What’s in a Blog?

Professional What?

When I think of Professional Services organisations, the ‘Big Four’ spring to mind automatically – KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte.  These are multinational corporate firms whose roots are based in accountancy and auditing.

So how do Professional Services firms rate with their digital footprint compared to the other industry sectors in Australia? The chart below from the ABS shows that they have a 25% social media presence.

(ABS, 2014)

These results are surprising and I would have expected this to be higher in this day and age of Web 2.0.  But looking across the chart as a whole, I believe that Australian firms have low maturity levels and are lagging behind their American counterparts when it comes to engaging online.

The ABS give reasons as to why there is not such a high presence which range from ‘lack of customer demand’, ‘maintenance costs’, ’lack of technical expertise’ and ‘no need for a web presence’.  McKinsey Global Institute 2012 report discuss the low adoption in the Professional Services sector and the reasons that they give are “cultural issues, resistance by management and lack of enthusiasm by staff, as they can see no personal gain”.

Blogging Aussie Style

I have decided to select an Australian Professional Services company to analyse their corporate use of blogs. The company selected is SMS Management & Technology who describe themselves are providing services for Strategy, Design, Deliver, Enable and Operate and solutions for Business Innovation, Customer, Digital Agility, Digital Transformation, Efficiency, Managed Services, Mobility and Solutions by Industry.  They describe a wide range of success stories across various industry sectors.

So how efficaciously is SMS with their social media presence? Doing a quick scan, it shows that they are active with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube and Vimeo and of course their Blog.

Blogs are part of the social media technologies, one of the forerunners of the technology but they have never lost its appeal even to a 140 character tweet. SMS have described their SMS Blog content as “Leadership on a number of issues, the latest company news, information on emerging technologies, our solutions and services as well as general light-hearted discussion and career highlights from SMSers, current events and more.”

Why have a Corporate Blog?

So why do organisations use Blogs? Blogs are a platform which gives companies the opportunity to market and advertise themselves through another medium.  It provides another communication channel for the direct sharing, dissemination of information which is accessible worldwide.  It helps to personalising and promoting their company, it gives them a ‘space’ to do opinion pieces and to get immediate feedback.  It can help with brand awareness and building virtual rapport with customers and provided another avenue for customer service. It is a way to communication and collaboration with their internal employees and their external customers.  It has become part of companies’ communication and management strategies.

Some of the disadvantages of Blogs are the investment of time and resources by the company to create, maintained and monitored the blog traffic.  Reputation management also needs to be allowed for.  I do not think that companies are mining the rich data that is available from blogs.  It is not enough just to count ‘clicks’ and ‘likes’ on Blogs, sentiment analysis is needed which can be used to identify and extract subjective information. 

How are SMS using Blogs to bring value to their organisation?  McKinsey Global Institute 2012 report breaks down the 10 value levers across the organisational functions:

10 Value Levers sourced from McKinsey Global Institute 2012

From the levers, the ones I see SMS utilising their Blogs for are :

• Marketing and sales
• use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction
• generate and foster sales leads
• Business Support
• Improve collaboration and communication
• Enterprise wide levers
• Use social technology to improve intra- or inter-organisations collaboration and communication

 They are not using their Blog for social commerce but it could foster and generate sales leads by existing and being accessible.  There are not much reply comments on any of their blogs so it appears if they are not generating social traffic so they cannot be deriving any customer insights from these.

I do not have a view of how they use blogs internally to the organisations but the replies to the blogs are mainly from internal employees.

Blog Evaluation

Can a Blog be evaluated? Is there a monetary or social value associated with it? How can this be measured? Some of the criteria that can be used are:

Ø  Content

Some of SMS’s Blog categories sparked my interest such as Digital Agility and The Social Enterprise with some of the blog content being -

·         Enhance Your Real Time Digital Engagement Strategy

·         Successful Bloggers Secrets 

·         Six Ways to Gain the Most Benefit from your Online Experience

·         10 Tips for dealing with a Social Media Crisis

The Blogs content is relevant for not just these two area of interest I selected but for the other categories that are also available.

Ø  Credible

Is the information provided credible? Are the blogs trustworthy, authoritative and accurate? Are they biased? Corporate blog are not unbiased as this is their sole purpose to promote the company, its brand, products and services. I’m sure that the blogs are reviewed internally before being release to the public to ensure corporate correctness. They appear to have dedicated bloggers who are identified by name and links to their biographies which enforces their credibility.

