Social networks

With the increased cases of competition in this industry as well as the high level objectives of the company to expand to international levels and diversify, social networks can play a major role in ensuring that the company meets its objectives and challenges. Since social networks are rich grounds for meeting people, using social networks by the company will expand its customer base.

Since the chosen social spaces are international in nature, the use of Facebook and Twitter to advertise a company’s web page or to create awareness about a company can help the company in its expansion exercise, because potential customers will have heard about the company even before it expand to their geographical locations.

Social networks are great marketing tools where an organization can influence discussion by directing it towards a certain topic (Bonfield, 2008). Using social networks for advertisement and marketing will help create awareness of the presence of goods and services by the company in the market. This will in turn increase the returns of the company.

Social networks form groups of like-minded people. This means that when a company uses social networking, it joins the rest of the people interested in the industry (Bonfield, 2008). This consolidation of other networks that are related to the organization creates a network of contact that a person can use in the business, which includes potential employees, clients and customers.

Social networks are very rich in information. Companies have done market researches in these networks in order to ascertain market trends. To ensure that Century Maids gains a competitive edge over its competitors, cost cutting should be practiced (Bonfield, 2008). Most approaches to data collection and information gathering within the social networks is significantly cheaper and faster than the actual process of data collection.

If the company wants to expand through mergers, acquisitions or collaborations, social networking can be used to help the consumers of each company through the transition process. Before the transaction is completed, the management in each company should communicate with their consumers informing them of the impeding changes (Bonfield, 2008). The acquiring company can use these networks to retain customers by ensuring them of the maintenance or improvement of the relationships that existed before between the consumers and the acquired company.

Just a Call and Replacement Mothers Cleaning Services are two of the companies that have employed social networking in their operations. Just a Call Cleaning Service uses social networking to increase innovativeness in the way it conducts its business. When networking, it surveys the people in these social sites on how they would like to be served by the company in an ideal situation. The company later uses these views to come up with more efficient approaches to conduct business. Replacement Mothers Cleaning Service on the other hand has increased workforce morale by rewarding the workers that visit the company’s networking site often.

In order to achieve the objectives of the company strategies that include intertwining the roles of the human resource department and the applicability of social networks in worker motivation, incorporation of increased access to labor and resources resulting from networking into the expansion plans of a business, and ensuring that effective leadership should be put in practice at all times.

Reference

Bonfield, B. (2008). Should your organization use social networking Sites? Retrieved from http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page7935.cfm

Enterprise Wiki

 

Enterprise Wiki helps a company in gathering, organizing and disseminating information. They, at many times, turn out to be storage facilities for information regarding an organization. Since they encourage continuous informal tips and learning tips, a continuous need for training or IT support is not needed.

At Century Maids, Enterprise Wiki can be used to ensure that the information in need is accessible to those that need it within the organization. With the continuous high rate expansion of the company, sharing and updating information across its branches will ease management practices in the company. Comparison of information from each branch with that of the other branches will help identify areas in which particular branches were not operating optimally. This will help structure the decisions made in order to maximize returns, hence reach the objective of expanding nationally and internationally in the future (SharePoint Server, 2010).

Providing a means of information storage and updating within an organization will help Century Maids keep the workers informed about what is going on within the organization. This is especially necessary due to the continuous changes within the company, as it adapts to consumer needs. Being a startup company, Century Maids is still testing where it best suites in the market, hence malleability. During this period, allowing all employees to contribute in a Wiki can come up with more efficient ways of handling situations or solving problems, because the comments and updates made contain the latest information of workers (SharePoint Server, 2010). The large number of workers participating in updating information will ensure that decisions made according to these updates are representative of the organization’s workforce.

Diversification strategies adopted by the company will also be listed in the information within the Enterprise Wiki, hence ensuring uniformity within the operations of the company. When each branch understands what others within the company are doing, competition among these branches, if well administered, can lead to increased rates of growths of the company (SharePoint Server, 2010).

Just a Call and Replacement Mothers Cleaning Services, the key competitors of Century Maids, have Wiki pages that allow many-to-many communication, collaborative exchange of information, the option to insert files or images on a page, and an approach to easy referencing through tagging pages with enterprises keywords.

Wiki strategies that can help the organization achieve its goals and objectives include systematic evaluation of the updates of information regarding issues affecting the company, complete access and editing privileges to the workers, and safety of the stored information in order to use them for future reference (SharePoint Server, 2010).

