Social Media and Return on Investment – The Moose is in the Hoose

ACE IT’s ‘Moose in the Hoose’ project aims to help the elderly by empowering and stimulating them through the use of technology.

“ACE IT asked The Impact People to carry out a Social Return on Investment (SROI) study of its Moose in the Hoose Project.  The objective of the study was to better understand the social value that is created by the Moose in the Hoose Project.  In particular, the focus of the study was on the residential care home based digital learning activities provided by the Project within the city of Edinburgh.” – (aceit.org.uk/downloads/SROIcasestudy.doc)

Background – Moose in the Hoose Project

The Moose in the Hoose Project has a well deserved reputation for innovation and quality of the delivery of advice, guidance, learning and support in digital technology services to volunteers who in turn deliver the service to older people living with residential care homes with Edinburgh.  The Project has won numerous awards for its work and undoubtedly provides value for money.  However, until this SROI study was undertaken, ACE IT had been unable to quantify the social impact of the Project.

 Moose in  the Hoose Project – Theory of Change

 This case study demonstrates that the Moose in the Hoose Project creates  significant social and economic value for the elderly residents of the city of Edinburgh.  Moose in the Hoose Project aims to improve the lives of older people living within residential care homes across Edinburgh.  The Project does this through recruiting volunteers to work directly with older people living within residential care homes by introducing them to computers and information technology in a non-threatening, informal hands on approach. By allowing the elderly to suggest possible usage, the aim is to improve their mental and physical well being by keeping them stimulated at the same time leveraging the ubiquitous reach afforded by information technology to enable them to keep in touch with friends and family.  By offering older people learning and development opportunities within their residential care home the Project is able to provide additional support and care.

Strong Impact

To conduct the study, they first identified the relevant stake holders and used activities like:

• one – on – one interviews
• Telephone interviews
• questionnaires
• online surveys

The various stakeholders are

• The service users
• Friends and family of the Moose in the Hoose service’s users
• Moose in the Hoose volunteers
• The paid staff etc.

While the calculations are based onprojections, they have take into consideration the ‘longevity’ of the changes.Accordingly, some changes (in the target audience) will last longer than others. They have estimated ‘3’ years for the long lived effects and have thus, calculated the impact.

ACE IT have an SROI (Social Return on Investment) ratio of 8.13, this means that the social return is worth 8 GBP (17.06AUD) to every 1 GBP (2.13 AUD) spent.

It is quite apparent that this project will create value. As the ‘trailblazers’ the success of the Moose in the Hoose project will lead to sustainable projects like this in the future. Its quite a

pparent that as human beings live longer lives, the care of the elderly will be an essential need and project’s like ‘Moose in the Hoose’ are showing us that it is possible to do ‘good’ in the world and still grow.

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The State Library of Queensland

Today we will be talking about State Library of Queensland by providing a brief overview of the library services first.

State Library of Queensland plays a lead role in serving all Queenslanders, through state-wide library services and partnerships with over 340 public libraries, including 23 Indigenous Knowledge Centres (IKCs).

Founded in 1896, we have become a bold and adventurous 21st century library driven by a commitment to access for all.

SLQ belongs to the people of Queensland. It is an inclusive and welcoming place for all, a trusted source for information, and a place for intellectual freedom, a cornerstone of democracy and custodian of Queensland’s memory.

SLQ is a ‘knowledge bank’ and vital community resource, as much a physical as well as a virtual place for sharing, learning, collaborating, and creation. As a community hub for democracy in action, here everyone is encouraged to have a voice.

From social enterprise perspective, we will be studying the network effects; see how it is affecting directly or directly.

Defining Network Effect

A phenomenon whereby a good or service becomes more valuable when more people use it. The internet is a good example. Initially, there were few users of the internet, and it was of relatively little value to anyone outside of the military and a few research scientists. As more users gained access to the internet, however, there were more and more websites to visit and more people to communicate with. The internet became extremely valuable to its users.

Barriers

The chief hurdle for any good or service which uses the network effect is to get enough users initially so that the network effects take hold. The amount of users required for significant network effects is often referred to as critical mass. After the critical mass is attained, the good or service should be able to obtain many new users since its network offers utility.

If too many people use the good or service, negative network effects can occur, such as congestion. In the internet analogy, having too many users on the internet can hypothetically cause the speed to deteriorate, decreasing utility for users. Thus providers of goods and services which use a network effect must ensure that capacity can be increased sufficiently to accommodate all users.

