Toyota-Unlock the Value of Blog

Toyota is one of largest automobile manufacturers in the world. From the Toyota annual report in 2013, the evidence shows that Toyota has an overall revenue increase of 18.7%, compared with the prior fiscal year. Most important, the company has steady revenue growth in Asia, North America and Europe respectively. What makes it successful can be traced back to company’s philosophy which is ‘customer first’.  It can be well explained that Toyota aims to deliver customer-oriented automotive products and services to delight their customers.

Refer to the 10 levers theory from McKinsey (2013), derive customer insights and use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction are two levers across organizational functions of marking and sales. Blog provides opportunities to Toyota’s marketing and sales in building and fostering relationships.

It is not hard to find Toyota has embraced social technologies as their communication mediums with their customers. Blog is one of the social tools where they have company’s philosophy embedded in.

Toyota UK blog as an example of how they unlock the value of social tools was launched in one of multiple blogs in various countries. This blog has clearly categorized information related with Toyota into several functions. They have news from official departments, features of new motors and stories from owners, events, range of cars’ descriptions and stories and motor-sport. 

And especially, they have a community that opens to owners or someone interested to share Toyota stories on the blog, which positively engages customers to participate to the big Toyota community sharing stories. It also gives Toyota opportunities to listen to customers what they want from them. Because of this, it also gains customers insights to improve own business, but it also attracts potential clients or partners who might be interested in new Toyota techs, which might form new relationships that create revenue opportunities for the company. 

Moreover, Toyota UK blog does integrate other social technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube etc. in their blog to expand popularity and influences and to publish information about new technologies, events or customers’ stories.   

In general, Toyota has realized the potential value of blog that could bring to the company. And they well explained philosophy of ‘customer first’ by using social technologies as a communicating platform between the organization and customers.

Reference

Toyota. (2013). Annual Report 2013. Retrieved from http://www.toyota-global.com/investors/ir_library/annual/pdf/2013/

McKinsey. (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies. Retrieved from https://about.yammer.com/assets/MGI_The_social_economy_Full_Report2.pdf

New Sight of Domino’s Pizza

Domino’s Pizza enterprise is one of the largest pizza chains in Australia in terms of physical store numbers and network sales. The most amazing things that appeal audience are not only by their multiple choices of pizza but also by their new ways of operating pizza business. Domino’s pizza launched Pizza Magul to advocate co-creation of pizza with customers, which potentially increases the innovation of product development and expands their market through social network by different pizza creators. Apart from Pizza Magul, Domino’s also provides online booking app on Facebook that makes more visible on social network platform. 

1) Pizza Magul – A new strategy of product development and marketing

Pizza Magul is a co-creation initiative launched by Domino’s. It engages customers to design their own pizza and share it with others through social networks. The creator of this pizza can get paid from 25 cents to 3.25 dollars per pizza sold. And also he/she can donate a percentage of sales to charity. 

Embedding co-creation into product development as mentioned in McKinsey's report (2013, p 34-37), Domino’s is able to accept more innovative ideas on making pizzas that attract people with diverse preference tastes. And co-creation of product development enables customer as a member of Domino’s community, which could increase their motivation to have entrepreneurial opportunity by earning commissions through social network. Domino’s utilizes social selling as a new powerful tool for increasing revenue and advertising.  Creators share their creativities on social networks, which enables Domino’s to tap on a bigger market share.

2) Facebook Domino’s Pizza Ordering

 

In 2012, Domino’s launched Facebook Ordering in Australia and New Zealand (Messieh, 2012). Domino's had provided online booking and mobile app on their website. But this time, they decided to offer online booking on one of the most popular social networks – Facebook. Using this Facebook online booking does let users automatically publish status on their timeline, so friends will know what he/she booked. If the user does like the pizza and would like to share it on Facebook. Because of the word-of-mouth effect, it will bring more people to try the new service. The number of Facebook online booking is growing due to ‘like’ Pizza and share this social network experience with friends. 

Compared with traditional online booking in these days, using social network as deliver stream for products sales could make stronger capability of communication and interaction within the customer's community (McKinsey, 2013, p38-39) . With the benefits of a large amount of users, it is much easier to expand scales of marketing and sales. Besides, it is a way of saving expenses on advertisement, since using particular social network is relatively lower than other traditional media for organizations. 

Reference

Nancy Messieh. 2012. Domino’s doubles-down on social, launches Facebook ordering in     Australia and New Zealand. Retrieved from http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/05/09/dominos-doubles-down-on-social-launches-facebook-ordering-in-australia-and-new-zealand/

McKinsey. (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies. Retrieved from https://about.yammer.com/assets/MGI_The_social_economy_Full_Report2.pdf

Social Technology Leads To New World

Background

Back to ten years ago, it was my first time to use computer as a communication tool. However, it was one-way communication with the computer. It was very exciting for me to control all the behaviors of computer such as copy, paste or move documents by entering particular commands which seemed like UNIX.

Nowadays, the fast pace development of IT has shifted the way of communication, working or studying to social network in our life, as millions of people joined online communities and started using online social platforms. 

Theories about social technologies

Refer to McKinsey Global Institute’s report (2013, p 7-8), social technologies have several characteristics that enable value creation activities.

• Involve interactions among people.
• Enable social behaviors to take place online which is a mean of getting rid of geographic or time zones constraints.
• Provide platforms for content creation, distribution, and consumption, also including value co-creation (e.g. Google Doc allows a group of people create and edit one document in the same platform instead of completing documents in traditional ways).

There are two social tools that we might feel useful when studying in university. Let’s have a look how these tools reflect the value creation of social technologies.

