Hello Readers!
Update from my previous blog post: For those of you who are interested, the dachshund (Invader), who needed adopting from the RSPCA is no longer available on their website which gives me high hopes that someone has adopted him- yay!
So after that positive note, I will get into the guts of what our task is for this week. We were required to select an organisation from the Professional Services Sector and discuss how they are using a blog, twitter or wiki to enhance their business, of course with connections to relevant value levers from the McKinsey Report that we are all familiar with now!
The organisation I have selected from the Professional Services sector is BCM Partnership. BCM is now one of Australia’s largest advertising and integrated marketing communication organisations, and are an organisation that I personally follow on their social media platforms (they have a plethora of interesting pages).
As well as having a visually pleasing and well designed website, or at least I think so anyway, they also have an official Facebook page, Twitter page and Blog. However, while I could not find any wiki pages affiliated with BCM- it is always possible that they could use a wiki as an internal tool to assist in collaboration among different members of staff or organisational areas.
As an advertising and IMC business, BCM has to be a heavily socially active organisation to not only be able to communicate work of their clients, but also develop new business or attract customers. Twitter alone has reported having over 200 million active users, that amount of potential target markets and influence is a huge incentive for any organisation in the professional services sector.
I definitely feel that BCM are optimising on this with their twitter account and blog posts, and if they weren’t they would ultimately be lagging behind their competitors in the advertising/marketing arena, as well diminishing their chances of the types of clients they may be able to attract, such as one of their current clients, QUT. As QUT is the ‘university for the real world’, I doubt that if BCM was not engaged in up-to-date applications and marketing practices, such as those of social technologies, that QUT would have hired them (I am not saying QUT hired them just because they use twitter and blogs, so hopefully you understand what I mean).
Source: BCM Partnership Website
Two of the value levers of social technologies that I think are particularly relevant to BCM and their blog posts and twitter feed are: using social technologies for marketing communication/ interaction and deriving customer insights.
Blogging and Twittering allows BCM to share and spread marketing communication messages (of their own and their clients) on a large scale level for relatively no cost at all, that in itself is a huge benefit. But, the two-way communication that this enables allows for people to feel involved in the conversation and contribute their thoughts and opinions. BCM interacts with their followers on twitter and in blog posts, by asking them questions, responding to queries, as well as sharing tips to the marketing/ advertising community about how to be more successful in that area. By BCM responding to people’s thoughts (even the negative ones) they are fostering some of the key affordances of social technology such as participation and transparency.
What I particularly like about their blog and twitter posts is that they add to their credibility as knowledgable professionals in the field by coming up with new ideas and topics on a daily basis.
Source: BCM Twitter Feed
While at the same time, they as an organisation seem relate-able from the way they present and word content (such as this blog post of theirs about mediocre superpowers), their work is not shovelling marketing content and how great they are down your throat all the time, and to me that’s really using social technologies to enhance a business and its in a smart way. What do you think?
Thanks again for taking the time to read through my blog post! I appreciate any feedback or comments you have for me.
References:
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