Red Bull

on Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Hi, how's everyone doing? I hope everyone is doing great!

This week's topic is about identifying and discuss an addition ROI case example.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows what Red Bull is. For those who don't know what Red Bull is, Red Bull is an energy drink sold by an Australian company. It's basically an energy drink like Mother and V Energy.

I'm not sure about you readers out there but I've encountered many times that Red Bull's car is often around busy areas in the City and even in Universities to give out free Red Bull energy drink. The main goal of this activity is to gain awareness from the public. In my opinion, this is a way of advertising, those drinks are absolutely free of charge to anyone that wants one if they ever across one of those cars. It's a simple investment of advertising and Red Bull might not necessary get return from their investment but they would increase their branding and increase the demand of Red Bull energy drink to supermarkets, grocery store, or convenient store. In that way, they are indirectly gaining profit or return from the investment of giving out free energy drinks.

In my opinion, ROI is calculated by (profit from investment - cost of investment) / cost of investment. In other words, when an amount of money is being invested, the profit from the investment has to be accumulative than what has invested.

In October 2012, Felix Baumgartner backed by Red Bull had created a new World Record by jumping off 120,000 feet from space with a record speed over 800 MPH. It was a historical moment for the whole world. In my opinion, it's a huge investment that Red Bull made and there are high risk as they wouldn't know what would the public response were. This balloon itself had cost Red Bull $100,000 USD.

On that particular day, the even was broadcast live over 40 networks in 50 different countries all across the world. According to Telegraph, "more than 3 million tweets were sent about the jump including those from people encouraged by Red Bull to send their questions for Baumgatner's post-jump conference."


On Red Bull's Twitter, @Redbull, gained heaps of followers over the 6 months especially the 30 days after the event. Red Bull actually reached over 3 million impressions with over 1,400 tweets.

Similar situation on Facebook, Red Bull gain heaps of fans but after a while, this topic begun to reduce tremendously.



As days goes by, the graph begun to change drastically. 

In conclusion there are pros and cons towards this huge investment. It's worth it to get more attention from the world but it's only short term plan. From all the graph and research, I can conclude that this event is only a short term event to get more attention from the world and eventually the whole world will stop talking about it or even remembering it. 


That's all for this week guys. 
Catch you guys later. See ya.
Have a great week ahead! 


LEGO

on Saturday, September 21, 2013
Hi everyone, I hope everyone is doing great!

This week we are asked to select an organisation and perform an analysis using one or more free tools that we could gain access. 

This week I'm going to talk about LEGO.

Well, as everyone knows, LEGO is famous for colourful interlocking plastic bricks. Those bricks can be connected and even assembled in many ways to construct many different objects such as buildings, vehicles or even furnitures. Plastic bricks can come in many sizes and shapes that could build many objects better and prettier. LEGO is founded by a Danish family owned company. In 1949, LEGO begun manufacturing interlocking plastic bricks.

Recently, LEGO became the world's most valuable toy brand that overtook Mattel (produce Barbie), Haasbro and Playmobile.


How Sociable

What is HowSociable? I'm pretty sure none of us knows what is that all about. Check out the video below to know more about HowSociable. It's way easier to understand from a video rather than text.


The thing about How Sociable is that it's not entirely free. The only FREE feature is from How Sociable is the overall magnitude (overall performance from 12 social media platform) and magnitude on each individual social media platform.

One of the constraints of having a free account for How Sociable is not having metrics for all 32 other social media platform and only limited to 12 social media platform. The next constraint is not having a history of the social media of that particular organisation. However, the history feature or data only last for 3 weeks and user will have to pay again if they want more.

Despite the downside of the How Sociable, the price that they have made on their website for different level of account is pretty affordable. For the basic account with 5 brands/names/topics/organisations only cost $9/per 3 months. That means it's only $3 for a month. For Plus account, it's $19/per 3 months with 20 brands/names/topics/organisations and last but not least Max account which is the premium account cost $99/per year with 100 brands/names/topics/organisations.

All in all, I really do think How Sociable is a great monitoring organisation feature that could help organisations to improve or monitor their social media part of business.

Lego

p.s. results are based on FREE account from How Sociable

According to How Sociable, LEGO have a current magnitude of 7.4 out of 10. At the moment LEGO is very effective in using Google+ as the report from How Sociable, LEGO has a magnitude of 8.5 in Google+. Besides that, LEGO is doing good on YouTube as well with a magnitude of 7.6. Currently at the lowest magnitude would be GetGlue with a magnitude 2.1 out of 10. 

