Oreo – Dip it in ROI

For the past couple of months I have been talking about the various implications, advantages and benefits of using social technologies, in relation to organisations around the world. Latest stats indicate that over 80% of fortune 500 companies are using social media as part of their marketing strategy.

So what’s the main purpose or in other words the end goal of using social technologies? To simplify it in one word… it would be ‘Money’!! Every organisation craves for money and most importantly profit. This is where Return on Investment (ROI) comes in. ROI can be calculated by, subtracting the gain from investment to the cost of investment, then dividing the result by the cost of investment and finally multiplying the output by 100%. Therefore the higher the percentage of ROI is the more likely that the investment paid off. An organisation that has benefited from their social media campaign is the one and only Oreo.

For those who have not tried Oreo before it’s basically a cookie consisting of two chocolate disks with a sweet cream filling in between. Owned by the Nabisco division of Monedelēz International, the organisation has been a worldwide brand since the 20^th century. For the past decade or so they are famously known for their endearing TV ad campaigns. However recently the digital age has become a popular platform for marketing as well as increasing positive brand image. Consequently Oreo have taken advantage of their well-known brand to invest time and money in social media marketing resulting in over:

–       34 Million Facebook fans

–       187K Twitter followers

–       20 million You Tube views

–       101K Instagram followers

–       3K Pinterest followers

 

Last year Oreo celebrated their 100^th year of existence. With the help of 360i, Oreo commemorated the millstone by hosting an event, which included inviting the online community to pitch their own story ideas as part of a competition that went on for 100 days. As a result of this, fan engagement soared with 280% increase in Facebook shares and 510% increase in re-tweets on Twitter. For a large organisation such as Oreo the return earned from investment clearly outshines the cost of investment. Both the tangible and intangible created by Oreo’s campaign are clearly recognisable. Therefore it is evident that Oreo’s social marketing strategy has paid off with an increase in the organisations ROI.

That’s all for my last blog! Hope you enjoyed the read and don’t forget leave a comment 🙂

Cola Trends

As discussed in my previous posts, using social media has its benefits in terms of promoting an organisation in front of the public eye. An advantage this entails is being able to monitor the popularity of an organisation using social media monitoring tools. There are many tools out there that monitor social media pages, some free and some cost money for additional features. This week I’ll be analyzing two social media tools with Coca-Cola as the selected brand of evaluation.

Socialbakers

Socialbakers is an example of a tool that offers analytical services, which aim to give businesses insights and to monitor their social media profiles without having to spend millions on valuable information. With the free version, one of the many characteristics the service provides is being able to measure fan growth based on the brands Facebook data. It provides users with a line graph showing the increase and decrease in fan growth as well as an estimate growth of fans weekly to monthly. In Coca Cola’s case, they have over 73 million of fans worldwide with 19.4% in Brazil alone. They also have a monthly fan growth of 1.3 million with an increase of 29 thousand a day. The stats aren’t that shocking considering Coca Cola is one of the fastest growing brands today.

Additionally Socialbakers offers Twitter, You Tube and Google + data as well, as part of their services. With Twitter, graphs are shown regarding the amount of followers the organisation currently has and rates in which it has increased or decreased throughout the weeks. The paid version enables the organisation to analyze engagement rates, use performance indicators to track key influencers, follow competitors and even generate graphical reports. Even though Socialbakers was only launched less than five years ago, over 30 of the Fortune 500 companies have bought the paid version of the tool to monitor their businesses popularity and growth.

Topsy

Topsy is another social media monitoring tool that analyze and draw insights from conversations and trends based on Twitter feeds. Similar to Socialbakers, Topsy enable users to view a graph showing monthly Tweet trends. An interesting feature the tool encompasses is ‘Topsy Sentiment Score’. It’s similar to the like and dislike bar on You Tube and it changes hourly depending on the current trend. Coca Cola’s sentiment score was rated 59, which in comparison to other brands, seems pretty reasonable. The free version has its limitations with only general information displayed. For a brand such as Coca Cola the Pro version would be more adequate allowing them to conduct interactive analysis on keywords by-

• Activity
• Influence
• Exposure
• Sentiment
• Language
• Geography

All in all I think both Socialbakers and Topsy are handy tools to have in your pocket, seeing that social media plays a large role in determining the reputation of a company. However relying heavily on statistical data alone is not always truthful or accurate in determining an organisations overall performance.

