone owners dispose of their devices in an environmentally-friendly way”. Why?
Florian Koch:We use Twitter primarily in our PR work as a communication channel. In general we make current IT and communication issues, political demands, events and publications known. With Twitter we reach the receivers of our messages without any delay.
Do you have an idea who your 900 “followers” are?
People and institutions interested in IT and communication issues follow us. They range from journalists, employees in member firms and private persons to firms, agencies and other associations.
In September 2009 BITKOM founded the working group Social Media. Isn’t that a bit late for a high tech association?
No, Social Media is an across-the-board issue that affects all areas. Of course we dealt with social media in other committees before the start up of the working group. The new working group allows us to focus more strongly on social media in corporate use: Business 2.0. This encompasses not just the use of social media in sales but also for example in personnel or press departments.
How do you use Web 2.0 for you association work?
BITKOM makes very intensive use of collaboration tools such as web conferences, wikis or web-based mind maps to develop our publications. Professional issues are moreover discussed in blogs.
And how do you connect social media and social networks in your numerous workshops?
The results are in part directly tweeted from some of our events. We ask participants beforehand if they agree to this. Trust is a key aspect particularly for non-public events. We use social networks such as Xing of course to conduct professional discussions or to inform people about our events.
