8. The value of social networking and its followers

I’m sure many have had the pleasure of “Flight delay” and the oh so comfortable wait for a connecting flight at your visiting airport but haven’t you wished you could have someone/place to directly and in a timely fashion complain to about your dodgy flying experience? and maybe.. just maybe.. have your rant ANSWERED???? well here’s an example I’ve used in my previous post about why social networking tools are beneficial to have and use! -customers who would like to air out a little bit of their frustrations when things are not up to par with a company. I think it’s a necessary thing for airlines and airports alike to have and moderate when it comes to living up to your objectives of “customer satisfaction”.

One of the key features of Social Networking is the Network Effect (the more people connected, the more valuable) which should be the center aim of all social media tools used by companies. Your company should ask questions like  “Have they mapped out the online social network structure of the target market?” or “Can you systematically identify ways to increase the viral, interactive, or social influence/referral factors of your business?” Asking these questions will help companies understand where they might be going wrong with their social media services

While having a browse over Brisbane Airports social networking Facebook and Twitter accounts I’ve been very impressed with their upkeep and attention to user comments/posts, it’s nice knowing that my local airport is actually taking the time and effort to connect with their customers/users this will build trust and immersion. Although it would be interesting to see the social networking moderators possibly add to the experience something of interest to their customers within the airport itself. I wouldn’t exactly call this a wroth while issue to be addressed because now days people have iPods and so forth to keep them entertained during their waits. I would like to think Brisbane Airport would strive to compete with or maybe be better than it’s competitors. For example Dubai Airpot just won an award for their campaign (Travel + Leisure Social Media in Travel & Tourism Awards) using a YouTube video. Brisbane Airport could possibly follow in their footsteps by adding something more to their airport with its social networking by getting to know your customers by asking them more questions online or maybe:

Duty free is a reason waiting for your flight isn’t so bad

– Rewards on their Facebook or Twitter or (to the users at home looking for a good deal) big updates on sales in duty free, give the waiting flyers something interesting to see and read

– Giving customers more than a reason to complain about past experiences on their networking feed by uploading discounts in stores or flights maybe? or if that’s not possible some other form of encouragement

– Increase awareness of the social media tools by advertising it more boldly and make things more interesting? – for example making a hip cool and fun YouTube video that captures the target markets eye because at the moment things still look a bit generic.

Brisbane Airport has done a fantastic job with their social media tools and have expanded their networking by being the first airport to have a Pinterest page which objectives is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting’,” Brisbane Airport Corporation’s Head of Corporate Relations, Rachel Crowley. Which is fantastic but they could possibly give the current flyers something a little more interesting on their other social networking pages than past messages of complaining users, it might give them incentive to not mind waiting the next time they come passing by. There is always room for improvement and engaging with your customer base is a must.

References

1. Dubai Airport wins Prize

2. Brisbane Airport Pinterest article

7. Wiki- for customer satisfaction

What are Wiki’s and what are they used for?

What is a Wiki? You ask? well it’s a piece of server software where users are freely able to create and edit web page content (articles for example) using any chosen Web browser which is usually created collaboratively. They can be used for knowledge management, community websites or even note taking for example. It’s a simple concept of “open editing” which everyday users add to and edit web page content which can be exciting for users who don’t have a technologically savvy background – Although with little experience it is still able to encourages group collaboration and communication in its own way.

How a wiki could assist achieving or tackling relevant objectives at Brisbane Airport?

Brisbane Airport will benefit from implementing a Wiki into their social media tools because customers will be able to contribute to the Wiki by adding helpful tips about bookings or past experiences in airports and anything which they would find useful to other flyers – Kind of like a FAQS/Forums page for past users and new users alike. Like all businesses their objectives are to increase customer satisfaction by connecting to its customer base which Wiki could help in more ways than 1 by supplying general information about the airlines and their facilities, planes, locations that they fly to, as well as providing inside customer/flyer information on helpful tips or “know how’s” perhaps. The Wiki experience could knock down the boredom if you’re waiting for a flight and you found something interesting to post to other users possibly flying that day.

Of course the website will be managed and monitored by employees to ensure no foul play is going on and such but it will be written by customers for customers to make their airport experience more comfortable during those long (or short) waiting periods.

Have you ever been confused at the airport? and wanted to know something small and for it to be answered quickly without waiting inline at an information desk? Maybe a Airline Wiki is the way to go?

how similar (or competing) organizations have employed wiki’s thus far:

I haven’t heard much of airports introducing an official Wiki specifically for the use of customers/travelers,  but I have come across airlines such as JetBlue and American airlines which have their own social media tools such as the usual twitter and Facebook and so forth which have definitely lived up to their expectations with this one story “American Airlines and the case for Social Media”- Scott Gulbransen  which is a good read if you’re interested in knowing just how one comment on a Facebook page can actually go a long way! and have their own  Flyers guide Wiki .

