POST 7:TIMES OF INDIA: Leading Newspaper of India Victimizing Celebs

Hello Friends,

  This week I am gonna talk about a premier news organisation in India that has used Social media as a playground for manifesting stories which victimizes vulnerable individuals. 

The TIMES OF INDIA (aka TOI) is a major brand of 'THE TIMES GROUP (also known as Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd.)'. This company was founded centuries ago on 3rd November,1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal during British rule in INDIA. After the independence of India, the ownership of the paper was passed on to then famous Industrial family of Dalmiyas and then later on it was overtook by Sahu Jain family. 

 After almost 172 years, the company has successfully acquired following assets:

• 16 Publishing Centers
• 15 Printing centers
• 55 sales offices
• 5 dailies including two of the largest in the country with approx 4.3 million copies circulated daily
• 2 lead magazines
• 29 niche magazines reaching 2468 cities and towns
• 32 Radio Stations

 In addition to this, it has almost 11,000 employees with over $1.5 billion+ revenue. TOI is the largest India's daily selling Newspaper and besides this it is also the world's highest selling English newspaper in terms of circulation.

Being the top selling newspaper in INDIA, it covers and supports all the major changes going on in the country. One of the recent one is Women Empowerment. TOI has supported this matter on all of its  social websites ( twitter, Facebook, TOI app and blog). But since last few weeks, the always good quality newspaper has lost a huge number of readers and subscribers because of its hippocratic comment on two leading actress of Bollywood in India. 

TOI has badly spoiled their No. 1 newspaper of nation reputation by making headline like: 

                           "OMG: DEEPIKA PADUKONE CLEAVAGE SHOW"

The anger and disappointment of readers from such a top quality daily is clearly visible in their following comments:

Following video shows the view point from both TOI and the leading actress:

TOI hits back on Deepika Padukone cleavage controversy

TOI thinks the former Miss World has ugly legs and she should cover it up

There are lots of comments and insults pouring for TOI on their Facebook page and thousands of tweets regarding such a comment and their support for women empowerment. The above videos clearly shows that TOI continuously tries to defend their point in spite of apologizing of changing mindset. There tweets and comments on Facebook not only affects the reader of TOI but it affects the NATION as well. This embraces lots of intangible dis-benefits like increase of women disrespect, forbidding women to live their life, creating stress for women, overlooking their capabilities and talent at the cost of their clothes, etc.

SO these contradicting articles are flourishing the multimedia stage. With magazines and newspapers posting pics of celebs privates or dressing sense, which reach the more backward minded individuals of society compared to the women empowerment messages uploaded onto twitter and Facebook that's aimed at a forward thinking India. This is CLEAR misuse of social media for the purpose of cheap attention by such a reputable brand in a country where people are starving. 

I clearly feel TOI should apologize and in future not publish such news as headlines, as there's lot other things happening in a country which is worth becoming a headline. Also they shouldn't misuse the benefits of social sites by avoiding to tweet in way that can affect someone's personal space.

What do you guys think, Is this really a publicity stunt? If yes then of movie stars or the Newspaper publishers?

Reference:

Bollywoodlife.com. (2014a, 25 September 2014). Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is a 'hot babe with ugly legs', says Times of India.   Retrieved 5, from http://www.bollywoodlife.com/news-gossip/aishwarya-rai-bachchan-is-a-hot-babe-with-ugly-legs-says-times-of-india/#!1/3_233/

Bollywoodlife.com. (2014b, 22 Spetember 2014). Times of India’s answer to Deepika Padukone open letter over cleavage controversy.   Retrieved 25 September 2014, 2014, from http://www.bollywoodlife.com/news-gossip/times-of-indias-answer-to-deepika-padukone-open-letter-over-cleavage-controversy/

INDIA, T. T. O. (2008). REVIEWS.   Retrieved 25TH sEPTEMBER, 2014, from https://www.facebook.com/TimesofIndia?sk=reviews

INDIA, T. T. O. (Producer). (2014, 25 September 2014). Cleavage controversy: TOI hits back at Deepika Padukone. Retrieved from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/celebs/Cleavage-controversy-TOI-hits-back-at-Deepika-Padukone/videoshow/43158971.cms

Tellychakkar.com. (2014). Deepikapadukone.   Retrieved 25th September 2014, 2014, from https://twitter.com/search?q=%23deepikapadukone&src=tyah

POST 6: The Fresh Food People return for the people...