Indirect Effects

Indirect network effects are “market mediated effects” such as cases where complementary goods (e.g. toner cartridges) are more readily available or lower in price as the number of users of a good (printers) increases. In early writing, however, this distinction was not carried into models of network effects. Once network effects were embodied in payoff functions, any distinction between direct and indirect effects was ignored in developing models and drawing conclusions. However, our 1994 paper demonstrates that the two types of effects will typically have different economic implications. It is now generally agreed (Katz and Shapiro, 1994) that the consequences of internalizing direct and indirect network effects are quite different. Indirect network effects generally are pecuniary in nature and therefore should not be internalized. Pecuniary externalities do not impose deadweight losses if left uninternalized, whereas they do impose (monopoly or monopsony) losses if internalized.

How can SLQ Benefit from Network Effects

SLQ can benefit in many ways by applying network effects. For example, creating applications for mobile devices that will enable access to multiple users and provide access to e-books and magazines could be really helpful. The innovation will attract larger audience.

An indirect effect will be if some revenue can be generated through the online app via pay per click advertisements.

Economic Policy Group Blogging and Wiki

The Economic Policy Group (EPG) is an economic and strategy consulting firm based in London.We offer social impact analysis, and economic and regulatory policy advice to corporations and the third sector around the world. (http://www.economicpolicygroup.com/about.html#)

“It’s not who you know, it’s what who you know knows.” (Noshir Contractor)
According to John Brown and Paul Duguid knowledge can be defined by three criteria, namely: knowledge is associated with a knower, knowledge is embedded in the knower, and to become a knower a person needs to be committed to understanding the information presented to him (Brown & Duguid 2008:119:120). In organisations this knowledge comprises experience, specialist skills and the practical knowledge of how the organisational processes operate (Orlikowski 2002).
Social Networking 2.0 provides users with the ability to create a global list of contact details (either in a graphical or text-based format) of people with whom they have strong professional ties, co-workers, colleagues and people they do business with, who they trust enough to be associated with and even recommend to others (Gorge 2007).
This contact list is different from other electronic directories in that the information is linked directly to the profiles created and maintained by the contact himself, allowing for automatic updates of changes to contact details, current activities, interest and specialist skills and expertise, in a searchable format (Boyd S. 2006; ClearSwift 2007a).

Social Networking 2.0 can assist organisations to create an online resource containing the accumulated wisdom of the organisation, by allowing knowledge to be codified, searched and shared (Cairncross 2001:131, 134; IBM 2007). By decreasing the use of e-mails and other disruptive communication methods, the use of asynchronous communication methods, such as blogs and wikis, can increase productivity and work flow efficiency

In case of the Economic Policy Group (EPG) the company has not achieved what it should have achieved through wiki ideas and blogging and remain inactive which may not provide them success as it should have

Risks in Social Media

Social media training, a social media risk assessment plan, a social governance policy, and a risk-aware culture — is all of this really necessary? Yes. For all the benefits social media have provided to financial service firms from marketing, referrals, and recruitment, the complexities and legal risks are still daunting, not to mention risks to reputation.

But going social cannot be avoided, according to a new Accenture paper, “A Comprehensive Approach to Managing Social Media Risk and Compliance.” The number of social network users worldwide skyrocketed to 1.73 billion in 2013 and is expected to top 2.55 billion by 2017. In the US, people spend 16 minutes of every hour using social media. With momentum like this, “it is better to manage it effectively than try to stand in its way.”

The legal and brand risks are understandably paralyzing, but at this stage, adopting social media is not a forward-thinking move. It’s an obvious and inevitable strategy. Fortunately, early adopters have demonstrated that social media can be managed, and financial firms have yet to make headlines for a major accidental breach through social channels.

We have been talking much about social media, lets take an example of a firm that has to understand their risks regarding social media. We will discuss our previously used example of Ahmet’s resutarant based in South Bank, Brisbane.

They claim the following on their webpage

A great atmosphere leaves a lasting impression from the moment you enter Ahmet’s. From the vibrant rugs and lanterns adorning the walls to the jangling Turkish music, you will be transported to Turkey, erasing the memory that Brisbane is just beyond the door.

As it was identified that the restaurant has to increase their social media presence, so here are the following strategies suggested to minimise the risk

Define your strategy. For a successful social media program, you need a well-defined strategy that has been developed and endorsed by management. Your strategy should address these key questions:

·         What business benefits do you expect social media to achieve?

·         What are your target markets, and how will your social media serve them?

·         How will management ensure that the entire organization is following the strategy?

·         Who is authorized to speak on the organization’s behalf?

·         How will you respond to negative or untrue feedback?