Strategy?

These airlines have small unofficial Flyers Guide Wiki which contains FAQS and information about their business and helpful information which can be very useful to customers if they were looking for answers and information. Brisbane Airport would benefit greatly if they adopted a Wiki and advertised it on their website in some way filling it with useful information and customer questions and content. This will in turn increase customer satisfaction and possibly if advertised on their main website they could offer out prizes or some sort of token of appreciation to frequent contributors to get the crowd interested and encouraged to participate.

Reference

1. JetBlue – Strategic Management Study

2. Wiki – What is a Wiki

Social Media it’s hisotry and its effects

Response

Hey guys, just a little insight into what social media has become and its history. This video was very interesting to watch and I just wanted to share it with you guys just encase you were wanting to know more about how social media has changed the way we communicate with one another and it has become a faster way to hear about news than the actual televised News program reports! with videos and pictures being uploaded quicker than news reporters can get to the scene, which I found both amazingly true and scary at the same time. It’s a real eye opener considering these networking tools only came into being a couple of years ago and now all of a sudden the big broadcasting companies use it as a valuable source.

It has made me appreciate social networking/media on another level because usually News and media only show one side of a report and control what viewers know and see what exactly is happening in the world/ country but with social media you can find out more, you can hear more sides of the story at any given time of the day, for example the floods in Queensland, pictures and stories were spreading like wild fire and it was confronting but it was something we needed to know (safety reasons as well as sympathy and a helping hand for people going through the traumatic event).

References
1. Simon Gilberg – RMIT Networked Media – Social Media

6. Blogging to fill the emotional distance

This week I will  be working with a team to focus on strategies our case study (Brisbane Airport) can implement to improve their Enterprise 2.0/ Social Media tools or perhaps they could even adopt new tools.  I will be discussing the benefits and strategies involved with incorporating Enterprise 2.0 and also why it is a great idea for airports to  implement these social media/networking tools to connect your company/business to customers/flyers. It’s all about blogging and micro-blogging externally and even within your company which reaps major benefits for your business, employees and as well as your customer base.

Brisbane Airport will benefit greatly from adopting social media tools, Wiki, and even a corporate blog. The company who has harnessed these aspects is an American low-cost airline named JetBlue. The airline has their main website and uses social media presences including a Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as a YouTube and Flickr channels.

Although an even better way to get customers and employees notified on up to date information on the company is having a corporate blog which is what JetBlue has done by creating their official BlueTales Blog. BlueTales is their company blog which publishes timely news and commentary about anything that happens at JetBlue or to do with JetBlue and in the wider airline industry. The Author of the corporate blog is Allison Steinberg who works on the Corporate Communications team and JetBlue and ensures the blog runs smoothly.

An up close look at the BlueTales Blog Website

Within the Blog website you can view articles/column/blogs relating to anything JetBlue ranging from their history, videos, pictures and it’s even all archived for your convenience to browse!. There are popular columns such as A Day in the Life – which focuses on visiting a member each month in a different work group to understand what different jobs work in the airline industry as well as Weekly Airline News Roundup – being a roundup of the biggest headline in the airline industry, along with many more helpful and interesting columns.

All in all I believe implementing this corporate blog that JetBlue has created would be a great idea for Brisbane Airport to have or consider because it’s a great strategy to reduce the emotional distance with employees and their customer base by opening up the company’s door to letting customers get to know the industry better and how things are run. Incorporating a blog will also reduce the emotional distance by blogging employee activities and events for other workers in the company to see and comment on, which I would believe to be encouraging to know that your efforts don’t go unnoticed. Brisbane Airport has come a long way and continues to grow which is why trying something new like blogging would be beneficial for a closer connection with the very people that make their business thrive.

References

1. About BlueTales Blog

2. Wiki JetBlue

3. Brisbane Airport

4.Brisbane Airport Facebook

Team Members Work

Andrew R’s Blog – Team Member

Andrew M’s Blog – Team Member

Matt’s Blog – Team Member

Airlines using Social Media- doing it right

Airlines implementing blogging/micro-blogging tools externally are really doing their customer base a favour by following they can find promotional airfare offers or weather delays and other important information. Their social media tools are literally an instantaneous airline news source.

