Bendalls Group - The Female Social Network
Name of Organization / Company: Bendalls Group, North Sydney, NSW Australia
Category: B01 - B09 - Award for Excellence in Corporate Innovation > B01A. Award for Excellence in Innovation in Business Product & Service Industries - Up to 100 Employees
Entry Title: The Female Social Network
Essay:
In early 2017, Bendalls Group, led by Fi Bendall, one of Australia’s most enterprising and innovative female entrepreneurs and an international Stevies award winner, launched The Female Social Network (TFSN). TFSN is an extensive and integrated "network of networks" that connects female entrepreneurs, small businesses, bloggers, influencers and others so that participants can leverage and scale through the channels and networks relevant to them.
TFSN connects the dots across online and offline channels and platforms, enabling female entrepreneurs to make the most of business opportunities. It draws upon more than 20 different female related business networks, including mumpreneur, parenting and corporate networks from around Australia, giving it a reach of close to 4 million genuinely engaged women. It acts as a gatekeeper to this active community of women, allowing unprecedented access to tap into this community.
TFSN has now attracted substantial interest from potential investors and partners in the US, Canada and India.
As a platform, TFSN enables smaller networks through aggregation to increase their clout with potential corporate partners. In creating TFSN, Fi Bendall recognized the bloggers, entrepreneurs and businesses that made up these networks had something in abundance that brands craved: authentic connections to their member audiences. She also recognized these networks were for the most part operating at low levels of scale in dealing with big corporate partners.
This asymmetric relationship was hindering these influencers from securing the best possible deals for their potential worth as marketing influencers on one side of the equation, while for corporate partners, there was a limited scope for reach and scale in dealing with smaller partners. TFSN created a marketplace platform to match-make big organizations and brands with a range of potential partners for the purposes of influencer marketing as well as other development opportunities such as content creation, advertising and marketing aggregation, and education even advocacy programs.
By matching like-minded parties, TFSN creates immense value for partner brands in terms of authenticated exposure through a recommendation ecosystem. TFSN builds authentic connections between brands, influencers and endconsumers, all facilitated through online and digital portals as well as offline networking and education events.
This match-making process is achieved by utilising the Bendalls Group Methodology for Identifying Effective Advocates from research across 900 personality behaviours creating an “Effective Advocate Inventory”, from which customer advocacy programs can be designed that drive big commercial outcomes and insights. This unique IP in the intersection of behavior and social technology underpins TFSN and drives the platform’s effectiveness in achieving results for all parties. This is the result of years of research and development by the team at Bendalls Group, achieved in conjunction with a team of behavioural economists and academics.
TFSN is an excellent example of the power of the platform business model in the digital age. As a business service product, it provides optimal results for all of its network participants. This is because TFSN understands the needs of these participants, and through its unique IP, can deliver the required outcomes. In terms of product design and development, TFSN works efficiently to enable participants to explore and engage with potential partners through the platform. As a marketing tool, TFSN provides incredible reach to an audience of close to 4 million women and growing.
Finally, TFSN recognizes and empowers female entrepreneurs and female-led businesses to grow by connecting them to a broad, deep and rich network of like-minded women. In little over a year, TFSN has become a driver and incubator for female entrepreneurship across Australia, and very soon, across Asia and the world.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/thefemalesocialnetwork/