Ø  Valuable

How valuable is the content? Who is the audience and is it relevant to them.  For their customers who are pursuing a digital strategy or embarking on social media technologies, the blogs are highly relevant.

Ø  Findable

Can the content be found easily? Does it give the user a good experience?  The Blog page has got good information architecture design which is simply structured with the Blogs categorised for findability which heightens the user experience.  The Blogs are searchable and content is retrievable.

Ø  Currency

Are the blogs up to date and managed?  There are regular Blogs and these are updated which gives the user confidence in the Blogs.  More frequent Blogs might gain them more social traffic.

Ø  Connectedness

Are the blogs creating social network traffic? Are people connecting with the author and therefore the company brand? The Blogs are not creating external traffic and there is only a minimum amount from internal employees, so they are not achieving good connectedness and need to improve on this.

Walking the Talk

Here is a company whose business is to provide services to other companies to create their digital and social enterprise strategies.  Do they practice what they preach?  From my quick analysis on SMS I believe that they are walking the talk.

References:

McKinsey (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies

The Holy Grail

The Holy Grail

The statistics from McKinsey Global Institute 2012 report are quite impressive on social technology usage …

•          1.5 billion Social Network (SN) users globally

•          80% of online users use SNs regularly

•          70% of companies are using Social Tech. (ST)

•          90% of companies who use ST report business benefits from use

But how do these translate when you start to analyse various companies?  Have they reached these statistics and what does it mean if they have?  Are they gaining any value and is there any benefits realisation happening?   Looking at the 10 value levers across the organisational functions, how are organisations using social technologies to bring value? 

10 Value Levers sourced from McKinsey Global Institute 2012

Have they tapped into the local and global markets to increase their market share? Is this not an objective of organisations and their shareholders?  The question that looms is, if not, why not? Is Enterprise 2.0 indeed the Holy Grail of organisations?

Survival of the Fittest
So why is Enterprise 2.0 so important in this day and age? It is the survival of the fittest in the corporate world.  Michael Porter’s work on business strategy is highly valuable in explaining why the use of social technologies in organisations is so important.  Today, Enterprise 2.0 is what will bring competitive advantages to companies by incorporating them into their organisation’s strategies.  These need to be part of the organisations’ value chain where they can realise the impact of Porter’s five forces and have the marketing positioning strategies in place to counter competition in the marketplace.

Does the Bubble Size Count?

For this blog I decided to concentrate on Australian, preferably Queensland companies.  I have not come across anything as spectacular as Colgate, Novartis or Goldcorp experiences.  I went to the sectors chart below to see which industry I would concentrate on.

I choose to look at the financial sectors and decided on Suncorp and Commonwealth Bank because ‘who does not have a bank account?’

The Elephant in the Room

From doing basic scans on these companies, I realised that if the bubbles are a reflection of their businesses’ GDP due to social technologies, they would be ‘shouting it from the rooftops’ but I do not see this happening for the organisations I looked at, specifically for the following levels :

• Marketing and sales
• derive customer insights
• use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction
• generate and foster sales leads
• social commerce
• Customer service
• provide customer care via social technologies

It is not a successful exercise… Yes, both companies have a digital footprint with blogs, Facebook pages, RSS feed, Pinterest, Twitter accounts but their digital presence appears to be very low.  There is poor traffic on their sites with blogs produced on a monthly cycle.  Their approach is very corporate and not spontaneous, the writings appear to be outsourced to professional writers. 

Marketing and sales seems to be both of their predominate reason for social technologies but how much sales do they have out of their efforts? I see no evidence of them using customer insights, or working collaboration with their customers.  They use the technologies to spam, sorry, to leverage the sales and marketing and social commerce for the self-promotion of their community activities but I think they have missed the point with Enterprise 2.0.   Both have a great customer base and should be taking advantage of it by getting instant, direct feedback and then acting on it.

What value do they bring to their customers – do they provide customer care through these technologies? CBA seems to be better at this and gives timely replies on queries and complaints whereas Suncorp just seems to ignore them.  Using social technologies for marketing communication/interaction, means to at least reply to them! One of the sites, reverts back to Enterprise 1.0 by sending the customer to a telephone number to call and a form to be submitted and ‘they will endeavour to make contact the next business day’!