This adoption of social media gives airline businesses the ability to build meaningful relationships with their customers and also be able to learn more about them. A good example of an Airline who has used these tools to their advantage is American Airlines, responding to customer’s messages, questions, informing customers of updated information and does all this in a nice genuine manner with many customers finding the experience enjoyable and very friendly. In my opinion has made their implementation a success because if the customers are happy than this reflects well on your business.

Social Media Business Applications

Although there has been a case where United Airlines has had its downfall with “not-so-good” services on their social media for example cases where California Attorney General Kamala Harris (an ambitious young democrat, makes privacy issues a high-profile priority) In a message posted on her Twitter account, @KamalaHarris “Fabulous app, @united Airlines, but where is your app’s #privacy policy?” then considerately linked the California’s Online Privacy Protection Act, requiring commercial website operators to “conspicuously post” a privacy policy if they collect personally identifiable information from California residents. This took some time to be responded to and have something arranged but finally were given the response of:
“We are committed to protecting our customers’ data and personally identifiable information. United has a customer privacy policy in place that may be viewed on united.com <http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/privacy.aspx> . We will review the app to ensure that our privacy policy is also easily accessible to United app users.”

Which is good to know they reply to your questions and requests although not in a timely manner which doesn’t give the company a good image making customers think their issues/questions aren’t important and the company is just too busy to respond which kind of defeats the purpose of the social media tools.

References

1. How American Airlines Gets Social Media Right

2.Social media as a law enforcement-tool

5. Connect.HASF – A successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption

It may seem hard to change your normal daily business regime lets say for example when adopting Enterprise 2.0 technology in to your company. This could bring up many issues such as money and time risks along with having the social media/networking aspect  along with its etiquette which is a complex thing to get employees to adhere to. There are tones of risks needing to be assessed before implementing such technology including:

• Governance being a big issue –participation reduces control
• Many companies just don’t have the time to implement the system/technology or maintain it
• Lack of knowledge about social media/networking also could potentially have a negative spin amongst employees for example   bullying and there are the learning curves as well.
•  There’s always the possibility of underestimating the new implementations success which could lead to difficulties trying to sustain the system and may interfere with major business activities.

All companies should know that it is imperative to apply some sort of GRC (Governance, Risk Management and Compliance) plan in association with adopting Enterprise 2.0 tools and even weighing up the advantages/benefits and risks before making the change.

A success story that is widely known for its adoption of Enterprise 2.0 is by the company BASF (In German: Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik),being the largest diversified chemical company in the world pulling in revenue of €63 billion a year, known as a giant in the industry. BASF’s headquarters is situated in Germany although they have 390 production sites all around the world which brought up issues with having uneven cultures due to the many time zones and geographic locations they operate in. This is one of the reasons as to why they thought Enterprise Social Networks could help with their problem by bringing employee’s that are scattered across the world together with the use of social networking tools within the company- better connecting the organization. The objective of the implementation was to increase worker efficiency and the overall value of work taking place at the company by creating a platform that included rich user profiles, status updates, communities of interest, searching/tagging capabilities, blogs, forums, bookmarks, file sharing, and wikis. The company’s strategy was that ‘‘we form the best team in industry’’, – BASF.

connect.BASF Accomplished Objectives

Before adopting the system they thought out a carefully crafted project plan starting in 2007, began a pilot in 2009 with a full launch in May 2010 accompanied by a well defined communication plan. The system was named connect.BASF, and it is a social business platform which at first took some time for the users to get accustomed to but eventually had a user base of over 15,000 within the first year and doubling in 2 years making it an instant success with the system  still steadily growing. The system reeking its benefits by allowing -faster and easier access to experts, increases in the value of existing knowledge, higher worker efficiency, better collaboration, reduction in e-mail overhead, and better alignment with younger workers. Because of their careful thought-out planning and communication planning used to convey connect.BASF’s purpose and uses, this has made the project a successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption for the organization.

connect.BASF – the Online Business Network from BASF

References

1. Article Explaining in detail by Dion Hinchcliffe

2. BASF website

3. Wiki BASF

Company Social Media and its legal issues

Social Media Legal Risks

Old world principles are slowly evolving with the new including in today’s social media terms and conditions for instance with the “click wrap” and “browse wrap” agreement signaling user acceptance of a vendor’s terms & conditions which is basically applying the old world principle (making sure the user/individual knows what they are agreeing to) to new world situations. But sometimes employees and individuals will always come up with ways to beat the system, to the point where there are now conditions dealing with these things in employment contracts. If you start a social media account for example a “Twitter” account and you have built contacts within the account, if you have left the company- fired/quit, then you are to unlink yourself from the account and those contacts because you have lost the authorization to access that information and that companies contacts because it is exclusively that company’s twitter account.