Reference

SharePoint Server. (2010). Enterprise Wikis overview (SharePoint Server 2010). Retrieved from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721051.aspx 

Blogging /Micro-Blogging Strategy

Century Maids is a startup company that offers low cost cleaning services and implements low income earners within the community. Having been running for six months, the company has been experiencing astronomical growth rates and expansion from one branch to 24. Its customers and clients range from small scale institutions such as schools, clinics and hospitals and hotels. It also offers personal services by cleaning residential areas. With its growth, the number of employees has grown from the original three employees when the company started, to the current 780 employees across its branches. The company opened up as a family business, with its founder, Mark Century owning it fully.

The business aims at expanding its operations to all parts of the country as well as internationally. Diversification of the company’s operations to include all aspects of the industry has also been noted as being of interest to the company. Since its formation, the company has had to compete fiercely with other established companies in the market which include Just a Call and Replacement Mothers Cleaning Services, two of the most well known and prosperous cleaning services in the country. Lack of effective ways to communicate with the population made the growth of the company stagnate in the first two months. It is still experiencing hardships in continually informing its customers and the potential market of the services and products it continually adds to its operations as it grows.

Blogging and micro blogging can help the company attain its objectives by ensuring that the public is well informed about the company. Micro blogging and blogging can be used to create a platform for sharing, collaborating and organizing information about the company. The small size of micro blogs ensures that communication and feedback is immediate (Howard, 2010). The company can use micro blogs to promote its products and services and the company website. This would ensure that the public is well informed about the company.

Social spaces of the most common used social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to create awareness of the company’s webpage as well as market its goods and services (Howard, 2010). Other firms in the industry, including Just a Call and Replacement Mothers Cleaning Services have resulted to blogging and micro blogging activities such as status updates, deleting unwanted comments or updates and integration of information from social sites to that on blogs or micro blogs in order to direct the discussions to revolve around a certain topic.

Some of the strategies that the organization can use when blogging or micro blogging include integrating blogging and micro blogging with an organization’s communication plan in order to ensure information flow, use blogs to learn about the competitors, and ensure consumer loyalty through rewarding blog users (Howard, 2010).

Reference

Howard, T. (2010). Blogging vs. micro blogging. Retrieved from http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2010/11/blogging-vs-micro-blogging/

Return on Investment ROI of Enterprise 2.0

With the increased technological advancement, many companies are adopting varied technologies in order to gain competitive edges over the other players in the industry (Turner, 2012). The adoption of social software programs by some organization with the aim of organizing, sharing and collaborating information within an organization or company, or between organizations or companies and their customers or partners, requires investment. This brings about the need to measure the efficacy of such programs in an organization through their returns on the investment.

Social networks, like any other communication tools over the internet, cost money to set up, run and maintain. When organizing, collaborating information over the social platforms, it is necessary to determine their effects on the bottom line of the organization (Turner, 2012). Returns on investment of Enterprise 2.0 are the difference between the returns to the organization before Enterprise 2.0 was adopted and the returns after its adoption. Keeping track of the number of people converted to either clients of customers help ascertain the added value Enterprise 2.0 brings into an organization.

The amount to spend in order to acquire a customer or client is calculated by calculating the lifetime value of the client to an organization. This is the average amount of money a customer spends in a brand before moving on to other brands (Turner, 2012). A percentage of this amount, often called allowable cost per sale, is what is invested to acquire a customer using any approach. When this allowable cost per sale is applied in social media and customers or clients are attracted at a lesser fee, the return on investment is positive. If the cost of attracting customers using the social media climbs beyond the predetermined allowable cost per sale, then the return on investment of the social media is negative.

The long nature of chains that exists between cause and effects in application of IT systems makes specific measurements problematic. This is because the effect might be due to a series of factors working in concert with one another, and may take time to be noticed. Investments in this case can take the form of manpower, time and money used to buy the IT implements. Expressing the expected returns in quantitatively, for example in terms of what is aimed to be increased or decreased as a percentage, in terms of time or in form of numbers. These returns should then be connected to the returns to the organization by interpreting the information and correlating it with financial performance (Turner, 2012). Identifying trends, especially changes in trends after the adoption of social networks, an d discovering what is causing the changes is the surest way of identifying the effects of social networks on returns of an organization.

Reference

Turner, J. (2012). How to: calculate the ROI of your social media campaign. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/11/05/calculate-roi-social-media/

Challenges to Online Advertising

 

 

Online marketing has a number of challenges especially that related to Intellectual Property theft. But creative investors will not be stopped by such issues from using blog, links and social media among other forms internet to advertise. This is based on the advantages of using the method over the traditional methods. Investors are confident that will continue making new innovations to their products and thus tackle the problem of copy right stealing.