Evernote

Evernote is a suite of digital notebooking application supported by numerous operating systems such as iOS, Microsoft Windows, Android, and Blackberry.  The company also offers online synchronization and backup services, so all notes could be shared and saved among different devices and users. Furthermore, I found it is really helpful with the self-productivity as it has multiple functions:

1)    Organizing files

Evernote is a perfect “notebook” to store all the materials needed for any project and manage the ideas, deliverables and deadlines. By attaching different tags, it is easier to find notes. Also, search and discovery function is powerful enough to locate words, images and documents.

2)    File attachments

As a digital notebook, file attaching function allows users to insert webpages; photographs; PDFs; and voice memos.  This massive integrates all possible utilities into one which save me a lot of time in capturing ideas and save interesting information.

3)    Notes sharing and syncing

Whenever to work alone, or with a team, Evernote makes it easy to send important information to team members or friends with Shared Notebooks. It also allows peer editing and lets collaboration in capturing big ideas or finishing tasks more easily.

There are more amazing features of Evernote waiting for exploited. Check this video:

Dropbox

Dropbox is a file hosing service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud and client software. It allows me to store any documents in their cloud drive and access these documents from most popular media such as computers, iPhone, iPad, and the web. However, the most appealing parts of this software provide sharing, links, events functions other than personal storage, which allows people to co-operate with each other in one platform and in real time.

1)   Sharing: I can create a folder in dropbox and invite my group members in this folder, the folder will appear inside their dropbox and syncs documents whenever or whoever takes actions on the doc. Compared with traditional file sharing methods such as USB, email or Bluetooth, dropbox is able to provide more efficient online file storing and sharing method. 

2) Links: I can create a link to any file or folder and send this link to anyone I want to share with no need to access dropbox. It is beneficial for some team members who want to view files but are not willing to install or sign up dropbox.

3) Events: Within Events, I can monitor any changes made on the dropbox folders by anyone linked. Most important, I am able to restore any documents or folders that someone deletes them without caution.

Reference 

McKinsey (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies. Retrieved from https://about.yammer.com/assets/MGI_The_social_economy_Full_Report2.pdf 

Evernote. (2014, August 11).  5 Tips to Manage Your Freelance Career with Evernote [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.evernote.com/shard/s419/sh/b2983e0c-4eeb-4b39-8e0b-0ed523b1ba86/71a7f5250f3bd73fa35b269eff92bca8

Evernote Scott. (2012, April 12). Evernote Tips: The 11 Amazing Features That Make Using Evernote So Freaking Awesome [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce2_gWZHBIs

HELLO BLOG :)

It is very exciting to have an official blog that potentially has plenty of people (students, workers, professionals etc.) using it for different purposes. I was inspired to have my first blog by Mr Callam Porch who is in profession of social networking.  

Why I am blogging?

1) Information sharing – Blog defined as web log based on the World Wide Web creates the opportunity for people from culturally diverse backgrounds with various interests to share opinions, specific topics of interest, expertise on everything. I think blog is one way to express and communicate our thoughts with others. This could help me obtain valuable information from others’ comments on my blog. 

2) Relationships building – Blog is able to provide source to deepen the connection with readers, and sometimes, readers might be your potential employee or employer. By browsing and commenting on your website, they possibly have further understanding of you, including ability of constructing thoughts and personal opinions on specific affairs. Because of that, I do also believe blog is the place to show our talent to wider potential employers.

3) Engagement development – Blog could create a community with people in the same interests. Through commenting your blog, they might have sympathetic response in one thing which is likely just the start of building relationship with readers. Sometimes, this kind of relationship (readership) keeps readers returning to your blog and also engages you to publish better content.

How can be a successful blogger? 

Here I will describe my understanding of how to create useful posts and strategies for obtaining readership based on several bloggers opinions and my past experience in other social networking platforms. 

• Think and research thoroughly before posting – Personally, I am responsible for what I will post and have to respect readers who take time to read my posts. In order to achieve that, I believe thorough research on the topic from professional or informal information sources would build my own comprehensive and objective understanding of the topic.

• Welcome all positive and negative commenting – Positive comments would definitely encourage me to insist what I am doing. In the same time, negative comments from people who might not agree with you would also follow with positive ones. 
By viewing these negative comments sometimes offer me an opportunity to see other sides of the world because people who hold other arguments might help me to have a better understating of the thing. Moreover, negative comments sometimes also keep me to desire more and more readers’ compliments. Thus, personally speaking, a blogger who can accept either ones can be successful and make himself/herself better and better.

• To be more familiar with blogging techniques – A nice or special layout might be one of the reasons that most viewers keep returning to the sites. How to attract people to read posts not only depends on the content but also depend on visualization and functionalities of the sites. For instance, people prefer blog who provides the function of sharing post with others in Facebook or other social network platforms by clicking buttons on the site. 

Blog Star

In addition, SIXPACK SHOTCUTS found by Mike Chang who aims to share the best techniques for getting a ripped body and six pack abs either in the gym or home. He regularly posts his own efficient workout techniques and videos on the site. In the first beginning, I am not sure whether what he posts work on me or not, until one day I was amazed that he uploaded several fans’ videos showing their amazing results after following his workout tutorials. Now, I have grasped many necessary workout tips and could make myself feel fresh after intensive workouts either in the gym or home. 

It is really amazing that he shares his expertise on fitness and helps numerous people get rid of unsatisfied body and unhealthy diet by accessing his blog or Youtube channel. This sharing spirit also inspires me to do the right thing and share my own enjoyable things or expertise with others on my first blog. 


Here is his sample video showing how to get chest and back workout at home with just a pair of dumbbells.