I

Monitor and manage feedback. There is a wealth of information in the feedback that companies receive from the public—especially feedback from current and future customers. Still, not every comment that a company receives is going to be useful.

A very important aspect of your social media strategy is figuring out who and what to listen to and how to react to their comments. All remarks should be evaluated carefully. It is important to act on negative comments swiftly and appropriately, but it is just as important to address potentially fake comments, which can skew product opinion and lead to brand damage. Both Amazon and TripAdvisor recently addressed issues regarding fake reviews in an effort to maintain their brand image.

Social Technologies and Value Creation

So, we introduced the social technologies in the previous blog. Now this begs the question, how the social technologies are creating value generation. It is an important concept studied in consumer behaviour. Let me introduce bit of the literature in the context of social media, internet and consumer behaviour.

In the modern world consumers are very actively involved in various activities over internet. Heinonen (2011) argues that consumers not only share knowledge but also participate in discussions and contributing to other consumers’ activities as well. It is interesting to note that there are various forms of media on internet that is also referred as social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. The social media is largely a platform for creating and marketing the companies’ content. Stewart and Pavlou (2002) stated that from a marketing perspective marketers have developed a keen interest in digital interaction particularly consumer activity and interaction over the social media.

The results from Gros (2012) showed that 95 % of the respondents have been using different forms of social media for more than two years and 48 % of the users have been using social media for more than five years. Moreover, it was interesting to note that users were spending up to 27 hours per week on social media

The companies should use the opportunity of interaction available through Social Media to get involved with the community of followers. Klaus and Maklan (2011) argued that the Internet has transformed initial relationship between consumers and marketers into mutual collaborative relationships. It can also be concluded that Social Media offers the opportunity to express their concerns for customers and ensure that their voices are heard. Moreover, through the social media.

companies may be using to come up to customers’ expectation. Sweeney and Craig (2011) argue and comment that if the customers feel that their comments and feedbacks are valued and companies are try to come up to their expectations and are concerned; the purchase decision are made quickly.

Value and Social Technologies

The following articles explain the social technologies in a very coherent manner

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_social_economy

http://breakthroughanalysis.com/2014/11/04/social-media-analytics-pedro-cardoso/

Mickensey report on The social Economy discussed five functional areas that can add value to a firm. I would like to discuss example of Ahmets Restaurant (http://www.ahmets.com/south-bank/) at SouthBank that claims to create a lasting impression for the customers. However, what is missing (read: inefficient) from their customer service and experiential part of service is the presence of social technologies.

A functional area that can be significantly improved for Ahmets is their marketing and sales through social technologies. As Vargo and Lusch (2004) discuss about value co-creation in the service scape. It is an opportunity for Ahmets to use customers’ feedback to create value for customers. It will also develop insights for firms growth as compared to traditional marketing practises in the past. Also, the social technologies allow firms to actively follow up the customers

About

I have worked for three years as a Assistant Manager In Corporation Agricultural products back in Saudi Arabia. These days I am based in Australia. I have keen interest in reading books, travelling different parts of the world and exploring different cultures of the world.

 

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Social Enterprise Consultant’s Page

Social Enterprise

So what is a social Enterprise ? A firm with a vision to contribute value to lives of individuals. Social enterprises are revenue-generating businesses with a twist. Whether operated by a non-profit organization or by a for-profit company, a social enterprise has two goals: to achieve  social, cultural, community economic or environmental outcomes; and, to earn revenue. On the  surface, many social enterprises look, feel, and even operate like traditional businesses. But  looking more deeply, one discovers the defining characteristics of the social enterprise: mission  is at the centre of business, with income generation playing an important supporting role.

So whats the Fuss

The purpose of this blog is to introduce the term Social enterprise and educating the masses about social enterprises and offering our services as social enterprise consultants. We tend to  provide the services to social enterprises using web 2.0 based technologies such as Facebook,  Twitter, Youtube etc. The one bottom line is to reach larger audience with our social mission in  mind. The purpose of the blog will be two-fold; introducing some of our work in form of case  studies (read: success stories) and information forum for students wishing to learn more about social enterprises.

I will be updating you folks with my posts on weekly basis and expect you to communicate with  me. Please try to give me feedback on my posts and I would love to hear from you. This will  allow us to form a community of like minded people who have some interest in social  enterprises. Some of the blogs that I loved and I am sharing with you to have a look

https://wearesocialstarters.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/one-year-of-_socialstarters-how-your-failures-become-your-biggest-lessons/

http://svaconsultingquarterly.com/2013/02/19/hidden-businesssocial-enterprise/