FreshNetworks Blog

We’re celebrating over here at FreshNetworks because, according to AdvertisingAge, we’ve just made it into the top 20 UK blogs for media and marketing.

Woo Hoo.

A big thank you and well done to Matt Rhodes who writes the majority of our posts.

Our aim is to provide useful content for organisations interested in using Social Media to engage customers, suppliers and employees. We’re always keen to improve the blog, so if you have any suggestions, please let us know – email, use the comments field or connect to one of our Twitterers: @cosmond, @helentr, @hollyseddon, @peteshannon or @mattrhodes

We thought it might be helpful for us to tell you a bit about each of the top 20, so that you can find the ones of interest.  And at the bottom of this page, there’s a link so that you can subscribe to a feed (or email) that combines the best posts from this list of blogs.

To prevent this post being too long, I am writing it in two parts. Below are blogs ranked 11-20. I will post the Top 10 UK Marketing Blogs tomorrow.

UKs Top Social Media and Marketing blogs

11. Welcome to Optimism – the corporate blog from the London office of Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency. It’s a broad-ranging mix of advertising thoughts, interesting annecdotes and updates on daily life from this well-respected creative agency.
12. PR Blogger – Written by Stephen Davies MD of 3W PR, an online PR agency. The blog focuses on public relations and social globalisation. A great read if you ever wonder how traditional PR agencies are going to survive in an online world.
13. SEOptimise – SEOptimise are a UK search engine marketing agency. The blog, as you might expect, covers lots of SEO topics. Every post is, of course, perfectly optimised (in case you’re interested, each post appears to have around 500-700 words). One of their most popular posts of recent times was 30+ Google Analytics Tools, Goals, Segments, Filters, Hacks and Resources.
14. A PR Guy’s Musings – Stuart Bruce is founder of Wolfstar. A seasoned PR veteran, he started advocating online PR and social media much eariler than the rest of his industry. In this post, he kicks off a great debate about PR being a reputation tool, not an SEO tool.
15. Nick Burcher – Nick Burcher is Head of the VNC UK at Publicis Groupe in London. His blog covers a range of topics related to advertising and the evolution of media. Including very popular compilations of statistics on teh growth of Twitter and Facebook.
16. HERD – The blog from Mark Earls, author of the excellent Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature. Whilst many bloggers just report on things they have seen, Mark always tries to go deeper on understanding why things are happening.
17. Crenk – Dedicated to finding and reviewing the best new web and mobile apps. They cover blogger tools and general internet news and analysis.
18. Spinning Around – The coprorate blog of 77PR, part of the Fishburn Hedges Group. The blog’s full of engaging and often amusing content from around the web. And I just noticed they have a list of the top 100 UK Marketing blogs here
19. The Engaging Brand – Anna Farmery writes this blog. She has has a good podcast on Leadership and marketing, called The Engaging Brand, and regularly pulls out key thoughts of her podcast interviews in her blog. For example check out 10 How to Wow Tips
20. FreshNetworks – That’s us. We try to focus on Social Media and branded online communities. We’re nuts about the opportunities for organisations within the social web. And we cover evertying from using online communities for market research & innovation to driving word of mouth by engaging brand advocates.

Get the UKs top marketing blogs in one feed

I have created an RSS feed that combines the best posts from this list of Top 20 UK Marketing Blogs. Here’s the feed. Or subscribe by email.

I’ve used PostRank to pull out only great feeds from a blog. 10-20% of the posts from each blog make it into the great category. So you won’t get snowed under.

Ranking the top UK Marketing blogs

I have used the ranking from AdAge. It’s the best ranking I am aware of. But there is no perfect measure of best blogs – should it be number of subscribers? influence? number of links? quality of content?  Clearly we’re delighted to have made it onto this list, so we think it’s good. But it’s not an exact science.

Are there any blogs you think ought to be on the list that aren’t?

Image by Bert Kommerij via Flickr

It was just a week ago that Susan Boyle performed I Dreamed a Dream from Les Misérables on Britain’s Got Talent. And in that week over 35 million people have viewed her singing  the song on YouTube. By anybody’s measure this has been a true viral success. Indeed, this video has achieved much greater success than many videos designed and seeded as part of viral campaigns for big brands. Many of them would be delighted for quite so many people to have viewed, commented on, shared or talked about their video. Even more would wish for the kind of brand recall that Susan Boyle is now getting from her video, or indeed the access to the lucrative US market that happened in a matter of just days.