Mainly, companies need to value the use of blogs and other online communication to elicit information from their customers. This will help them in developing new products and fight with thieves of their copy right. It is worth risking and promoting the image of a brand rather than failing to do promotions in fear of such a trivial issue (Clemons, 2009). Basically, those who are wishing to advertise their product internationally need to be more motivated to use on- line advertising which is fast and covers a wide proximity.

The problem that encounters the use of online advertising also involves the inability of those who post advertisements and blogs not use words which will help the customers to link to their information. Blog is necessary in this case since it helps providing the website where one can link to the rest of advertisements. The different forms of internet provisions like blog, social media including face book and twitter, websites can all be used together to promote a company’s products.

The use of traditional methods of advertisement among them television, radio and magazines will also help people to acquire information and the presence of on- line information relating to the company. This is how the brand of an organization get promoted. Those who wish to inquire more use the link provided and they later respond or ask questions on the products (Clemons, 2009). Thus, the use of on- line advertising is to stay and those who are reluctant to adopt the method will be left behind as others promote their brand.

It is easy to disregard those who claim that customers are not likely to trust blogs from company executives. The reason as to why they are likely to read them is because they know that they are the ones who influence the commodities produced. They regard them to be a main part of the company and thus the promoters of the brand they like best (Clemons, 2009). Thus, since the customers associate themselves with this brand, they will read and respond to what is posted by the executive.

Basically, there is no issue strategy which does not have its challenges. Thus, the most important thing is to seek to weigh the advantages and disadvantages. The use of online communication is becoming popular each an ever day. It is important that companies adopt the use of online method of communication so as to attract more customers and boost their profits.

Reference

Clemons, E. (2009). “Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet” Retrieved on August 24th 2012 from http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-the-internet/

 

 

 

 

 

 

The legal implications of online advertising

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The use of online communication has several legal implications. Generally, it is important to understand that though there are many benefits of using website for advertising, there are challenges and risks. The legal issues are as a result of efforts of ensuring ethics in the use of internet as a new form of communication. Thus, at the national and international level, relevant bodies have evaluated the negative effects of using internet by companies and how this problem can be solved. It is necessary that any organization ensure full adherence of laws formulated to regulate the use of internet in business (Lorette, 2012). Consequently, observation of set rules will ensure that companies and individuals do not infringe the rights of others.

First, the issue of intellectual property is very pertinent for any company that wishes to use internet for advertisings. This involves protection of the organization copy right as well as not to steal that of others. Copy right involves the words, pictures, photos graphics among other features which appears on ones web page. This rule should apply at all levels including where one wish to use an idea from a client. The client in this case is the one who originally came up with the words or graphic and thus he/ she has the right for it (Lorette, 2012). A company thus needs to obtain permission from such a client on whether to use it.

Companies which are making online advertisements are supposed to include fraud trackers. This will ensure that those who steal their copy right are upheld. In a similar way they need to do research on other companies so that they do not infringe their rights without knowledge.

In addition, it is crucial that any organization that is using online advertisements make it a routine to observe business ethics. Some companies have often received criticism from the audience for the words and pictures that they use in advertisements. It is worse when they are used in the internet because this information sticks there and it is accessed by all members of society. Pictures of naked people have strongly been criticized as well as words which have negative connotation for creation section of the population like women (Lorette, 2012). This shows selfishness and lack of consideration of the rest of the population in the aim of maximising profits. It is ironical that such advertisement can lead to negative image of the company as its sales decline.

Before posting of any information online, one needs to thoroughly think about its implication. The person who posts information in the internet will be directly held responsible for it. Thus, one should not carelessly mention the name of another competitor company. Negative words in reference to another company can lead to suing of the organization that one represents and later difficult effects including payment of fine (Lorette, 2012). Besides the mentioning of other companies, one is also required to give only true information relating to the company’s product as well as any other issue relating to the society.

Generally, the use online marketing requires one to be aware of the legal implications. These include protection of intellectual property as well as observation of ethics. Also, any organization that wishes to use on- line advertisements should understand the rules of CAN- SPAM Act. In particular, the use of e- mails needs one to be sensitive to the feelings of the customers. A customer may get tired of receiving e- mail. In this case there should be a chance for them to say no and stop receiving.