Recommendations

After done trying out How Sociable and knowing the results from it, I have a few suggestions and probably could help LEGO to improve their reputation on other social media platform.

  • Before posting anything onto all social media platform, ensure everything is synced
  • Redirect audiences to other social media platform that has low response 
  • Having YouTube video in some of the platforms that are having low magnitude
Hopefully these few steps could help LEGO to improve their results or metrics on all social media platform. 


That's it for this week guys! 
Thanks for reading.
Have a great weekend ahead. 

Deloitte

on Monday, September 16, 2013
Hi all! How's everyone doing this week? I hope everyone is doing great! 

Last week I talked about World Vision. The topic for this week is to discuss how the Professional Services use blog, twitter or a wiki to enhance their business. 

This is one of the BIG FOUR audit firm that I'm pretty sure most of us knows about. Just a little background before I touch into anything, Deloitte's full name is actually Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. It's a UK private company. It's founded in London, England, UK in 1845 and now based in New York, U.S. In 2012 financial year, Deloitte earned a record of $34 billion USD in revenues. Deloitte is also the largest professional service network in the world by revenue and has 193,000 employees around the world providing financial advisory, consulting, tax, audit, and enterprise risk services.

Twitter

In case you don't know, Deloitte do have a twitter account. At the moment they have more than 126 thousand followers. They use twitter to actually reaching out to more audience by giving advice or tips and latest news regarding finance in today's context. Most of the tweets do have a link to redirect audience to another social media platform such as Facebook or YouTube, blogs, or online news website. Most importantly, they use twitter to redirect to their own website. 


Facebook

Deloitte's Facebook account have more than 153 thousand followers. It's different from Twitter, they use Facebook to have the same objective as Twitter that is to post some tips and news regarding today's world. However, there's a downside that is Deloitte do not reply their audience nor respond. Despite that, they do have many audience liking their post on the Facebook page. Similar to Twitter, they do redirect their audience to YouTube videos as well regarding tips and news regarding today's economy. 


YouTube

The main objective to have a YouTube account isn't to reach out for more audience but to upload their videos that they would want to share on other social media platform such as share it on Facebook or Twitter. Being said that, they have only over 2 thousand audience that subscribe to their channel. Besides that, they too have social media box in their YouTube home page to encourage audience to follow their twitter account, like their Facebook page, and connect themselves to their LinkedIn account. Nevertheless their YouTube account contains many useful videos. 


I guess that's all from me this week. Until next time. 
Have a great week ahead all. =D

World Vision Australia

on Saturday, September 7, 2013
Hi all. Hope everyone is doing great after a week break from blogging.


This week's topic is about non profit organisation that uses Social Technology that relates to Social Technology value levers published by McKinsey Global Institute, 2012


Before I start, here's a short introduction of World Vision Australia. World Vision Australia is an ecumenical Christian non-governmental organisation based in MelbourneAustralia. It is a part of the World Vision Partnership led by World Vision International.


Fundraising

One of World Vision Australia or International's focus is fundraising. If you check out World Vision Australia's website, you can find many different fundraising programs for different individuals and those who are in need especially child. World Vision Australia uses their Facebook page to create awareness to.


World Vision Australia and in fact International are being very transparent with the money they raised. On World Vision Australia's Facebook page, they replied to two patrons regarding the money they raised and the best part of it is that World Vision Australia's Annual Report could be found on their website. 




Engaging Supporters

Did you know that In Guy Sebastian was appointed an Ambassador for World Vision Australia in 2005? He was the first winner of Australian Idol in 2003 and was a judge on Australia's The X Factor between 2010 and 2012. By having Guy Sebastian as an Ambassador, it really helps to generate public interest and in turn create awareness as he has a huge fan base and influence to Australia especially him being the first Australian Idol. Being a good role model to everyone, Guy visited a rehabilitation centre for former child soldiers in GuluUganda, and also met children who had been orphaned by HIV and Aids when he went to Uganda to film a documentary An Idol in Africa for a Network Ten television special. Sebastian did not stop that year but continue to support and actively involve himself in different programs of World Vision Australia such as the Child Rescue program and the 40 Hour Famine as well as Make Poverty History

40 Hour Famine

So you might wonder what this program is all about. Check out the YouTube video to find out more.