That’s all for this week! As usual don’t forget to leave a comment 🙂

Hewlett-Packard

We all know that organisations ubiquitously benefit from using Enterprise 2.0.  Whether it is a large enterprise or a small business, social technologies have changed the way organisations interact with their customers and enhance their business performance. Hewlett-Packard or commonly known as HP, is a clear example of a professional service using social media to gain value within their organisation.

About HP

HP is an American multinational information technology corporation that provides products, technologies, software solutions, services and consultations to consumers and businesses all around the world. HP has been around the IT industry for over five decades making it one of the most established businesses today. Despite strong competition within the technology sector throughout the past couple of years, HP has yet proven to be on top of the corporate ladder thanks to social technologies.

Blogs

One of the many social tools HP utilises in presenting themselves to their customers, employees and stakeholders is by using Blogs. An example of this is their Careers at HP blog page within their website, where they aim to provided a glimpse into the day to day life at HP. The page also aim to help career seekers to find a variety of information offered regarding career opportunities, workplace culture, social innovation and other career related tips written by HP employees themselves. They also encourage readers to comment and share on topics presented throughout the blog for a better interaction between the organisation and the public. Other blogs include latest innovation news, trends and research within the technology sector. However despite their variety up to date blog content, there isn’t much interaction going on with minimal comments from readers. Having a stronger community presence is definitely something they can improve on in the future.

Twitter

HP has utilised Facebook and Twitter effectively as a means to promote and engage with their customers. In addition to promotional purposes, HP exploits its twitter page by taking advantage of this social tool to engage wither their customers. By asking questions such as “What do you look for in you online shopping experience? RT your answers and help us out!”, helps the organisation understand their customers needs and wants with just one simple tweet consisting of 17 words. Based on McKinsey Global Institute, this a great example of adding value through providing customer care via social technology. A social tool HP does not utilise is Wikis. It is definitely a useful tool for collaboration and communication of content. Many organisation use internal wikis to increase productivity within their business. However HP is a large corporation and a well-recognized brand with worldwide audiences. Therefore the question lies, how little or much more would they benefit from wikis? Does it really affect their productivity?

That’s all for this week and as usual don’t forget to leave a comment!!

Save the Children

Good day to you all! This week I will be talking about a non-profit organisation, namely, Save the Children foundation and how they have associated social technology value levers across their organisation, in relation to McKinsey’s Global Institute.

Little about the organisation…

Save the Children is an internationally active non-governmental organisation that promotes children’s rights, provides relief and helps support children in developing countries. Globally they work in 120 countries with aim of ensuring that children no longer die from preventable diseases, have the opportunity to learn through access to education as well as have the basic needs to resources such as food, water and shelter.

Mobilising resources

In the past couple of years social technologies have played a major role in promoting non-profit organisations. Not only it is inexpensive but with the growing number of individuals using social media today, allows for these non- profit organisations to endorse themselves on a large scale. Save the Children uses Facebook and Twitter pages to engage the community in fundraising. Apart from their website, the organisation uses their Facebook page to spread the continuous awareness of their charitable work to the public through videos, pictures and various posts. This then encourages others to donate and be a part of making a difference.

With over 19, 000 likes on Facebook and almost 7000 followers on Twitter (that is Save the Children Australia alone), Save the Children creates and expands its volunteer network thorough social media. Many are enticed to volunteer because of their friends and peers who are already volunteering. For example someone shares his or her charitable work through Facebook and a couple of friends are inspired by it and decides to try it out themselves. Save the children also uses their You Tube channel to endorse their work as well as raise awareness to the general public with the aim of increasing funds and expanding its volunteer network.

Being a non-profit organisation, keeping volunteers engaged can be a challenge as they rely solely on them for continuous support. In addition to You Tube, Facebook and Twitter, Save the Children retains support through personal experiences expressed in blogs by volunteers and other members of the organisation. Overall Save the Children has mobilized their resources effectively through social technologies and consequently been making a positive difference around the world at the same time.

That’s all for this week and don’t forget to leave a comment!

The Burger King Debacle

This week I’ll be delving into the risks associated with social media and will be using Burger King as an example. As I discussed last week, organisations mainly use social media to further increase their popularity and promote their business to a larger market. However there are both advantages and disadvantages in doing this.  What many organisations oversee are the perks of using social media. They often focus primarily on the positive aspects of using Facebook and Twitter, as a source of marketing tool at their disposal, that they forget the implication it has if something goes wrong.