Hey guys,

  For post 6, I am bringing to you good old WOOLIES and their determination to utilize social media as a tool for growth of the organization and for supporting the working class people of Australia.

 Firstly lets start off with the brief overview of implementation of social media by Woolworths Ltd. to expand their business. As it was tough to attain an financial documentation which represented the company's exact benefit from utilization of social media, we will assume certain parameters such as the benefit and profitability gain from the online sale recorded in years 2010-2011. Reasons behind a choice of these two particular years is that during the year 2011 Woolworths Ltd. was freshly rolling out the online sale portal for BIG W, their largest online merchandise retailer.

 Woolworths has initiated different avenues of virtual media to get the recognition of the market through Facebook, Twitter ( still under construction), Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram.

 From the FY 2010 to the FY 2011, there is a significance of E2.0 being implemented in the organisation. These results in tangible benefits like mentioned below:

• A 63% increase in the online sales of Woolworths Ltd. products in FY11

• The large wholesale liquor giant Dan Murphy going online in March 2011  

• 'Cellarmasters' acquisition expanding the already strong liquor sector of the organisation

• Woolworths online geographical capacity to exceed 85% of the Australian population

• Incredible growth within BIG W's online sales from the initial launch of the site in May 2010

• The Indian online branch also netting in a cool 26% sales rise

• BIG W’s ‘Big Catch’ and ‘Daily Deal' becoming major trending aspects online for e-shoppers

• The Dick Smith Electronics revamped with the new  ‘Click & Collect’ service being available to Australian consumer

In addition to this there are intangible benefits in the company's future share price through added value in the strong recent performance of the company. This falls on the back of the satisfied customers.

 Lets have a look at impact of getting social in business on ROI (Return of Investment) of Woolworth. From the anuual report of Woolworth for FY 2010 - FY 2011, we got following numbers:

ONLINE SALES = $34,675m

COST of OPERATIONS(the total cost of employees)= $6,262m

GROSS MARGIN (24%) , specified by annual reports has increased from 21% (2010) to 24% (2011)

This increase has clearly shown the value of social media impact on the sales of the products. 

Net Revenue= 0.24*34675=%=$8,322m

Net Cost=$6,262m

   ROI= (8322-6262)/6262*100 = 32.9%

With a return of 32.9% the future of Social media as a source to maximal the profits of Woolworths looks very bright and flourishing. The Company has looked to invest more into the risk of implementing future cash flow into the social media channels in order to attain a greater market share. Currently in Australia Woolworths is the largest and most successful supermarket giant. However in order to keep the online customers it has enlisted social media to keep the online consumers happy by providing delivery services and "click and collect" facilities. 

The risk associated with introducing an online supermarket was no so major as most other major leading supermarkets such as Coles had already initiated their own campaigns. It was mandatory that Woolworths meet the demand and enter a level playing field with Coles. The Risks associated with the initial adaption of the idea to promote more online shopping paid of well for the multi million dollar giant. 

Woolworths has many dispatch facilities and warehouses around Australia which are used to house the goods for the supermarkets. With the increased online demand it has not put any further burden on the supermarkets but become a smooth transition with effective supply-chain management solutions being put into place. 

That's all for this week friends...I will be happy to receive your feedback and suggestions incase I have missed out some part of calculations... :)

Reference:

LIMITED, W. (2014). Response to Competition Review Issues Paper.

LIMITIED, W. (2014). WOOLWORTHS LIMITED PRELIMINARY FINAL REPORT -LISTING RULE 4.3A. Sydney, NSW.

Supermarkets, W. (1997- 2013). The fresh food peoples Woolworths. from http://www.woolworths.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/webSite/Woolworths/

POST 5:Awesome mixture of RETAIL and SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY

Hello friends, while researching about retail companies that have used social technologies in their business, I have come across one awesome example that not only uses social technology but is actually existing because of social technology. 

Yes I am talking about 'THREADLESS'.  Threadless is basically an apparel company, a company that makes it fuzzy to decide who's the company and who's the customer. This company was started in 2000 by Jack Nickell and Jacob Dehart (no longer with the company) with just $1,000 of their own, based in Chicago, Illinois. 

