Social your target market- connect officeworks with targeted social network for marketing

Social networks are utilized to contact and brand enterprises with various groups and sub-groups with multiple cultural context and interests. As an enterprise who intends to maintain and board their market share, participating and keeping online connection via a number of social networks is necessary. Customers and public contacts for Officeworks have different cultural background, speak different languages, work in different professional spheres, which means, they use different online social network applications. In some cases, a large part of them may take advantages of multiple social networks. For instance, a governor may use Facebook for communications between family members and friends, while she/he properly (or not) also updates a linkedIn account frequently.

Time and budget are precious resources for enterprise in all cases, thus, marketing department must limit cost on online social network. In this case, enterprises need to page social networks which their target customers use.

Officeworks cover twitter, Facebook for their external communication purpose, while linkedIn is used in professional area. Officeworks use Facebook and twitter because both of them are popular web 2.0 applications which own large population from different backgrounds. Definitely, a vast number of their customers are using these tools with high frequency. Many other enterprises and organizations manage their online social network for the same reason, without survey or further investigation. It does reduce cost before real online social networking, but effectiveness and efficiency are ignored as a part of benefits.

From my view, there are some steps an enterprise should do for their online marketing. Here, we will take Officeworks as an instance.

1. Investigate customer data, which may include their job, occupation, languages, main online social network options, and frequency of their online social networking. For officeworks it can be done online or short question surveys.
2. Select three or more major popular social networks as targets of Officeworks online social networking. One important thing in this step is many social networks are similar in functions. Hence picking social networks with different features must be underlined.
3. Set online social networking strategy for these located social networks. Due to characters these social network play and outstanding features they have, Officeworks need to understand difference and unique features of different types of social networks and set different strategy for them.
4. Set regular activities for online social networking within settled strategy. As for as I concern, fast replying on these social networks should be included. Officeworks have facebook page and group currently, but they use them as information publishing more than communication. Even for communication, they seldom answer questions from individual followers. This is what they need to improve.
5.  Get feedback from their visitors and followers in these social networks. This will enhance online social networking performance.Based on our research, Officeworks attempted to use Facebook as a part of marketing strategy. But there is something they missed or ignored, while these points are valuable in their Facebook marketing strategy.

Officeworks use Facebook to publish information, but their customers can hardly notice it, sometimes just ignore it. Because, target audiences of Officeworks Facebook page now are only big organizations. Small groups and individual customers are keen to be cared. To perform this, fast post is the first thing to do. Then product information should be added in their Facebook page which allows others to comment and share. Each information and product should be associated with at least one image.

Introduction to another enterprise2.0 tool – Wiki(part three- how to implement for enterprise)

According to the definition from MicrosoftTech, wiki is a publishing site for sharing and updating large volumes of information across an enterprise.[1]

To implement a wiki for enterprise information collaboration or group discussion, a feasible plan must be set up. The question list below may help you to page your wiki plan with necessary details

1. What is main purpose for this wiki?
2. What project with which scopes the wiki will serve?
3. How many members are expected to participate in this wiki?
4. Is there a chief manager of this wiki? Who is the wiki manager?
5. Is there any other organizing authority level is this wiki? If yes what are they?
6. How many types of media material is allowed to use in this wiki, what are they
7. Is this wiki a protected wiki, or public wiki?
8. Do you have a fixed template in this wiki for contribution?
9. Do you have a privacy policy for this wiki?
10. How do you track who contribute to wiki? What contribution did they do?

Collaboration tools in enterprise may contains sensitive information which is strictly forbidden from revealing to external environment, In other words security is vital. Thus, some enterprises may build an isolated internal wiki rather using a free external wiki.

Now we can discuss the steps how an enterprise implement a wiki.

1. Business options analyse
2. Wiki benefit and dis-benefit analyse
3. Wiki efficiency evaluation
4. Wiki major risk evaluation
5. Target wiki engage
6. Implement privacy policy of wiki
7. Build valid security protection
8. Implement information sharing and publishing template
9. Organize and manage wiki with various authority levels
10. Wiki utilization monitor and control
11. Period feedback of wiki effectiveness and efficiency

Reference [1]Enterprise Wiki Planning(SharePoint Server 2010),May 12^th 2010, MicrosoftTech, retrieve from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721055.aspx

Introduction to another enterprise2.0 tool – Wiki(part two-Wiki strategy for enterprise)

The previous post introduced a collaboration enterprise 2.0 application, which is Wiki.