I am only a ‘lurker’ and do not have a full understanding of how these companies work and how exactly they deal with their customers but their use of social technologies are not promoting them as helpful, open and transparent companies to do business with. Are the social technologies more destructive than constructive for them? Are social technologies the elephant in the room for these organisations?

  Casting the First Stone...

Am I free from sin? Can I afford to cast the first stone? I think not, as I admitted in Anne's Blog - Neophyte or Luddite. That was my personal experience but can organisations afford to let this happen to them.  I understand that companies are going through stages of acceptance, like any organism but Enterprise 2.0 is not new.  They have the advantage of having resources available to them – marketing departments, legal departments, IT departments, … but are they any further down the path of redemption than I.  Are they using Enterprise 2.0 for their competitive advantage?  Will they survive?

From my quick analysis on the financial sector my questions are - Are they walking the talk? Or are they just paying lip service to Enterprise 2.0?  Organisations need to take on board and understand the '6 Key Affordances' of social technologies as described by Bradley (2009) -

I believe that these companies need to review their strategies in line with their objectives and understand how Enterprise 2.0 can assist them in achieving their organisational goals. The CIO's article on "Enterprise 2.0 - What is it Good for?" maybe a good starting point for them.

If the companies adhered to the affordances, we the customers might receive a better, richer experience from our banks. And they would receive the value and benefits that they are missing out on.  They need to stop search for the mystical holy grail and acknowledge that elephant!

References:

McKinsey (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies

Bradley, A. 2009. "The Six Core Principles of Social-Media-Based Collaboration" Gartner, Inc.

Aladdin’s Cave

Aladdin's Cave

This week I feel as if I have gone through a black hole after being in stasis and have arrived at Aladdin’s Cave.  The treasure trove of items that I have found this week, has made me blind from the sparkling of the jewels.

The Jewels

Using CommonCraft as my starting point ‘to get with’ social technology has been a great link with introductions to Web 2.0 tools.  Gone are my days of Web1.0 – ‘email’, I laugh in the face of it!

‘My precious’ has become social networks, content, collaboration and communication tools like blogs, facebook,, rss, dropbox, google drive and twitter. Some examples are -

• Blogs – started last week and powering on with my blogging available at Anne’s Blog  
• Facebook – joined Facebook to communication and collaborate with QUT unit groups for assignments and idea sharing
• Twitter – created an account and started microblogging and my handle is @aeemckenna.
• Delicious – to manage my Web2.0 tools together
• Blogger and WordPress – to create and design my blog pages
• Dropbox and Google Drive - for unit document storage and collaboration.

Tweet, Twit, Twot, Twat??

So now I am microblogging using Twitter.  After only coming to terms with blogging and being verbose, I now need to be clear and concise with 140 characters.  But like any change there are phases, the ‘5 stages of Twitter acceptance’ is explained in the presentation on How Twitter Changed My Life, which are

• Denial
• Presence
• Dumping
• Conversing
• Microblogging

      At the beginning of the week I was at stage 2 but now I think I have moved on to stage 3 but I am advancing. What stage are you at?

Twitter reminds me of Seth Godin’s book Tribes (an oldie) which explains Web 2.0 communities and how not to remain as a “sheepwalker” but to become a leader in your chosen tribe through being open to change and willing to lead.

I am finding that microblogging is more related to a conversation with short comments, questions and rapid responses, more like a one to one.  I am currently mimicking other people’s following but the amount of tweets I am receiving is a wallop to the senses which is leading to information overload for me  ….

Fatigued Neurons?

With my entry to Web2.0, I am finding that there is a tsunami of information which is violating my senses but the wonders of the brain and its elasticity to accommodate and change will recede this onslaught to a babbling brook -

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

(The Brook, Lord Tennyson)

To help me acclimatise and to do some of this brain filtering I watched the link on social bookmarking and I thought ‘great’ there are many applications that can assist with this problem, like delicious (and this is not the cooking magazine!) and TweetDeck which I have joined and this displays and manages my tweets and tweeting.

While doing some research on information overload I came across an interesting news article about How to Cope with Information Overload by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin which I hope may help others out there as they come to terms with processing the new sets of information.