This company has an online community of artists that creates designs. All the artists are welcomed to enter into contest and submit their design. These designs are then made public for public vote. The designs with most number of votes and community feedback is selected and printed on clothes, phone cover cases, mugs and other products and sold worldwide through the online store and their retail store in Chicago. The artist is whose work is selected for printing is rewarded with $2,000 in cash and $500 in Threadless giftcards that can be exchanged for $200 cash. Each time a design is reprinted, the respective artist will receive $500 cash.

This company has beautifully used many Mckinsey organisational functions like Product Development, Business Support, Marketing and Sales. The company has   account in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Google+ and Flickr. Facebook has 866,838 likes and is regularly updated with the new contest, promotions, sales, winners and request from subscribers for reprinting of some T-shirts. The core success of this company lies behind its blog and Facebook page which attract more artists to submit their design and attract more customer to fund the artists. Most of the people visiting Threadless are willing buyers. To keep them coming back, company devised few incentive schemes like upload a photo of yourself wearing Threadless T-shirt and you will receive store credit if $1.50. Such marketing strategies resulted in sales of 1,550 T-shirts on a typical day. On a one day sale in this spring, company sold 35,000 T-shirts that gave company a  good number of new visitors on a long term scale. The new visitors are encouraged to start blogs, upload their photos, leave flirty comments and also signup for Threadless newsletter. Every week the newsletter is delivered to 370,000 email addresses and 75% are actually opened to check the new designs available. 

In 2000, Threadless printed t-shirts every few months. By 2004, the company started printing new t-shirts every week. Soon in 2006, the company that was started with $1,000 jumped to $6.5 million revenue. Soon the company was associated with crowdsourcing term. In 2008, the company got listed on the cover page on Inc. as 'THE MOST INNOVATIVE SMALL COMPANY IS AMERICA'. Customer play a very critical role in the operations of company including idea generation, marketing, sales forecasting and all that has been distributed.

In 2010, a book was published named "Threadless: Ten years of T-shirts from the World's Most Inspiring Online Design Community" by Jack Nickell that throws light on the decade of Threadless designs, their artists, interviews with many of the designers and detailed story on how company achieved such heights and success.

Below video shows few funny designs of Threadless T-shirt:

Wow...I got one more site for my shopping....Studying E2.0 is so fun...I feel like lets start my own company with friends...lol...

Reference:

Baer, J. (2008-2014). Threadless Shares 10 Years of Insights and Inspiration.

CIHLAR, R. (2010). 4 Reasons Threadless Owns Social Media and Community.  MAY 27, 2010 from http://www.trada.com/blog/threadless-social-media-marketing/

Threadless. (2014a).  Retrieved from http://blog.threadless.com/tagged/news

Threadless. (2014b). from https://twitter.com/threadless

Threadless. (2014c). Threadless Clothing. from https://www.facebook.com/threadless

POST 4: Best Place To Work In Australia

Hi all, in this week I will be talking about an Financial service and Insurance Firm which is declared as the best place to work in Australia i.e. OPTIVER...

OPTIVER is a global Market Making company, who is trading on all major financial markets around the world. The core business of OPTIVER is making market in financial products. The company does this by putting only its own capital at risk. Its an 25 year old company with almost 220 staff from over 35 nationalities. The company has well established teams in Trading, Information Technology and Business operations. 

The things that make this company stand out from others is the they have one IT developer for every single trader. One strange thing i found about this company is inactiveness on Facebook. The company does has a Facebook page but none of the staff uses it. Also inspite of it being an multi-national company, it just has 30 likes and 40 visit...!!!!

This company uses only three social networking websites: Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.  Out of its 220 employees,  its 127 employees  are on LinkedIn. Much of the credit of winning the title of Best Place To Work In Australia goes to the involvement between staff and company through social technology. 

Out of the 10 Social Technology Value Levers discussed by McKinskey, Twitter and LinkedIn is helping this company to benefit from this social technology by using following levers:

• Marketing and Sales
• Business Support
• Enterprise wide Levers (using social as organisational technology)

LinkedIn and Twitter not only helps this company to develop its brand digitally but also improves its internal communication and their working efficiency. 

Following video gives you an idea that because of the great minds of employees, OPTIVER has been the best place to work in Australia.