Based on various purposes, enterprise can select Wikis from one or more providers. For flexible discussion, groups can select general wiki, for instance, wikispaces.com; there are also some wikis preferred by formal usage, such as xwiki and Twiki.

 

Even all these wikis have collaboration characteristics and basic features, selecting a proper wiki for specific usage still affect positively on working efficiency. Because best aspect of wiki is that this type application enables all group members to edit pages and contribute resources, good management of each wiki is the very first thing on the concern list. Usually, performance of utilization for a group wiki may vary final working result. Hence, wiki excellent group management is a reflection of wiki strategy, vice versa. From my view, the points listed below must be followed in a wiki group management policy.

 

1. A wiki group must have at least an organizer, but not all group members have same level authority in one wiki group
2. Pages in a group wiki must follow one fixed document template.
3. Contents for same topic or issue must be filled in one category or page which decided by specific condition.
4. If contributions in this wiki is from external source, a clear reference must be provided
5. A wiki group which is used for commercial purpose discussion must be protected, and invisible to public
6. A integrated statistic tool must be applied to group wiki and publish statistic result by period to ensure everyone has necessary contribution to group wiki
7. A group wiki must have one page to guide group members for how to use this group wiki
8. Group members are not allowed to reveal discussion topic or content without confirm with group wiki manager.

 

This list above may be considered strictly, but information of business content must be highly secured. That is why security protection for choosing a specific wiki provider must be on the concern list as well.

 

Besides all points we mentioned above, there are still a few suggestions

1. Encourage group members to add tag and reference information each time they contribute to a page.
2. Build a unique page to allow group members to offer suggestion for how to manage a wiki group.
3. One group must have unique wiki manager, but number of organizers could be two or three depend on group size.
4. If project is too big, do not put entire project in one group wiki. A smart way is building several group wikis, and let them linked to each other with a category and link page in each group wiki

Introduction to another enterprise2.0 tool – Wiki(part one)

From previous post, we already introduced several enterprise 2.0 applications. Some of them hold strength of branding in detail level (like blogs), while some others enable their users to transmit information fast (such as twitter). Several of them are special because they can be used to post short and long message however, enterprises use them just because their customers and potential customers are using the same tool as well (for instance, Facebook)

Now, we will introduce another collaboration application, wiki. The first world related to Wiki may be Wikipedia or WikiLeak for some people. In fact, wiki stands for a collaboration of information, which could be photographic, article, video, etc. The video below from youtube demonstrated what a wiki is.

vary from other enterprise 2.0 applications, top features of Wiki are:

1. Every group member can contribute to one group wiki
2. Information in wiki is shared with pages.
3. With valid authority, group members can edit and add new content in exist page.
4. Like blogs, wikis usually admit comments and further discussion module
5. Pages in wiki can be linked to other pages

Comparing with twitter, wiki enable groups to keep their work in longer term. Because it is difficult to find information several days even hours ago in twitter. Hence, not as a fast sharing and news publishing tool, wiki is not featured in speed but collaboration. With clear categories and pages based on different topic or sub-topic, relevant content can be organized and manipulated well.

Comparing with Blog, wiki allows user to obtain and add information in same page with different accounts.

As can be seen , wiki is advanced in group working situations. With wiki, group members can discuss and share all materials without sending email or any other traditional materials. Enterprise wiki strategy will be discussed in later post.

Officeworks Facebook communication

Facebook and twitter are two major social network applications which Officeworks adapted for external communication and enterprise branding.

As can be seen from  Facebook page of Officeworks, Facebook is a vital communication path between the enterprise and external organizations as well as news publishing channel. Charity, cooperating, new products and services can all be found in their facebook page.

the picture below was taken at 10:30 am, 21/09/11 from facebook page of officeworks.

The page we showed above is just for communication and enterprise branding, and they also have another page in facebook for basic information, for instance comany history.

Major reason for taking the facebook as a major tool in enterprise 2.0 might be because the user of facebook increased sharply in recent two years, the graphic below is the result from siteanalytics to show the user population  trend  on different social network applications. It is clear that the Facebook is much more advanced in population competition.

