How to Gar(t)ner support: Blogs as Marketing Tools

Welcome back to the weekly dose of Enterprise 2.0 insights. Similar to last week's blog, I am going to introduce another example of social technology in action. This time the focus is on a company from the professional services sector: Gartner, Inc. (Yes, the heading is indeed an attempt of a pun). Referring to the title of the post, marketing probably is not the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear of professional services provider such as consulting or law firms. Indeed, I was first considering to write again about knowledge and expertise sharing inside the organisation (as this is the main asset of those companies) but then decided against it since I already talked it about extensively in my last posts.

So what does Gartner actually do? 

Gartner is one of the largest information technology research and consulting companies in the world. With over 6,400 associates they serve clients in 85 different countries around the globe. Their key business activities include market research in the field of IT as well as providing the gathered insights to customers in order to solve their problems. A very popular and well-known graphical tool is the Gartner hype cycle, which projects the adoption of new technology trends. Interestingly enough, on their 2009 hype cycle for emerging technologies Web 2.0 was mentioned with a forecasted mainstream adoption of less than 2 years. However, as we already know and also what the McKinsey  report on the social economy (2012) proofs: there is still a lot of value potential left to capture.

Corporate Blogging at Gartner 

So let's have a closer look at how the research giant captures value through its blog. As already pointed out in the beginning of this post, the main focus here is on a blog serving as a marketing tool. Last week I already introduced the 10 value "levers" by McKinsey. The following points, which highlight the value creation at Gartner throught the use of blogging, can be summarized under the lever '(5) Use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction':

• Brand value, Credibility and Recognition: Of course, most of the research material by Gartner is not freely available. In fact, it costs a lot of money. Blog posts by Gartner professionals offer a great way to indicate high value content to potential clients. The posts reflect the level of expertise the company can provide and allow potential customers to get a sneak peak at topics that might be more interesting for them.
• Personalization: Maria Piscopo very nicely outlines that a blog can give a company an identity, or how I would call it a "face". Each Gartner blogger has a profile picture next to his or her posts. This helps client to build a better connection to the company and makes the overall picture of the organisation more vivid.
  
• Interaction: The comment function of the blog enables visitors to engage with the authors directly and valuable discussion might be born out of this. Again, the direct and personal link adds value in comparison to old ways how to contact somebody in the organisation. The data can also be used for useful customer/persons of interest insights (see value lever (4) Derive customer insights).
• Visibility: Blogs allow for sharing across multiple social technology channels and so does Gartner. It is an easy way to reach a wider audience. Through the use of, for example, a RSS feed, readers can be updated automatically and the content does not neccessarily need to be actively promoted anymore.  
  
  
  

  References: 

• McKinsey (2013). The Social Economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.

• Jackie Fenn (2009, August). Inside the Hype Cycle: What's Hot and What's Not in 2009. Retrieved from: http://my.gartner.com/it/content/1101800/1101817/august12_hype_cycle_final_jfenn.pdf

Enterprise 2.0 in Action: Internal Collaboration at Alcatel-Lucent

Last week, I introduced two extremely powerful web 2.0 tools and discussed how they might impact business productivity. In this week's blog post I'm going to present a real-life example of how a company - that is Alcatel Lucent - captures value through the use of Enterprise 2.0 technology.

A short introduction to the company

Alcatel-Lucent (hereafter AL), a merger of French Alcatel S.A. and US-American Lucent Technologies, is a multi-national company operating in the fields of telecommunications and networking applications and services. The company also owns Bell's Lab, which is a worldwide-recognized research institute.

 Source: Alcatel-Lucent (Marc Jadoul - http://de.slideshare.net/mjadoul/community-is-strenght-2012)

Enterprise 2.0 history at Alcatel-Lucent 

The first major web 2.0 tool emerged at AL in 2008 when Ask@Ben was introduced. Being some sort of modification of Yammer at that time, it mainly focused on interaction between the employees and the CEO. Soon, a lot of other tools such as an internal video channel and livechatting followed. However, as Dion Hinchcliffe points out in his blog, the use of many different channels became problematic so the company decided to integrate all of these tools in one (on Jive based) platform called Engage.