 

 

 

Reference

Lorette, K. (2012). “Issues in Web Advertising”. Retrieved on August 20th 2012 from http://www.ehow.com/list_6522293_issues-advertising.html

Designing a Weblog for Marketing

 

 

 

 

The reason why entrepreneurs give up in using blog for their promotions is because they do not set the procedures appropriately so as to meet their target. It is important that one get to understand the right procedures in using blog as a tool of communication. First, commitment in the posting of blogs is necessary for its success (Digital Labtz, 2012). This poses a challenge since it requires creativity and determination. Putting in place of resources needed for the writing on blog, and responding to the customers is core to this form of marketing.

It is also important that an organization put into consideration the target population to communicate to through blog. This can either be mothers, men, teens or even children. It is after doing so that one will come up with information that most suits that population. For instance, children like colourful things while teenagers are usually carried away by fashion. Mothers need to be assured that the features of a commodity will make the family happy. It is necessary that you create more than one blog and then post them for the audience (Digital Labtz, 2012).

After posting, an organization needs to continue writing for more blogs for posting. This should be a continuous process if it has to make impact in boosting the sales of the organization’s products. Basically, this requires creativity so that need ideas get posted for the customers to find interest with the brand. This is how the branding of the company get improved as a result of using blog. Generally, blog should show professionalism and thus the content should be appealing.

Finally, the created blog should be set in a way that it gives adequate space for sharing. This means the sharing of information and ideas between the general public. Thus, twitter and face book becomes relevant at this level (Digital Labtz, 2012). In addition, inviting other bloggers to comment on your blog and doing the same about their blogs will also help popularize your posts. This will bring to success to using of blog for marketing. It is necessary that one continue to post blogs despite the low rate of response until it becomes successful.

Reference

Digital Labtz (2012). “7 Steps to Launch a Successful Business Blog” Retrieved on August 14 2012 from http://www.digitallabz.com/blogs/

Weblog Adverting

The use blog for advertising is full of advantages; it is not only efficient but also cheap. The use of blog is part of the new development in the world of communication and specifically in computer technology. It is amazing how digital communication has revolutionized the computer technology making it possible for a person to communicate to large number of people, and within a very period of time. Actually, many entrepreneurs have embraced the use of blog for advertising their commodities (Scifo, 2010). It has simplified the process of conducting promotions. Weblogs are more preferable for advertisements over other forms of social media.

The use of weblog for advertising is made possible by the increased presence of people who are using internet. In addition, there is large number of people who are willing to purchase commodities through the internet. This is because the use of internet saves one from having to travel. One can now make enquiries from the house without making a single step outside. Globally, more people are opting to use internet for communication and entertainment rather than the traditional methods mainly due to convenience (Scifo, 2010). As time lapse, there are always change and this is a major change that entrepreneurs need to keep pace with.

The problem is that there exist a large number of people who still do not know how to design blog to do promotions for their businesses. Some are even not aware of how much this form of social media can help in bringing a tremendous success to a business (Scifo, 2010). The effect of the use of weblog is immense yet one does not need to travel or use a lot of money in order to use it. It is preferable to use blog than other form of social media since it shows professionalism and does not expire.

The reason as to why entrepreneurs should consider blog as a method of advertising is because the method is cheap. In fact, some people refer to it to be free. Blog advertising only requires one to post a blog in the internet of which one will only pay for the internet use. It is different from commercial advertisements through the television or the print media for which one would pay large amount of money (Scifo, 2010). People who are already using blog marketing have seen a boosting of their businesses.

Use of blog for advertising allows business people to get feedback from their customers. This is a core element in the today world where customers wish to get engaged in the production of what they buy. The information that is acquired from the targeted buyers helps in improving the quality of a product. Weblog advertising also helps in increasing the popularity of a product and thus improvement of the branding (Scifo, 2010). Since the members of public have the chance to give feedback, this is used in marketing strategy and in particular in improving advertising.

Basically, the use of blog helps in increasing the number of consumers who buy the product and also helps improve the brand. Blog helps in reaching large number of people at a wide geographical area unlike the traditional methods of communication namely: radio, television and print media.

Reference

Scifo, G. (2010). “Online Marketing blog” Retrieved on August 9 2012 from http://www.georgescifo.com/2010/05/10-advantages-of-online-advertising/

 

Hello

Hello.

Hello

Hello there,

This is my first blog am very exited on learning the Enterprise 2.0 subject which required creating blog. I am studying at QUT university its my first semester. I arrived to brisbane three weeks ago i like it so far.

I wish to all of you that your dreams become true this year and every year.

Best wishes,

Bidah 1990