FreshNetworks Blog

I’m just dashing between events, but want to keep everyone up to speed on my Web Mission 09 adventures out here in California.

Today we enjoyed a fantastic brunch at the penthouse apartment of Susan Best. With great views accross the city, this was an excellent place to mingle with San Francisco journalists and investors. My photo doesn’t quite capture the view – but at least you get a sense of the event.

Susan runs Best PR. They represent a range of great clients – the most exciting for our purposes being craiglist, a great example of social media.

I also got the opportunity to sit down with francis zadan from Corebridge. Francis runs a business that’s perfect for these cost cutting days. By providing a link between corporate telecom and IT systems his business provides a few neat telco features to clients and also cut costs – in particular for overseas calls. It’s a bit like an international phone card that routes calls in a more efficient manner. And that’s what i love about the business model. In addition to a ‘we can add functionality that will increase the value of your work’ there is a very clear ROI cost saving message that he can take to clients: ‘you’ll have paid for the system in 3 months’. Its a great message and something we’ve also worked hard at.

Whilst we think the most valuable benefit of an online community is in long-term engaement and brand building, it can be hard to predict exact outcomes for each brand. As a result, some clients who believe in the potential of a community, often buy  based on the ROI case of a solid benefit. For us that can be reduced support costs from user-to-user engagement or replacement savings of a real-world focus group when using a community for research. Food for thought…

That’s all from me for now – more tomorrow!

Read all of Charlie’s WebMission 09 blog posts here.