 

enterprise 2.0 week 8 – Officeworks and its culture and collabroation

In this post, we will discuss the relationship between Web 2.0 application and Officeworks company. Differing from many other enterprises, officeworks does not pay much attention on blogging. Comparing with long articles and comments, officeworks prefer to short communications with social network like twitter and Facebook.

Because they adapt to these social network tools, the corporate culture of Officeworks has particular obvious character of fast and short, which also can be seen from business pattern of Officeworks. As a large supply for both small business and large enterprises, officeworks intend to provide fast and easy services. With the official twitter of officeworks, their public relationship department enables public, efficient, collaboration, communication with media, consumers, manufactory, and other contacts.

For different communication target groups, and possible contents, they use both Facebook and LinkedIn to answer questions and publish news. On one hand, due to large population of Facebook and twitter, they use these two web 2.0 applications to communicate with external contacts, such as TheAge and product buyers. On the other hand, since LinkedIn is one tool with professionals, utilization of LinkIned for Officeworks emphasizes internal and technical aspects.

The main reason they do not use blog might be most of their products are simple and common in everyday life for students and officers, and they do not want to share all information with external contacts. However, Blog is still a tool to enhance their business pattern and enterprise branding. Because twitter and facebook can let users to share and publish information in a quick way, but it is very hard to find same information several days later, whereas blog is capable to be a comprehensive tool in strategy. In later posts, our group will discuss a proposal of Officeworks and advantages if they add blog as a communication tool.

 

 

ROI -Week7(optionA)

To decide whether to use Enterprise 2.0 applications, as well as other decisions, usually need to emerge ideas from different departments and approved by chief manager or prime minister of specific organizations. For IT professional, web 2.0 tools means advanced technology, whereas the measurement from financial view, benefits and cost must be paged into currency.

To answer the question, how enterprise 2.0 utilization is more advanced than ignoring it, we import the concept ROI (return of investment).

There is a standard formula for common calculation for ROI which is:
ROI = (finalValue-stratValue)/startValue

This formula returns a percentage value to illustrate the times of benefits to investment. However, with concrete destinations, more factors and accurate methods are necessary for evaluation. Meanwhile, these data can only come after a period or from similar enterprise with similar environment. Experts suggest that metric tools and sentiment analysis will help the evaluation for enterprise 2.0 utilization, to help manager and minister to get more data for final decision.

In this post, we will introduce metric methods firstly. Main purpose of metric tools is to track and calculate the posts, comments, followers, and relevant links for social media application such as twitter and Facebook.
Main purpose of metric tools is to track and calculate the posts, comments, followers, and relevant links for social media application such as twitter. Now let us take the Facebook as a temporary target, there are several traditional metric trace and analyse tools online, and video below talked about tools for Facebook metric tracing. Meanwhile you may already find, these tools may not be effective enough for business propose as analytic result.

In fact, besides these traditional metric tools, there are also some popular web 2.0 metric tools for more concrete spheres, such as marketing sphere. Here, I want to introduce the Google Analytics. With Google Analystics, financial officer could measure investment and corresponding outcome determined by added factors. To study user behavior and set market strategy, this tool can help enterprise the benefits of target social media tools.The video below is an introduce for Google Analytic from Youtube.com.

with these applications, we mentioned above, manager and technical support can clearly page the traffic on their website, blog, twitter, facebook, and other web 2.o applications.

Further question is coming,  for some enterprises, they obtain hundreds of comments on their website each day, however, due to bad service and product quality, most of these comments are negative. That is also why some websites does not enable user to leave comments in their pages. But ignoring these bad comments and complain does not help organization development, neither for online marketing. Hence, to retrieve and analyse these comments online, the sentiment analysis hold big significance for the decision.

Here I recommend a popular free sentiment analysis tool for social media named SocialMention. It can provide a general analysis about positive and negative comments on blog, twitter and some other social medias. Because enterprise 2.0 developed with a high rate speed, some company also serve other business for sentiment analysis on enterprise 2.0.