Buuuzzzzz - Busy as a Bee …

The benefits of using Web 2.0 tools in an organisation has been highlighted by Dawson (2008) with increases in:

• Productivity and efficiency
• Staff Engagement
• Knowledge sharing
• Enhanced reputation of a company

Twitter does not seem to have taken off as a corporate tool and Yammer seems to be favoured. I believe that this is to do with some of the risks that Dawson (2008) has pointed out about security, loss of control and impact on reputation.  With Yammer it can be used as a closed site and not open to the public.

With Web 2.0 tools, it is giving me the opportunity to access multiple communities with various interests but at a global level, my village is expanding rapidly.  It will allow me to create networks so that I can learn and share by ‘following’ or being a ‘follower’.

Fireworks…

All this has become possible through the use of APIs which the API Economy article explains that they are becoming the ‘primary customer interface and are ‘driving revenue and brand engagement’ not just for companies but also on a personal level.  It speaks about “the confluence of factors has created a perfect storm of sorts where a vast constellation of applications meets a massive network of end-users at the centre is an explosive opportunity to find and mine new customers and communities that companies can tap into…”

…… I am truly emerged from the black hole, my storm is brewing and my fireworks are about to exploded!

References

Dawson, R. (2008). Implementing enterprise 2.0. San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.

Neophyte or Luddite?

Source: http://www.istockphoto.com

Neophyte or Luddite? Being a neophyte to Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 at both the corporate and personal levels, I am quite apprehensive with how to approach this unit.  I can hear you say, ‘how can someone not be part of it?’ with Facebook, twitter, google+, ….

I have worked in IT for quite a few years and have ‘missed’ out on this aspect of IT.  I find that IT is quite broad ranging and I have worked and concentrated on the not-too-sexy side of IT - data, information, databases, business intelligence, etc., and not been part of the frontline digital arena. But am I truly ignorant or a Luddite of blogging? No, because when I think about it, blogs are everywhere – even when I go to buy a book at amazon, I read the reviews or the blogs about the books.

Blogger of the Year 2014

For this initial foray into blogging, the purpose of my blog will be to experiment in a safe environment with regards to learning the tools of the trade, and creating an online presence across different channels.

Ouch, is that sore?? 

Source: http://appreneurworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/branding_cow.jpg



From my readings, I am learning that Web 2.0 is not just ‘a casual chat with someone’ but that my online presence is global and therefore has much more serious consequences to how my personal brand is received in the marketplace.  The description of personal branding as “the public expression and projection of an individual’s identity, personality, values, skills and abilities” shows the depth that surrounds this simple phrase. 

This is specifically true when you consider the blurring of the boundaries between personal and professional online identities.  Does this matter? Well, if it is going to impact my professional life, my career, my means of income, well yes, then it does. To see that applying for jobs is not a manual process anymore (5 Reasons Why Your Online Presence Will Replace Your Resume in 10 years ) but an automated one which leads to employers doing global searches of people’s online presence.  So maybe not being an early adopter may work to my advantage as I can plan for my entrance onto the digital stage by following a branding strategy.


Just Me…..
Some of the questions I have asked myself are –

• How will I portray myself? Will I use a persona?
• What tone and style should I use? Do I need to be the James Joyce of the digital age?
• How to blog? Do I have anything to blog about, something to say or a message to convey?
• Do I need to be a particular personality type? An extrovert?

The answer to my above questions were summed up quite nicely in the article “Learning About Blogging and How to Blog” – BE YOU! BE HONEST! This gives me some relief and hence I started this blog ….

My aim is to create useful blogs and I believe that I can achieve this if I keep the following at the fore of my mind that there are 2 things worth doing when blogging are

1) create content worth reading and

2) create content worth linking to.

Word of Mouth!
Strange to see the phrase ‘Word of Mouth’ in an article about how to attract a blog audience through digital linkages!  The idea of sending people away from your blog by using links, is like playing Russian roulette, but this tack seems to work quite successfully. The benefits of commenting on other people’s blogs is a way of builing up traffic on my blog, increasing my blogging network by creating relationships with fellow bloggers and experts and obtaining readership while increasing my digital signature.

 A Weird Duck Business …

At this stage, I cannot honestly give an example of a blog that I consider excellent, I could of course say that at this point of my learning and research it would be http://digitalplatforms.blogspot.com.au/ - good layout, concise and clear articles…..

…… until more investigations are done but if I can achieve this level of blogging I would be happy with my online digital presence.