 

I truly encourage everyone that if every single one of us put in little bit of what we have, even a single bit, it could really help others or change the world. 

Creating and expanding volunteer network

World Vision Australia is always looking for more volunteers in different programs and in different country to help those who are in need. There's a saying in World Vision:
"Wherever there's World Vision, we need you!"
Being started off from Christian church with Christian values, World Vision has always been connected with many churches across the globe to help those who are in need especially the 3rd world countries. Being said that, World Vision do have volunteers all around the world. It is rapidly growing through different ways probably inspiration from Guy Sebastian or Churches or even through peers. I hope by writing this blog, others would be inspired and would want to be a volunteer too.

I guess that's it for this week's blog post. I really hope you would enjoy my blog post. Before I end, I would really like to encourage each one of us to really donate to World Vision either through general donation or sponsoring a child. I thank you on behalf of World Vision and those individuals that you've donated.

Have a great weekend everyone! =D

Social Media Risks

on Tuesday, August 27, 2013
With the rise of social media dominance in the world today, it is no wonder that many organisations around the world has been actively implementing social media into their strategies. However, many of this organisations stands ill-informed as to the risks involved in such implementation and the need for thorough planning.

Risks in social media is pretty evident if you look closely enough. For all of us who has a social media account be it Facebook or twitter should be well aware of such risks. However, for an organisation; one would have to be even more vigilant as the legal risks involved has pretty serious consequences especially if the risk mitigation strategies are not sufficient enough. Some of the legal issues involved confidentiality, copyright, reputation, statutory and so on.

In this week’s activity, I would be highlighting on one of the giant players in the franchise pizza chain; Domino’s Pizza.

Domino’s pizza was founded in 1960 and it’s the second-largest pizza chain in the United States and the largest pizza chain worldwide. The first international store was opened in 1983 in Canada. The company was sold to Bain Capital, Inc. in 1998.

And now to the main gist of our topic today; social media risks with a highlight on Domino’s. Let’s get started! J
So remember about 4 years ago in 2009 when Patrick Doyle, the president of Domino’s Pizza announced to the whole world that their old pizzas were not up to the standard and hence introduced a completely new recipe and using social media, asked their customers for feedback? Now that’s what we call daring.

This approach has much risks involved and these includes
·      Reputation risk
·      Trade mark infringement
·      Misleading and deceptive conduct
·      Discrimination
·      Defamation

Once we heard of such campaigns, one would think: what could this do to the company’s reputation? What if most or all of the feedbacks came out negative? Or what if the public decides to condemn Domino’s Pizza for their new recipe? Think about it, they advertise worldwide that customers can provide feedback via social media and what would those less adventurous customers do? They would go to the social media page and read the feedback of the other customers before deciding to go and try it out for themselves.



Then there is the risk of trade mark infringement. As this campaign is pretty widespread, Domino’s might find this campaign being used by others for other purposes. For example, other social media users might decide to create for themselves another social media site with the same name and slogan to lure customers into their site.

Also, if Domino’s social media team is not careful, there might also be a risk for misleading and/or deceptive conduct. For example, should a customer decides to post a false claim on the social media feedback site and the team failed to notice or to take it down, the company might be facing a lawsuit.

What about discrimination? Let’s play along to this scenario; let's say a customer decides to post a comment in social media that directly discriminates a certain race or religion alongside their comment and this is not removed fast enough or was not removed at all, the consequence would most definitely not be good.

Lastly defamation. Having put up such feedback channels through social media would also mean that there would be a team of employees who would be responsible for responding to all the feedbacks. As a result the company would be held responsible for the response by the employee. If the response given is rendered defamation, then Domino’s pizza would be held liable.

So how can we handle such risks?
·      Training your social media team to be able to give appropriate response to the feedback whether good or bad
·      Also to have employees filtering out the feedbacks that pose as a risk to the company
·      The company would also need to be on the alert on whether there are any other individuals out there who are using their campaign for their benefit

Doyle puts it simply in an interview that the keys to running a successful organisation is honesty, transparency, consistency and customer engagement.


“Fess up, own it, and if something isn’t going well, admit that you’ve got the issue, do something about it, and people will react to it,”
-Patrick Doyle-

Well, that's it for today. Do feel free to leave comments below :)

Cheers!

My Favourite Fast Food Restaurant - Maccas

on Monday, August 19, 2013
Hi there again. I hope everyone is doing great this week. 