Further Reading:
1. this link is an external article about ROI of enterprise 2.0 applications

2.The video below  from Youtube presents an minute survey for sentiment analysis, and explains how it works

Week5-Legal Risk with Social Media for Business

In this post, we will have a brief summary for legal risk of social media application for business. First of all, we will introduce some concepts and foundation knowledge. Then major risks for enterprise organization with social media will be discussed. Finally, we will discuss protections for business when we apply social and enterprise 2.0 technologies in business.

If you have read my previous posts, you will find that risks and crisis are unavoidable components coming with your application of web 2.0 technology in business, while social media on the internet will still affect your reputation even you ignore them. For assurance of positive effects and application of web 2.0, crisis management is necessary for each organization in current world.

The crisis management cycle contains three parts which are:

1. Social networking skills and strategies

2. Legal risk identification

3. Policy and contract development

With successful risk management, risks business confronts are capable to be opportunities and bring positive effects, whereas invalid method may result in worse situation.

Now, before we start to discuss legal foundations, there are some general rules we need to know. First, old world legal principles still affects with enterprises who apply web 2.0 technology at work place. Employees are responsible for when they did both online and not, which means employee must obey the lawful commands or directions of an employer. For instance, when employee signs up an account for social media, they have to read privacy policy and agree all conditions to sign up. Second, a rough truth is it may be possible to ban social media at work, but difficult to control utilization of social media, for instance Facebook, of employees after working hours, but their contract cannot be terminated for their activities after work. Third, a typical situation happened is Employers may be vicariously liable for the actions of their employees. In addition, both side of employment relationship must aware that employers own the work output of employees.

As can be seen, various risks for organizations can be identified when enterprise 2.0 is applied, such as confidential information risk, wrongful dismissal risk, reputation risk, technology risk, etc. Sometimes, statutory risk for copyright and privacy is also significant. Besides these risks we mentioned above, third part risks may also lead to serious disasters. Details and instances of several of these risks will be discussed within next post.

For protection purpose, some businesses block and ban some or all social media applications at workplace. Numbers of enterprises attempt to monitor their employees when they use social media tools. Some managers adapt more positive methods, for example document a social media marketing strategy, engage social media monitoring service, enforce employee training for effective engage, and efforts on how to protect from viral and malware threats.

 

Organization ROI of Facebook

Number of users of Faceook is increasing every single day,  which means common inhabitants of  enterprises who provide most types of services and products for  surf and retrieve information on this web social tool. Thus, more businesses add Facebook as their  part of their branding strategy.

With the time elapsed, Facebook start to concern more this specification of users, which is enterprise and organization. The link here is a marketing guide for organizations. (Of course, it is also enforce more enterprise become Facebook users.) Although these organizations are users of Facebook, from view of these enterprises, facebook does not have any authority or to offer any suggestion, meanwhile, some owners of companies do not believe Facebook will provide feasible ideas.

In face, despite all taking advantage of social media like Facebook, enterprises obtain different performance after they spend their resources. Main reason is they use Facebook in different way.  Some cooperation reply post from plenty individuals and groups, whereas others just use Facebook to publish news and ignore all reply and post on their walls. This is directly result in quite different ROI of Facebook.

In order to evaluate ROI of social media like facebook, some developers instituted multiple analyse tools. The image below is from a Marketing ROI Calculator tool, which takes some inputs with as parameters to response a ROI value in mathematical value.

There are much more calculator and analyse tool like this tool; however, sometimes, ROI is not simple to calculate, risks and sentiment analyse should also be included.

If you are interested in this topic, I recommend one external article named Easy ROI tools on Facebook tools written by Karlyn, who is director of Social MEdia at Southern New Hampshire University.

== Extracting From Existing Class Media Policy ==

== Extracting From Existing Class Media Policy ==
Class Media Policy made by Wu Yunshan sketched requirements about privacy and responsibility for content provided by media user. Before a media policy prototype formed, we also need to consider our audience, respecting of audience is also necessary for media policy.
* Ensure your post content will not cause large scale of misunderstanding for possible audience, slang are not allowed in any case.
* Consider target audience’s culture and tradition custom, respect audience’s religion, custom, culture background.
* To clarify what your content represent, title of each post much refer to general idea or main purpose of the content.
* Reference in your post must be associated with resource link to lead audience for further reading and research.
* Valid contact information must be provided by author in a separate post as the very first post. Otherwise, contact information must be provided at the end of each post
* Report any post or comments with violence, threaten, and crime information.