Another thing that make this company great work place is shown below:

One question that arises in my mind is why this company isn't active on Facebook?? Will there be any specific reason? Is it like the company who develop market doesn't get much social?? If so then why everything on Twitter and LinkedIn?? If any of you guys can clear my doubts on this matter, I will be really pleased...

POST 3: Enterprise 2.0 in our routine transport service...

In this rainy days, all I wish is to reach my home quickly without getting wet and walking minimum in rain. Hence I called yellow cab and was just talking to the cab driver and suddenly my eyes rolled to the sticker about yellow cab mobile app. And an idea strike in my mind about yellow cab using Enterprise 2.0. Hence I researched a bit about it and now sharing with you guys. 

Yellow cabs Pty Ltd  was started in 1924 in Queensland, Australia and after seeing lots of struggle, today its the leading cab service provider through out Australia. Yellow cab service is available in multiple cities of Australia and also overseas. Yellow cabs provides various services like yellow cab, maxi taxi, silver service and MPT (Multiple Passenger Taxi).

Out of the 10 social technology levers discussed by McKinsey, I will be concentrating on how Yellow Cabs implemented E2.0 in their business for increasing their marketing and Sales and provide best customer service. Yellow cabs has implemented social media strategy for attracting more customers to use and rate their service.

One can book Yellow cab by either calling 13 1924 or via SMS or via booking ONLINE. Hence Yellow Cab has been very flexible to their booking service. Also they have their Facebook page for regular updates, for posting their key events and giving responses to customer feedback. Yellow cab also has a smartphone app which makes it very convenient to order a taxi. Also they have been leading in using new technology an services since last two decades by introducing EFTPOS and GPS dispatch system. Yellow Cabs is moving ahead to create history by introducing the latest computer dispatch system by Australian company i.e. MT Data and the latest Avaya IP based PBX which will see the companies customer service visions realized into the future....

Yellow cab also has its commercial Ad to attract the customer (marketing strategy). I have shared it below:

Guys I researched a bit about black and white cabs too. By comparing both yellow cabs and Black and white cabs, I felt that Black and white cabs have less market and customers in comparison to Yellow cabs. One reason i felt is still they lack in using social strategy in their business...What you guys think???

See you in next post... :) :)

POST 2: Implementing ENTERPRISE 2.0 at INTUIT

Hi guys..

       Today I am gonna share about how INTUIT climbed the stairs of success using ENTERPRISE 2.0 in their company. INTUIT is a multinational American software company with 8,200 employees providing service to small businesses, financial institutions, health-care organizations and individuals by developing tax and financial solutions software.

                           

INTUIT started playing with few things in E2.0 space around 2005, not because of any need in business but because of curiosity. 

Earlier in 2005 INTUIT was using WordPress within the company that interested employees to do personal blogging. At the same time Mediawiki was also set-up mainly for managing projects. However, in the long run INTUIT started facing problem around innovation; which was their core motivation for E2.0. The actual challenge for the company was how to transform their ideas into outcomes?? Also company urged to see a much higher success rate for projects undertaken along with making innovations more efficient  and visible within the organisation. So actually company didn't needed an idea collection tool but an idea action and management tool. INTUIT needed a way to connect ideas to the right people who can best shape those ideas, help them overcome inertia, and capture value with them.

Also too much emails were sent between the teams in INTUIT which was second reason behind adoption of WP blog by the company. Another hindrance from innovation was being on the front line of the company and not able to move ideas forward. Ideas were there all the time but then what to do next? Hence INTUIT feels the need to build a platform named INTUIT Brainstorm to support innovation. Once the platform was built INTUIT started inviting their staff on their innovation mailing list. Within 4 months senior leaders shut down the old database and pointed it to Brainstorm. The #1 thing that allowed E2.0 happen at INTUIT was introducing a culture of innovation and experimentation. But the company faced lots of hurdles in accepting the change as there was strong dependency on IT group for technical issues. There was a list of obstacles being faced by the staff where they were getting stuck during any process/project which helped the innovation leader to set agenda and prioritize project.

   Before implementing E2.0, INTUIT  took 13 months to transform their idea into the product for user. After E2.0 INTUIT did that in 5 months, a 60% decrease. Within 6 months of Brainstorm, the rate of ideation went up by 1000% and the participation by employee raised by 500%. INTUIT also developed several solution that was result of internal ideas amongst which many of the products are generating revenue for INTUIT and solving real world customer problem.

