Salford Business School’s success with digital enterprise continued this week with two projects which were part of Passport to Trade 2.0 being shortlisted for the Big Chip Awards.

The Big Chips are far and away the biggest digital awards outside of London and the longest running in the UK in their 16th year. They are organised by trade association, Manchester Digital for all things digital – from mobile apps to social media, from animation to websites to digital brand.

Salford Business School’s Centre for Digital Business submitted two projects, one a student Live Project and one a European research project – Passport to Trade 2.0.

Big Chip Awards 2014 shortlist: Little Chip Student Award

The students’ project was shortlisted for the Little Chip award and was developed by MSc Marketing students who created a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) called Search and Social Media Marketing for International Business.

This free online course allows anyone interested in social media, to get advice and learn from academics and digital agencies. The course was created and promoted by four MSc Marketing students; Rebecca Lee, Vanessa Van Huynh, Maria Camila Villa and Luis Santos as their Business Innovation Project to complete their Masters studies.

Pictured left to right: Luis Santos (from Portugal), Maria Camila Villa Jurado (from Colombia),Vanessa Van Huynh (from Vietnam) and Rebecca Lee (from the UK).

The purpose of live projects is to give students a real tangible situation and problem to work through.  This provides an excellent opportunity to enhance their CVs and ultimately, their employability. The team excelled on the project by creating an innovative digital course using video, text, animation and designing the structure of the course itself. Maria, the team leader for the MOOC project, said:

“As a team, we were lucky enough to work for the pilot MOOC live project. The creation of the Search and Social Media Marketing for International Business MOOC was a challenge that was worth it and helped us to grow professionally.”

Will Passport to Trade 2.0 win at least one of these Awards?

Big Chip 2014 takes place in the evening at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, UK on 3 July 2014. Watch this space and wish Salford Business School good luck – the only thing we can do now is wait!

Read the full account of the Big Chip Award on Salford Business School blog

Four companies were contacted to participate in a focus group social media use and students placement practice.

After analyzing the answers from all four companies  it was evident that their responses could be divided into broadly two groups. The first group works exclusively with local companies and due to this, are not aware of the benefits of using social media to both attract & retain customers. We also identified a lack of awareness  in terms of how social media can be used to  attract & retain potential customers.

They are not necessarily interested in extending placement possibilities to foreign students because they don’t see the diversity this brings as a benefit that can help with their local clients. Another difficulty for this group is how to attract foreign students for placement or as interns to their company and their lack of ability to communicate in foreign languages.

The second group work with both local and international companies and because they work in the digital sphere these companies  are actively using social media as a tool  that works for their businesses and their employees are more internet savvy.

One of the companies in this group is owned by a foreign national but since half of the employees are foreign as well English is the official language of the office. The second company is very aware of how social media can help them due to their position in the new technology sector (They have designed a special program that enables TV stations to broadcast anything from live sport matches to films on hand-held devices like phones and tablets.)They already deal with all the major TV stations in their local market in Prague and are ready to expand to Europe and the rest of the world. These companies have a consistent presence across all the major social media platforms  actively selling and promoting products. They have offices across four continents , employing many foreign nationals & are willing to give a placement opportunity to the right candidate if approached.

In conclusion, the two groups are a fair representation of their regions. The first group is located  in a city called Usti nad Labem, which is about 100km from Prague. It has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, internet penetration & usage is not as high as in other regions and the standard of living is also one of the lowest in the country.

The companies in the second group are located in Prague – a cosmopolitan, capital city. Here they can take advantage of high internet penetration, high average salaries &low unemployment rates.

In summary, a company’s reaction to implementing best practice in social media etiquette as well as  the placement of students has a direct correlation with the products or services that the company is offering, the type of people that work there and often it’s location as well.

Artémat (www.artemat.it ) is a young company, which was incubated in Technest – Incubator University of Calabria, for two years. Artémat launched with the message “think different”, providing training in management and business creation through unconventional methods & tools – the Business Game!

Students, graduates and professionals practice their management skills, hone their decision-making and relationship capacity, develop a strategic vision, familiarize  themselves  with risk management & mitigation  as well as focus on acquiring a systemic knowledge of the world of enterprise and how to build relationships  that can be applied in real life scenarios.

In a short time, Artémat, gained considerable experience and became an industry expert in the “business gaming” event management field (for management enterprise projects), supporting young people at national level, thus ensuring that the company also strives to  build better communication channels with a young and dynamic audience as well as business professionals.

Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, represent, in that order, the channels most watched by fans of Artémat.

Artemat’s Facebook fan page has 3705 fans and 1,622 views from members of the network. The company also recorded most read article on its LinkedIn page (Artémat Srl), with 4,263 tweets, following 179 other entities and 143 followers on Twitter (@artemat). On Youtube  it has 1568 views and the most popular video of the channel Artémat.

The huge rise in social media usage means that businesses need to understand now more than ever, how to interact with fans, answer their questions, deal with negative comments and resolve disputes, how to adapt the right type of communication according to channel used, how to use the hash tag function on Twitter effectively in order to highlight keywords and ensure that users are able to find the business!

A business needs to stand out from the crowd and attract new fans: it may seem a trivial activity, but in reality it is a complex process and requires time and resources.

During the creation of a business game event, Artémat, like to ensure participants are actively involved: it will post photos in real time, as well as status updates and comments on the competition.

After the event, both within its business pages and across the website, Artemat immediately publishes an album with a description of the event along with any commentary. Artemat recognises how important it is to be constantly present, engaged and give more information to your community of potential clients and existing customers because it is critical to business success.

The company’s customers continue to follow  it on Facebook, beyond the project carried out together: they are always up to date on Artemat’s new products and this consistent presence on social media  often leads to new opportunities and ideas for collaborations or contacts that done does not expect.

For instance, after a Russian company that specialises in training, recently viewed Artemat’s LinkedIn page, it decided to include Artemat’s business game in it’s training catalogue.