Marriott International - Corporate Blog Excellence

Marriott International manages and franchises properties around the world, as a leading hospitality company of Hotel development. "On the Move" is one of the most well known corporate blogs internationally as the chairman Bill Marriott himself publishes weekly articles.

The amazing insights and advice of a billionaire are rare to come by at a personal level, one of many strengths this Marriott blog pertains. The high quality of content provided at a personal level is how they have won the hearts of millions of followers. Sharing his insights on running business internationally, the hotel industry, personal life milestones and open discussions about business ideas etc. The brutal and refreshing honesty of the posts following his sons death and his own heart attacks open readers eyes and have lead to the solidification of the blogs popularity. 

It can be seen on the Marriott blog various web 2.0 strategies employed, such as the hashtag searches and keywords used in content provided allowing readers to easily find various posts based on keyword search.

"Social Technology levers" identified in McKinsey Global Institute in 2012 are as follows:

Family business blog
The Marriott blog fits into the Family business category of 'customer service' by providing years upon years of experience in the business industry.

The Marriott has embraced the plethora of social media platforms available to them. The latest enterprise 2.0 strategy to be combined with marketing is creating an incentive for members to share their 'stories' made whilst staying at the Marriott. Creating a loyalty program to go viral, incentivising members to connect their friends, colleagues, friends and family to the Marriott's Tweets, Instagram posts, Foursquare check-ins can earn them potentially 2,000 points per month. Members can see their points accumulate instantly. The Marriott news center report on Share, like, tweet, repeat...Get Marriott rewards 'Plus Points' can read here. 

Bill has greatly increased the Marriotts marketing and sales online by becoming an authority online. Marriott has reported to generate millions of direct sales a result of Bills authenticity shared on the Marriott blog. During times of crisis or emergency Bill tries to provide unbiased reports and advice for members of the community. Marriott has clearly utilised the blog medium very well to build their brand online.

Lessons learned from Marriott blog highlight the appreciation and need for experts to share their knowledge with the world. The sharing of your expertise on your personal domain can bring traffic to your website, build your reputation and brand online. 

IBM Implementing Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0

Since the emergence of Enterprise 2.0 the organisational paradigms of online marketing and customer service have shifted to increase the quality of the business value chain. The concept of Enterprise 2.0 is the utilisation of social media platforms. As well as implementing Web 2.0 techniques, tools and services such as, RSS feeds, tagging and sharing within the enterprise. These may be made in the form of wikis and blogs that can accessed through the company intranet. Externally, customers are invited to view the corporate blogs and wikis if they wish to review further information about products and services (Andrew P, 2007).

IBM have taken advantage of features provided by social media platforms and software facilitating the implementation of web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 practices. IBM have encouraged the collaboration and contribution through company wikis. See Figure 1 for example, IBM have created wikis and blogs containing developer tutorials with the option for discussion and syndication via the RSS feeds. Through the RSS feeds customers can receive notifications instantly about the launch of new products. IBM currently have over 17,000 blogs, there are guidelines but IBM allows self regulation by staff members, they are asked to flag what is deemed to be inappropriate. Employees have stated that they enjoy the freedom provided by IBM's blogging platform. 

IBM employees utilise Twitter and LinkedIn for enhanced customer service. Their objective to use crowdsourcing to bring employees, partners, clients to facilitate powerful idea sharing (Casey Hibbard, 2010). Then projects are promoted, employees advance conversations using tags and hashtag searching to answer client questions etc. Which has grown to over 50,000 alum networks on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Benefits received post Enterprise 2.0 implementation.

Accessing corporate data faster. 

IBM employees and stakeholders are able to access organisational data that is stored via their Enterprise 2.0 systems. The increase of Wifi and 3G networks has also connected the data to users mobile devices. Data received is relevant, fast and up to date from any location however this is only made possible through a connection of the internet. 

Receiving notifications instantly.

Users are no longer required to constantly return to your website to check for updates. RSS feeds provided through the blogs and wikis instantly notify users on their computers and cell phones of any updates. 