Employees are now helping one another and reaching out to people that they have never met before. In present INTUIT is using following tools along with Brainstorm :

1. YAMMER
2. IM OR GCHAT
3. BRAINSTORM, FOR IDEATION
4. MEDIAWIKI
5. WORDPRESS BLOGS
6. ETHERPAD
7. INTERNAL VIDEOS
8. LOTUS CONNECTIONS
9. QUICKBASE

Key results after implementing E2.0 in INTUIT:

• Time required to get one product ready decreased by 60%
• Employees started feeling as they are part of company whether they are in office or not.
• Rate of ideation raised by 1000% and participation of employees increased by 500%
• Employees started helping each other, no matter they have moet ever or not.

Question for you guys:  Can you give an example of an company that failed after implementing E2.0???

POST 1: The Journey to blogging begins...!!!!

Hello Fellas....

Myself Hardika and I am pursuing my second Masters of Information technology with Enterprise System as major from QUT.

First of all I m heartily sorry for being sooo late for posting my first blog..But because of health problem and some work related issues I was unable to attend the lecture and be active in our google+ community... But finally I am heading ahead towards the journey of blogging...

Being very honest, I was never interested to write a blog in my life until i had gone through the first week lecture of my favourite unit this semester i.e. ENTERPRISE 2.0 ( wasn't favorite initially when i was sick because of pressure to write a blog..lol). The strange thing that I came across is I was just signing up my blog account in wordpress.com and i came to know that I already have an account it in...!!!

                         

I seriously had this expression.. :) After going through the lecture slides, through the blogs of other fellow mates and the video shown below, I was really interested to start writing. Hence i undertook a research on this, got bit familiar with it and now i am live with the blog...!!

 

How To Be Successful Blogger

• Setting up a blog : Initially I had an impression that the toughest part of being a successful blogger is actually getting started but then i realised hard part is setting up a blog in such a way that we can keep it updated regularly. The other thing is to be creative, visionary and inspired enough to be able to keep our blog active.

•  Deciding a theme for blog :  This is obvious but still some people ignores it. I find the theme should be simple, creative and attractive enough to make others feel like reading your post.

• Selecting appropriate topic : One of most important thing is choosing a topic about which you will be discussing in the blog. This definitely doesn't mean that you can wander around just one topic in your blog but you should be clever enough to decide what fits in and what not. Fourth thing is deciding where you want to host and share your blog. There are more than 40+ blog platforms where you can enjoy free blog postings.

• Start writing and keep on doing it : you might have great expectations of writing an awesome piece of art by playing with words and your thoughts as your first writing piece but its better to keep it short and simple. For the first few posts you gotta enjoy and celebrate for each and every post to keep your morale up until you make yourself comfortable with blogging. Then you can give a try to long posts. But your main motto should be "JUST KEEP WRITING". Maintaining patience to keep on writing is the must have quality for blogger to be successful.

• Sharing your blog with friends and colleagues: It is very important to share your blog once it's live to increase the readership. Initially it will be just your friends who's gonna read your post, which is obviously a sad part but you need to acquire more audience like family members, friends, classmates, co-workers, who-so-ever you can to support and promote your blog.

• Embracing social media-channels: For becoming a successful blogger, it is important to be present on social media sites like facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. Once you post something in your blog you should always share to expose it to more audience. One valuable hint is to look for an #tag on both facebook and twitter. Its easy for other people to find something of same interest.

• Engage with your readers and other bloggers: Its a good practice to look for other bloggers on social sites, who talk about similar stuff of your interest and comment and share on their stuff. Give your ideas, thoughts and opinions freely and eventually people will get engaged with your blog by commenting back.

• Concentrate on content : In spite of everything else, mainly concentrate on writing good and valuable content than can engage and interest readers. It doesn't mean you shouldn't share or promote your blog but without good content everything else doesn't matter much.

By integrating this suggestions into your practice when you initialize your journey to blogging, you will naturally increases the chances of you becoming a successful blogger.

I seriously wonder is it really true that only the blog about blogging, marketing and social media be successful?? What do you guys think??

That's all for this post guys. I am happy to hear your suggestions for my writing and also your opinions about my question...See you soon..