It all boils down to your company policy and where it stands on social media because necessary legal precautions need to be taken when dealing with these issues. As stated by Network Business Services, Inc – “Business owners also should be aware that there could be a lot of misinformation shared through this social media platform regarding their business due to security issues that Facebook accounts have.”- Social Media does your small business. Many risks are involved with companies and social media aspects of the internet not everything is positive. Some legal risks include

• Confidential Information – status updates about confidential company information, inferable posts

• Employment- Wrongful dismissal – posting threatening message on facebook, was it threatening? Was this covered and included in his contract or company policy?
• Technology Risks- Viruses malware
• Statutory risk – copyright, privacy defamation for example
• Reputation risks
• Occupations and Organization specific risks (each company has its own different risks, obligations

An example of a purely hypothetical situation between a company having social media legal issues could be –

Selected Organization: McDonalds

Sector/Business: Fast food industry

Services: fast food services

Legal risks for chosen organization:

Leakage of confidential information, Employment risks, statutory risks, reputation risks as well as occupation and organization specific risks. As with all business’s the same risks apply to social networking, anything that could say on their social media accounts that could affect they business’s reputation.

Justification as to why these risks are relevant:

These risks are relevant because they relate to the company’s specific risks of customer service and its business being in the fast food industry. Anything that reflects badly on the business could potentially cost them customers, business partners and so forth.

Scenarios of how these could apply:

For example an employee of McDonalds has a Facebook account which she has posted a comment in regards to her work role and its customers it a negative way. If her employer found out about the post, the employer has the right to have a meeting with the employee to discuss the issue for which she has most likely signed an agreement upon starting the job of some form of contract/policy, she could potentially be in breach of this agreement and be fired for the comment portraying the company/business in a negative way that they would find offensive, leaking confidential information about daily business or its secret ingredients perhaps.

What the organizations Social Media Policy should attempt to address:

The company’s social media policy should be addressed on a wider scale about the risks and issues rather than just have them sign a document the employee only reads the second they’re employed because it could have resulted in further action if the company took some sort of legal action towards such discrepancies. Although this issue will most likely still occur in the future, if employees have this issue about social networking brought to their attention in a more confronting way, the company could possibly avoid this problem less often.

References

1. Legal Risks of social networking for business

2. Some Social Media/Networking related McDonald’s stories where employee’s have been either fired/threat of loosing job

Enterprise 2.0 – What’s to decide?

Why is Enterprise 2.0 a benefit to have within your company/organization? And what are the risks involved with introducing an Enterprise 2.0 platform for managing social media? That is exactly what I will be covering in my post today beginning with the fact that “Implementing Enterprise 2.0 is about change.” – As said by Ross Dawson Implementing Enterprise 2.0, which is exactly what all organizations/companies should embrace in this new technologically advanced society because your business evolves along with its processes and perhaps the structure of the organization itself and Enterprise 2.0 can be that very upgrade to pull your business out of the old and in to the new.

Because there are many benefits to such an upgrade such as:

• Increased Productivity and Efficiency- Improved team performance, More efficient project management
• Enhanced Staff Engagement – Increased engagement, Enhanced collaborative behaviors
• Sharing of Knowledge through easier access to expertise and organizational capabilities
• Reputation – Activeness as an employer, Increased visibility in market place
  

  Embracing Enterprise 2.0 – Geek and Poke

Although with all new changes pose some form of risks and concerns which range from Security issues such as information loss, Loss of control of information flow, a possible negative reputation from staff behavior, Information being unreliable or possibly reduced staff productivity and increased expenditure on resources. But at the same time there can be risks of NOT implementing Enterprise 2.0 for example staff members using unauthorized web tools, Fragmentation of Information or reduced competitiveness.

A common problem within customer service departments are trying to communicate with all customers concerns and issues on a quick and timely basis. A company who has solved just that problem with the use of successfully implementing Enterprise systems in to their business is a company called TI (Texas Instruments). TI built Engineers to Engineers “E2E” which is an externality-facing community where TI’s staff members can freely interact with their engineering customers and all users interested in their equipment. They have built the platform on technology from Telligent which is a company that makes Enterprise 2.0 applications and this allows the customers ask for help from TI’s staff which can be viewed publicly for all users to see and comment on.

TI has benefited from this along with their customer base because it allows them to publicly share their knowledge as well as making information easier to access instead of having customers sitting on hold with a call center.