Improved efficiency and expenses reduced. 

The employment of the enterprise 2.0 practices the process to share information has become less expensive. Enterprises 2.0 services are simpler to install and integrate compared to previous predecessors and some web 2.0 services are free-of-charge.

A senior executive of IBM states that he believes in the importance of their employees being smarter, which is done by providing them with all the tools and services required (Casey Hibbard, 2010). What are your favourite mediums for accessing information and company data? Do you believe more companies should adopt this approach of employing Enterprise 2.0 tools and services? Leave a comment below.


References:
How IBM uses social media to spur employee innovation (February 2, 2010). Casey Hibbard. Retrieved 26th August 2014 from:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-ibm-uses-social-media-to-spur-employee-innovation/ 

Enterprise 2.0 the dawn of Emergent collaboration. (April 1, 2007). Andrew P Retrieved 26th August 2014 from: 
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/enterprise-the-dawn-of-emergent-collaboration/

"Social Computing: Maximizing the power of Web 2.0": Learn how to maintain influence and build acceptance for your ideas in this developerWorks article, August 2007. Retrieved 26th August 2014 from: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ar-soccomp/

The power of social media and business - Option 2

Following the search for different enterprises that utilise enterprise 2.0 social media platforms. I discovered Herschel Supply Co and Esencial Marketing Network that of which experienced exponential business growth since their successful adoption of Hootsuite, Facebook and Wordpress blogs. 

The first example is Herschel Supply Co, producing high quality travel bags, backpacks and accessories etc. As many businesses tackle the challenge of continuously turning over stock whilst ensuring customer satisfaction. Herschel's objective was to answer every customer inquiry through every medium possible, both direct and nondirect. Hootsuite is a platform where multiple social media accounts can be organised all at once. Through it companies can enhance their user engagement, listening, analytics and collaboration. It is best used for managing and scheduling social media outreaches such as the publication of photos and updates on automation, saving companies time and resources. Hootsuite enabled Herschel to set up a search stream of their business keywords and hashtags such as #Herschel. Facilitating the fast connection between the Herschel representatives and the customers on a personal level. Herschel experienced a dramatic increase in positive customer response instantly. Whilst experiencing more efficient project management, reducing the emails received and increased productivity.

For further information about their success, find more Hootsuite case studies here.

The second example is Esencial Marketing Network (EMN) an up and coming Australian company focused on teaching entrepreneurs and small business owners how to market their businesses online, specialising in lead generation strategies through the utilisation of social media, primarily focusing on Facebook. EMN have a private Facebook group where all of their members can ask each other questions anytime like an open support group, members find that their questions are answer immediately if not by one of the corporate team members then one of the knowledgeable members try to answer their questions. It is also a place where everyone can share documentation that may be beneficial for other members. 

EMN show members how to use Google hangouts for collaborative work and a training medium for one-on-one consultations. Their primary objective is to help their members grow their business, so they provide members with an all-in-one marketing platform. This platform consists of mobile marketing, email marketing, voice broadcasting and social media tools. For example members can create custom Facebook tabs for squeeze pages, sales pages or for promotional material exposure. Increasing business exposure in the market place.



Since the adoption of social media platforms 89% of marketers stated that their exposure was dramatically increased by the benefits received from social media marketing (Yasmin Bendror, 2014). It appears social media is bridging the gap between businesses and their customers personally on a daily basis. In the future could be saturation experienced? I think businesses will need to continuously find more ways to stand out above the crowd as more businesses make the transition to these online platforms. 

References: 

Want to Grow your business online? Secrets from Herschel Supply Co. (June, 2014.) Sam Milbrath. Retrieved on the 25th August 2014. From:

http://blog.hootsuite.com/herschel-supply-case-study/

Why Social Media Is so important for your business in 2014. (10 February 2014). Yasmin Bendror. Retrieved on the 25th August 2014. From:
http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-important-business-2014-0773321#!bJSDdn 

Value based Marketing: How to increase your blog readership!

Hello and warm welcome from Rachelle Taylor!

First of all thank you for visiting my blog, really appreciate it!