This week's topic is identify and discuss some of the major benefits and value levers associated with implementing Enterprise 2.0


McDonalds
Before I begin, allow me to introduce to you McDonalds. If you do now know what is McDonalds which I believe everyone does, McDonalds is the largest and world-wide known chain of hamburger fast food restaurant. It all started from Richard and Maurice McDonald in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant. McDonald's restaurant is operated by a franchisee, an affiliate, or the corporate itself.

McDonalds is actively promoting their product through Facebook. Although I really do love Maccas and it's my favourite fast food, I do not know or update myself with the latest promotion through television or through the radio as I do not listen or watch television and radio very often.




Recently Maccas throughout the whole Australia is having this promotion if you buy any extra value meal you will get a FREE CocaCola Glass. I get to know about this promotion when this post appears in my newsfeed.

Personally, although I do like Maccas but I wouldn't go crazy over it by checking out their promotion at their outlet itself.


Besides promoting their offer, they too have some competitions that are promoted through Facebook itself.



Big Mac Chant Challenge
I don't even realise there's a competition that is being held. The last time I've been to Maccas, I wasn't told or notified that there's a competition nor I saw any posters about it around Maccas. Nevertheless, it is posted up on Facebook and it allows me to find more about the competition. 


The picture above shows that McDonalds have some interactive competition on their website allowing anyone who has a Facebook account to vote and share the video to their own peers. You can vote as many videos as you wish but only once for each video. It's really good to see there's interaction between both sides and not just McDonalds pumping all the information to customers and customers aren't able to decide the winner or play a part in the competition.

In this conversation on the left, we can identify that McDonalds is replying a customer that is having a problem with uploading a video for the competition mentioned above. It's great to see that McDonalds actually do respond and do not leave their customers hanging. That's a very good way to use social technology for marketing communication or interaction. On top of that it also provides customer care via social technology. 
All in all, I can say that at least McDonalds Australia really do use Facebook and their website to really have this interaction between them and customers to connect each other and as well as doing most of their marketing, promotion, advertisements, and competitions available on Facebook to even connect to more people. 

Hope you guys enjoy reading it. 
Till next time. 

Top 5 blogging feature

on Saturday, August 10, 2013
Hey guys. I hope everyone is doing great!

Well, it's already week 3 of uni. We're given two options this week to choose between beginner or advance level of blogger.

The reason why I choose Option 1 is because it has been a while since I last blogged.

Option 1

1. Follow / subscribe
Basically what is means is that I subscribe to a particular blog, I could get update on their recent post. Blogspot has this feature where you could add a blog you wish to subscribe and it will just appear in your dashboard every time you login to Blogspot. To read more, you could also click on the Title at the Dashboard and it will direct you to the blog. Example, I subscribe to http://346class13.blogspot.com.au/ and any future post, I will be notified in my Dashboard and it makes it so much easier that I wouldn't need to remember the link to the website.


Follow feature



Blogs that I've followed


2. Chatbox
When I use to blog, there was this thing that was really popular which was having a chatbox at your blog. It is to ease your readers to actually just input their comment or having a chat with your readers. Blogspot comment feature is useful but what if there's someone who doesn't have a blogger account that wants to comment? Chatbox is the right feature to add on to your blog.

Chatbox


3. Live Traffic Feed
It is a feature that enables you to find out where do your blog got accessed from like different part of the world. It's like a demographic feature that you could add on to your blog.

Live Traffic Feed


4. Online Poll
This is the fun part in a blog. Back in those days, my friends and I like to insert a online poll. This enables the blogger and readers to have some interactive activity. Not only that it allows readers to actually understand reader's choice or decision. I have to admit that this online poll feature is actually really fun when you have so many readers as you may never know what is the final result is until you close the voting session.

Online Poll


5. Labels
Before Twitter and Facebook existed, Blogger use to have this feature called "Label" while as these days we known it as "Hashtags". At the very end of each post, we could insert different labels that could you to describe the post or to make it sound more interesting. At the end of our day, if we would like to search for "happy" all post regarding that keyword will appear.


Labels

Those features mention above are the TOP 5 blogging feature that I would recommend to all bloggers out there who would want make their blog a little more interesting. 

Before I go, here's a fun tip for everyone.
PS: Only works on Chrome Internet Browser
1. Go to YouTube
2. Play any desired video
3. Type "1980" at the start of the video 
4. Enjoy!

Have a great weekend ahead guys!