All companies should take the time to wavier the benefits and risks in every change to their daily business, when implementing Enterprise 2.0 this requires examining, understanding and addressing all benefits and key risks because for some companies the change may be advantageous to some it may still pose threats to your company.

References

1. TIs Web 2.0 Success Story
2. Telligent

Why companies big and small are embracing Enterprise 2.0

There has been a huge increase of companies big and small embracing the use of Enterprise 2.0 technology because of its efficiency in managing internal information systems, which essentially enhances collaboration and also connects people through social media network within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers. Jumping on board the Enterprise 2.0 (smart and efficient) bandwagon gives companies the ability to exchange knowledge seamlessly with one another and is accessible to everyone throughout the organization.

Examples of corporate social networking platforms:

A couple of Corporate Social Networking Platforms are Igloo and Yammer. Today I’m going to talk about Yammer because it is a widely used platform by some well known companies here in Australia. Yammer enables content and team collaboration, document versioning and document sharing from content management systems and is used by 80% of the Fortune 500 companies.

“Yammer is a private social network for your company” – Yammer

Examples of big companies that use Yammer:

Some of the companies include 7 Eleven, Unicef, Shell, eBay and even Suncorp. Suncorp is One of Australia’s leaders in financial services, being one of Australia’s top 25 listed companies, and has brands spanning banking, insurance, investment and superannuation and more.

Why Suncorp has brought this tool in to their corporation:

Suncorp has implemented Yammer as an enterprise social network which has helped geographically disperse employees and teams to connect, share, discuss, and innovate, also increasing knowledge flow and foster more collaboration by enabling employees to interact online in an open, informal, and transparent way. Suncorp has greatly benefited from this new social network and since applying the upgrade Suncorp’s Yammer network has grown to over 1700 users and continues to grow.

Jeff Smith CIO, Suncorp has stated that “Yammer has enabled us to harness the wisdom of our people who are spread across multiple teams, geographies and brands to help achieve our purpose of delivering business solutions for competitive advantage.”

In terms of Wikinomics business models, Suncorp using Yammer In relation to:

• Peering:Providing instant connection for people, teams, informal networks, communities of practice and other shared interest groups within Suncorp.
• Being open:Allowing all employee’s of the Suncorp organization to collaborate with one another spread across multiple teams, geographies and brands
• Sharing:Employee’s can now discuss and share their knowledge and information more efficiently and effectively by connecting in a centralized place.
• Acting Global:Being an Australian company the system is only offered internally to employee’s nationwide.

It goes to show that although social networking has had some negative feedback in the past, it has its advantages and benefits within the workplace and company.

References:

1. Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management Development Trends

2. Enterprise 2.0 Boston: Social collaboration and innovation

3.Suncorp

New and improved intro in to “Enterprise 2.0”

Today I will start off by discussing the purpose of my blog posts which is essentially trying to engage readers in a thought provoking experience but at the same time try not to bore you too much with the not so important/tiniest of details. Providing you with informative useful posts is also a main purpose of my blog posts (not just adding silly nonsense leaving you with a wasted 2-5 minutes of your life). A strategy must be implemented in order to achieve this however, and that my fellow bloggers/readers is what I am conjuring up in my bag of tricks. My plan you say? Well this is it… Short, to the point and keep the reading simplistic, easy to understand style of posts and of course  informative. Doesn’t sound very original I know but it’s what I look forward to when reading blogs, I don’t like the ones that drag on and make you read 400 words in order to get to the main point of it all which keeps readers interested.

Gamepeople website

Curious to see what I’m talking about? Well I’ve got some good examples of what bloggers strike my interest in their posts: FeFeFiles. I find the posts to be interesting to read and I like the style of how the posts are written which draws me in to read more.  This next one is more of a Gamers Review website but it has an interesting take on people’s review/story of their gaming experience whether it is in a blog style review or even a performed video, which I find absolutely fantastic GamePeople.

Also my blogs this time around will be focused on the subject of “Enterprise 2.0” which Andrew P.McAfee introduces in his paper The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. The term is similar to “Web 2.0” –Tim O’Reilly: What is Web 2.0, although with a distinguished difference that Andrew has pointed out –  “These new digital platforms for generating, sharing and refining information are already popular on the internet, where they’re collectively labelled “Web 2.0” technologies. I use the term “Enterprise 2.0” to focus only on those platforms that companies can buy or build in order to make visible the practices and outputs of their knowledge workers.”-Page 4, Andrew P. McAfee: Difference between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

I believe this is a wonderful start to a new blogging beginning and hope to hear what you guys think :).