So what makes this video so special and what can we learn from it about social media. The answer is probably quite simple – people watched, commented on and shared this video because the content is good. This is often overlooked when people talk about social media. Too much time can be spent trying to find the right people to seed a video, or working out the optimal viral strategy. And too little time may be spent on making the content good in the first place. Susan Boyle’s performance is good content, and that’s why it has spread so much and so quickly online. Why people think it is good may vary – because she is a good singer, because her performance is a surprise or because the attitude of the judges before she sings highlights the way human beings can make prejudices based on appearance. The reason people think the content is good does not matter, that they do is all that counts.

Of course, this leaves us with a dilemma – if we cannot tell what people will think is good content then how do we make such content in the first place? Well this is one of the benefits of social media but also one of the problems for brands and marketers. The proliferation of shared content online means there is more for us to choose from and more for us to enjoy. There is great content out there  and now it is probably easier for us to share it. But good content is in the eyes of the person who views it, and it can be difficult to predict what will be good.

So Susan is not only a good singer, but also teaches us a lot about social media. The key to making a good viral video is to have good content in the first place, but what makes good content can be difficult for us to predict in advance. The best we can do is to understand our target audience and then create something we  think will appeal to them. But maybe we’ll never be as successful as an unassuming singer from Scotland.

Some more reading

• YouTube Sensation (nickwagman.blogspot.com)
• Viral Friday: Susan Boyle On Britain’s Got Talent (viralblog.com)
• Singing Scottish spinster a global media sensation -Britain Got Talent 2009 (funtoosurf.com)
• Susan Boyle, An Unlikely Singing Sensation (cbsnews.com)
• Susan Boyle Knows Something You Don’t

This has been yet another week where Twitter has featured high in many discussions – in part thanks to the triple impact of Susan Boyle‘s performance on Britain’s got Talent, the Pirate Bay decision and of course Ashton Kutcher‘s one millionth follower. At FreshNetworks we think that Twitter is a great example of how people are innovating with social media – each of these different topics is being made popular by different people using Twitter for different reasons – sharing good content, keeping up-to-date or just following celebrities.

One of the main benefits that organisations can get from Twitter is to use it as an engagement tool – as part of a hub-and-spoke approach to social media and online communities. Use it to engage people and then provide them with a destination to go to or a thing to do. Today, I was presenting on this topic and how to get value from Twitter as an engagement tool and you can find the slides below.

Some more reading

• 20 Ways to Engage Contacts in Social Media (kylelacy.com)
• Talent show singer is online hit (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Celebrities Too Lazy to Type 140 Characters (jossip.com)
• Ashton Kutcher challenges CNN to Twitter popularity contest (cnn.com)
• Will Celeb Twittering Reveal Them as Twits? (marketingpilgrim.com)

FreshNetworks and e-mint last hosted a community manager meet-up in our very own Holborn last night, and it was great to hook up and talk shop (and other stuff) with some really interesting social media professionals.

Community managers were well-represented, but we also hosted a couple of curious print journalists, CEOs of exciting new start-ups wanting to learn about UGC and social media integration and product managers.

The wine flowed and the nachos and snacks went down easily (a little too easily in my case) and even the shyest attendees were circulating and meeting new friends and contacts.

Hosting meet-ups like this is an essential part of promoting community management, collaborative working and helping bring people together to share experiences and knowledge in an informal, relaxed setting.

The nature of social media work means that a higher proportion than in most professions are home-workers, which is fantastic, but missing out on water cooler conversations and the novelty of looking someone in the eye when you’re discussing the impact of iPhone apps, out-of-hours moderation or greater broadband penetration in all socio-economic groups is a welcome treat.

We’re planning on running a similar event in a few months time, and will be arranging a speaker and tweaking the organisation on the basis of feedback – in this modern world, good old paper nametags are still a requisite we’ve learned.

If you attended, would like to attend or are interested in speaking at our next event, please do drop us a line.

Research Reinvented have polled the Twitterverse (I hate that word!) to find the most influential people in the market and consumer research areas to follow. Rather ingratiatingly I’m one of them and now get to wait to see if I make the top 10.