Source: Alcatel-Lucent (Jerome Colombe - http://de.slideshare.net/SocialBizForum/engage-within- the-digital-workplace-at-alcatel-lucent-jerome-colombe)

Creating Value

In 2012, the McKinsey Global Institute introduced 10 ways of how social technology can add value in organisations. These so-called value "levers" exist at multiple functional areas within the organisations (Product Development, Marketing & Sales etc.) as well as across the entire enterprise. 

Source: McKinsey Global Institute (http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_social_economy)

Brought in the company under the slogan Connect-Collaborate-Contribute and serving as the company's social intranet, Engage clearly creates value through its enterprise-wide impact (see lever 9 & 10). Let's have a more detailed look of what was achieved at AL:

• Efficiency: As AL is heavily relying on tacit knowledge in their organisation, it is important that the internal platforms and communication channels facilitate the knowledge transfer. Just 1 year after the implementation of Engage, AL reported a massive increase in knowledge-related capabilities.
  
• Reach: Social intranets and collaboration tools such as Engage remove the boundaries between departments in an organisation and offer an easy and effective way to address a majority of the workforce in order to gather insights. For example, AL's management used feedback from the community to set the agenda for their meetings.
• Other: I really liked the story of AL's marketing department using pictures which had been taken by employees and shared in one of the internal communities on Engage. The resulting cost-savings are a good example of the direct effects of internal collaboration tools. On ther other hand, I believe the highly intangible effects on for instance the corporate culture are often overlooked (there is a short quote about this by Marc Jadoul though). 

This week I'd like to know your opinion again: Would you agree with what I pointed out in the last sentence that the intangible benefits of Enterprise 2.0 tools are often overlooked? Do you think this is because it is difficult to measure?

References:

• Colombe, J. (2012). Engage with the Digital Workplace, presented at the Social Business Forum 2012
• Jadoul, M. (2013). Knowledge is Power, Community is Strength: Experiences with Social Intranet at Alcatel-Lucent, presented at the VOV workshop on Social Media (October 2012) and J. Boye Intranet Group (February 2013)
• McKinsey (2013). The Social Economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.

 

Two Web 2.0 Tools That Will Boost Your Productivity

I've stated in my last blog post that I've already came across the idea of social tools being used in a business setting before I started this course here at QUT. However, I quickly realized that I haven't really used a lot of them up until now (except the usual suspects such as Facebook, Google+ etc.) nor do I actually know what kind of different products/tools are out there in the large space of Enterprise 2.0. So I decided to have a closer look at some of the existing tools and, if possible, also get a hands-on experience. In this second blog post I'll introduce 2 of those powerful tools and provide insights how they might affect productivity at the workplace.

1. Bitrix24 

 

I've found this first really interesting tool on a blog by Jacob Morgan, who is a well-know publisher in the world of the future workplace and collaborative technology. Every Friday he writes about updates and announcements made by web 2.0 providers so it is definitely worth it to check out his website to learn more about other emerging tools. Back to the product: Bitrix24 essentially is an internal social network that incorporates project management, document sharing and even CRM in one integrated platform. Some experimenting with the free version of Bitrix24 supported my initial positive feeling about the product. I especially liked the ease of use and the multitude of features that they offer on one platform. For a more detailed overview of the product, watch this video:

 

So how exactly does it affect productivity? I bet we are all very well familiar with the situation of opening our e-mail accounts and just asking ourselves why communication can't be as simple as our private Facebook or WhatsApp. That is the part where Bitrix24 comes into play. Serving as the company's own social network, it offers an easier and faster way to communicate with fellow colleagues. More importantly, the information is becoming more visible and accesible.

Imagine I would have a great idea and would post it on my company's Bitrix24. The guys from an other department (which I probably never met before) really like the idea and have additional input so they immediately contact me via the messenger. Eventually we form a new workgroup, start managing the project and share documents via the platform. You see my point here: A tool such as Bitrix24 greatly promotes cross-organisational collaboration and in turn, enhances individual and group performance. 

2. Lithium 

 

The next example is a company that I am particularly excited about. Lithium offers three main products: online communities, social media management and social media analytics. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on their products but everything I could find on their website looked really promising. Again, check this video out to get a more detailed impression of what they are doing: 

How does Lithium affect productivity one might ask? The keyword here is customer engagement. In other words, the times when customers were nothing else than just a source of revenue are over. As more and more customers share their ideas, feedback and valuable insights across several online platforms, it has become increasingly important for companies to make use of this knowledge.