I’ve created this blog to become an informative platform for QUT's Enterprise 2.0 subject, where we can interact, ask each other questions and work together to create new innovative ideas. I hope that you gain some valuable knowledge about Internet marketing here, as I have previous online marketing blogging experience.

In our society today, mastering online marketing is the defining difference between the success and failure of various businesses. Blogs are perfect mediums to provide the community with information, if they are done correctly, simply posting content with no strategy will not suffice. These blogs come in various forms; personal and corporate. I personally like to call them your '24/7 sales representative that never sleeps.' However, Ignite social media states that there are over 144,275,043 since 2010 and thousands more coming to 2014. The competition is growing and there are only so many spaces on the front page of Google. This vast growing number pushes bloggers to utilise new strategies to stay current. Which is why this blog post will be highlighting different strategies that can be used to engage your audience and how to drive traffic to your blog.

How I intend on providing value?

This post aims to provide value by providing strategies, that are easy to understand and implement for people that may have little or any experience with building their online brand and presence.

This is also known as value based marketing. Providing value to the audience for free is one of the best ways to build a relationship with your audience. I intend on providing valuable information, which is straight to the point, clear and concise. Followed by a distinct call to action at the end of each message.

Strategies for obtaining readership

Listed below are various methods to obtain and grow readership (I will try to use all of these methods except for Guest blog posting until this university subject is completed):

1. Turn on/Install social media sharing plugins and applications. When you find something that you believe will provide value to your friends it's best to share the article link with them via social media i.e Facebook, Twitter and Google+ increasing its likelihood to go VIRAL!

2. Guest blog posting is where a third-party blogger writes a post to be published on your blog to provide information that they specialise in. A fantastic example of this is Elite Daily, they have a number of different authorises to cater to their wide audience ranging from multimillionaire entrepreneurs to relationship experts. 

3. Search engine optimisation (SEO) longer term method, facilitating the faster discovery of your blog posts to the search engines such as Google and Yahoo. This organic method of ranking will provide free traffic to your website but you are required to become an authoritative and relevant resource. This is done by placing the appropriate keywords in your heading (header tags), body and meta tags of your blog, further information can be read here.

4. Word of mouth (direct marketing) is a fast and effective way to advertise the existence of your blog. Inviting friends to visit your blog by providing them with the direct link.

5. Create an account with link building mediums. Your time is PRECIOUS, so stream line the process of creating back links to your website. This works in conjunction with SEO, there are free and paid methods that can be found here. Some of the websites only require you to enter your URL once and then it can be posted to as many other social media accounts you have all at once.

6. Turn on commenting, I would like to personally invite you to talk to me doing this!

7. Create a video that compliments your blog post. Uploading your video on Youtube first and then embedding it in your blog posts is highly beneficial. Videos are proven to make readers stay on your website longer. It enables you to create a back link on a highly authoritative website such as Youtube.com and you can possibly drive traffic from your Youtube Channel to your website directly (free method).

8. Create strategic partnerships. Agreeing to promote and exchange/ping back blogs that may provide a different service or goal to yourself but still have similar audiences. This way you do not have conflicting interests and two different parties can benefit at once. This can be seen on various fitness Instagram accounts, a great example of this is a fitness workshop and a famous body builder named Lyzabeth Lopez.

The proposed discussion topic is open below....

Blogging platforms such as blogger.com and wordpress.com are free and have a user-friendly interfaces for non-technical savvy people. Which brings me to these questions because most of these platforms have the similar structures and they haven't changed much over the years... What do you think more blogs need to grab reader’s attention? Are there any missing key functionalities to make our user interface more engaging? What would you like to see in the future, in terms of blogging or self-promotion methods and branding online? If you have a blog that you would like me to read please post it in a comment below.

References

Autumm Morris. (August 5, 2010.) 2010 Blogging Trends: THere's only enough room in the Blogsphere for the 144 Million of Us [Web log] Retrieved August 1 ,2014, from:

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-media-trends/2010-blogging-trends-blog-growth-statistics/