At FreshNetworks we make the most of strong research credentials, both in our specific online research communities, but also helping all of our clients make the most of the insight they can get from online communities. You can read more of our recent research posts from making online research better to one on simple, effective market research.

The full list of market researchers to follow on Twitter is below (in alphabetical order) and you can vote for the top ten by commenting on the Research Reinvented blog.

If you fancy voting (and maybe even voting for me) then comment on the Research Reinvented blog here.

Marketing Researchers to follow on Twitter

• @alisonmacleod – UK – Researcher – Following 49 and 36 followers.
• @berniceklaassen – Singapore – Head of TNS Interactive in Singapore – Following 126 and 79 followers.
• @ccsavage – UK – Christopher Savage – Researcher – Following 458 and 381 followers.
• @comerpatrick – USA – Patrick Comer SVP business development at OTX – Following 71 and 106 followers.
• @communispaceceo – USA – CEO of Communispace a Research Community Software Provider – Following 2112 and 2603 followers.
• @cristi_popa – Qualitative Researcher at Yellow Submarine research – Following 535 and 252 Followers.
• @curiouslyp – UK – Simon Kendrick – Researcher at Essential Research and previously worked at ITV and GfK NOP Media - following 234 and 244 followers.
• @duey23 – USA – Brian LoCicero – Director Client Relations – Kantar Operations – Following 63 and 46 followers.
• @emielvanwegen – Netherlands – Researcher at Synovate – most tweets are in English – most tweets are Research 2.0 related – following 395 and 458 followers.
• @ericsalama – Following 33 and 425 followers.
• @insightsgal – USA – Researcher – Works for a tradeshow and publishing company – Following 531 and 468 followers.
• @jennibeattie – Australia – Director Digital Consulting at Digital Edge – Following 378 and 259 followers.
• @jhenning – USA – Jeffrey Henning – Vovici – Geek since before Geeks were Chic – tweets focus on research communities and customer feedback – Following 1132 and 948 Followers.
• @joelrubinson – USA – Chief Research Officer at the ARF – Following 632 and 574 followers.
• @johngriffiths7 – UK – Researcher – Following 60 and 181 Followers.
• @katetribe – Australia – Quantitative Researcher Tribe Researh- Following 869 and 867 Followers.
• @lovestats – USA – Annie Pettit – Statistician and Researcher and active blogger on MR – former VP Online Panel Analytics at Ipsos – Following 1873 and 1151 followers.
• @mattrhodes – UK – Head of Client services at FreshNetworks – specialises in online communities and social media – Following 2155 and 2027 followers.
• @merrilldubrow – USA – CEO of MARC, former SVP at Harris Interactive – Following 62 and 83 followers
• @mikemacleod – USA – Market Researcher at Lightspeed, previously at Harris Interactive – Following 1693 and 1908 followers.
• @montenegror – USA – Multifaceted Market Researcher at Black Mountain – Following 314 and 229 Followers.
• @mrheretic – Market Research Deathwatch – a mostly cynical but interesting pov on the MR industry – Following 31 and 72 followers.
• @ogaudemar – USA – Olivier de Gaudemar – SVP Online Community at OTX – Following 138 and 268 followers.
• @raypoynter – UK – Director at the Future Place – frequent speaker at MR conferences on Market Research 2.0 and winner of ESOMAR best paper award – following 136 and 187 followers.
• @researchrants – another anonymous researcher and partner in crime of @mrheretic – blogs frequently about Greenfield – new twitter user and most tweets are on MR – Following 32 and 146 followers.
• @researchrocks – USA – Kathryn Korostoff – Research Entrepreneur and founder of Research Rockstar, a market research training company- Following 42 and 84 Followers
• @rscionti – USA – Richard Scionti – SVP Solution Services at TNS – Following 82 and 76 followers.
• @tomewing – UK – Social Media Knowledge Leader at Kantar Ops - 297 and 405 Followers.
• @tomhcanderson – USA – Tom Anderson – next generation researcher and former employee of TNS NFO – Following 948 and 672 followers.
• @vincenthofmann – South-Africa – Qualitative Researcher at Submarine former employee at Synovate – Tweets on all different topics, but also on MR – Following 416 and 522 followers.
• @zebrabites – Australia – Qualitative research director at Zebra – Following 372 and 639 Followers.