In their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (2006) discuss several new business models which are emerging due to the influence of mass collaboration tools. One of them is the idea of the 'Prosumer': a blend of the consumer and the actual producer. Let me give you an example how this idea links with the general concept of Lithium: This time, imagine I would be able to build an online community of dedicated customers who share their experiences and ideas with me. Let's say one of them comes up with an outstanding addition to the next product I am about to release and I eventually integrate his idea in the final product. In addition, I am able to quickly track, analyse and respond to all the feedback and questions about the new product coming in through different social network channels with the help of one integrated tool. That is the power of optimized customer engagement enabled by tools such as Lithium.

To round this week's blog post up I'd like to hear your opinion on the two presented web 2.0 providers. Do you think tools similar to those offered by Lithium are the next step in the Enterprise 2.0 development?

References:

• Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2006). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Portfolio.

Let's get started - The What, Why and How

"From Germany to Australia and now into the world of blogging..." or something along these lines was going through my mind when I was sitting in last week's lecture of INB346 Enterprise 2.0 - one of the four units I am following here at QUT during my exchange semester. Not that it was particularly surprising to me that one of the main objectives of this course would be to create and maintain a blog (Yes, I've indeed read the unit outline before I enrolled in this subject) - no, it rather reminded me of the same mixed feeling of curiosity and cluelessness I've experienced the day I stepped outside the airplane here in Brisbane.

So what is this all about?  

  

Similar to my semester abroad adventure, this blog will be a journey into the world of blogging. Since a blog can be literally anything ranging from a personal diary to an extensive literature review, I'll have to note that this project will be more of an academic nature rather than just for the pure fun of it. Just don't get me wrong here, I'll still try my best to keep it personal and refreshing opposed to some dry textbooks you might already have encountered during your years at school. More specifically, the theme of this blog will be centered around the numerous web 2.0 tools and/or their applications in a business context.

 

Why exactly this topic?

 

In general, I just simply really like the idea of how technology enables us to enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing both privately and for business purposes. So why then Enterprise 2.0? Even though writing an own blog is completely new to me, I already came across the concept of using blogs, wikis and other web 2.0 tools in an organizational setting in one of my previous courses at Maastricht University. Back then, it was already pretty interesting to learn about what wide variety of applications these tools have or still might have. Most importantly, my impression is (and the first guest lecture by Deloitte Digital actually showed) that there still is a remarkable amount of companies out there which do not use make use of such technologies.

How do I get this where I'd like it to be?

 

I imagine writing a blog for the sole purpose of getting a message across can be quite boring and sometimes even depressing (Is there anybody out there?). I believe it just completely misses the point of the interactive idea behind blogs and similar tools. Thus, my ultimate goal is to create some sort of discussion platform - that is, my blog posts being just the starting point for an interesting discussion.

To achieve this I'll try to follow several guidelines which I've found on Entrepreneur.com. They can be summarized under 3 key aspects:

1. Content: Content is king. I'll try to find popular yet controversial topics to make it as interesting and inviting as possible for the (potential) readers of this blog. This might also very well include compelling pictures and videos that add value to the content. 
2. Engagement: As this blog is designed to ultimately serve more as a trigger for discussion it'll be crucial to engage with other fellow bloggers - in this case, especially with other students within the course community.
3. Promotion: Although this one is close to the 2nd point, promotion is more meant in a sense of spreading and sharing the blog on other social media sites such as Facebook and Google+ to hopefully attract one or two more readers. 

 

Any good blogs I'd recommend?

To be honest, up until now I'm not really following a lot of blogs - 2 in total to be precise: the TEDBlog (the guys that feature those great talks) and the blog of the Entrepreneur magazine. Both blogs offer diverse and rich content including inspiring stories as well as useful tips and tricks. I also really like the simple yet effective design of the two pages. After all, the layout of a blog certainly also plays an important role in the success of a blog.

So that's it for the first blog post. I'd like to conclude today's post with a poll to already get some of the planned engagement started - Thank you for reading, stay tuned and don't hesitate to leave some feedback/comments.

How many blogs do you follow on a recent basis?