The Debacle

Burger King is one of the largest fast food restaurants on the planet. With franchises all around the world and revenue of approximately $1.9 billion last financial year, Burger King is known to be a popular fast food outlet for many hungry burger cravers out there. Like other large organisations, Burger King utilises social media for promotions and free publicity. However early this year they got more than what they bargained for.  The company’s official Twitter feed was hacked by an anonymous group and their account was filled with images of McDonalds’s logo with a statement on the page saying “Just got sold to McDonalds because the whopper flopped, freedom is failure…In a hood near you”. In addition Burger Kings Twitter feed also announced the reason they sold to McDonalds was workers have been using drugs in the bathrooms and other offensive material. An hour later they regained control of the account and apologised to their followers and other members of the industry.

Reputation

Out of the classification of risk associated with participation in social media sites, this debacle comes under the Statutory Risk and Reputation Risk. The brand itself was damaged along with their employee’s reputation. Legally speaking what precautions should have been taken? This is where good social media policy comes in. To prevent this from happening in the future they should be:

–       Engaging in various technological measures to protect against viral and malware threats

–       Having a system in place to respond to complaints on forums, sites and fan pages

–       Having a documented effective social media strategy in place

–       Prepared for a Crisis Management Plan to deal with a social media crisis

In this case none of the employees are to be blamed and it was just unfortunate for them that this happened. If we look at this situation in another perspective, for example in which negative comments was said by a Burger Urge employee in Twitter that was damaging to the company’s reputation, the person would have had to battle the case in court to clear his or her name. When it comes to social media there is always legal ramifications that takes place. In order to deal with these issues strong social media policies should be enforced in organisations everywhere.

On a lighter note…

Even though Burger King’s reputation decreased for not being able to secure their Twitter account properly, their popularity did however improve. Despite the debacle, within the first 30 minutes of the hack took place the account had 5000 new followers. Makes you wonder, was it all an act? I’ll let you be the judge of that. That’s all for now, hope you enjoyed the read and don’t forget to leave a comment.

References

Legal risks of social networking for business

Movie Buzz!!

Hey there my fellow esteemed readers! So this week I will be talking about the benefit and value associated with Social Technology, in relation to an organisation.

How many of you have gone to the cinemas lately? Well being a University student and broke most of the time, I’m guessing not many of you. Anyways, today I will be using Event Cinemas as an example, focusing on their key functions of Operations and Distribution as well as Marketing and Sales using McKinsey’s Value Lever table.

Event relies heavily on social technology to derive their customers, which mainly consists of kids, teenagers and middle-aged men and women. You don’t often see elderly people in the cinemas do you? Because of that it’s easier to attract target customers using Enterprise 2.0. One of the methods Event facilitates it’s customers to buy tickets is using their online website. Within five minutes you would be able to choose which movie you would like to see, where you would like to watch it and whether you would like to see it on a Friday night or maybe during the weekend. Even though an individual has to be over 18 or own a credit card to actually make use of the social technology, chances of missing out on a movie because of a full cinema wouldn’t to be a problem anymore.

Also with the dramatic increase in the use of tablets and Android phones, apps are another great and easy way Event has utilised social technology to sell their tickets. You could have had an epiphany in the train and thought to yourself, “I really need to stop pirating films and actually watch a movie in the cinemas for a change, with my imaginary friend”. Bam, just take out your phone and within a couple of minutes it’s all done. Maybe not everyone has a lame epiphany as that but you get the idea. In addition if you signed up to be a member, you would be eligible to watch a movie for a discounted price.

In terms of social commerce and getting people interested in buying movie tickets, Event uses social media to attract their potential customers. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are used to give away promotions and hot deals by displaying banner ads on their pages. They also use You Tube for promotional advertisements as well as gateway to their website.

Clearly Event Cinemas has used social technology to distribute business process effectively.  By using this modern approach a.k.a. “Social Technology”, they have made going to the movies easy and simple for everyone. In saying that, if you have been reading this and had an epiphany of your own about watching a movie, why don’t you give it a try? Thanks for reading my blog, don’t forget to leave a comment and till next time…Adios Amigos!!