FreshNetworks Blog

At FreshNetworks we aim to bring you the best posts in social media, online communities and customer engagement online. In case you missed them, find below our top five posts in August.

1. How to write your firm’s social media policy

Our most popular post is August outlines five things to consider when writing a social media policy for your firm. At FreshNetworks, our approach is to keep things simple and to make them inclusive. Have a simple and clear policy on how employees should be using social media and make sure you include your employees in the process of drawing them up. Oh, and make sure your policy encourages your employees to use social media more and not less.

2. What’s next in marketing and advertising

Last year we highlighted a great presentation from Paul Isakson on the future of marketing and advertising, where his argument was that advertising was dead and the future was marketing. In August, Isakson updated this presentation and theory for 2009, with an equally good presentation on what’s next in marketing and advertising.

3. Why every business needs a social media policy

In August, ESPN’s social media policy came in for some criticism from people who felt it was too harsh. But the truth is it is better to have such a policy than to have none at all. We are looking at a new medium which is letting people communicate in new ways. It is like the conversation with a friend in a cafe, just taken to new levels, reaching more people and being significantly more shareable. This should be a risk for all firms. We don’t need reminding of the examples where employees have posted a video that has embarrassed their employer, or a Facebook status that has lost them their job. Firms need a policy on social media and part of this policy should be guidelines for their staff.

4. Storytelling and social media

Social media is about conversations. It’s people connecting, interacting and sharing content. And whether it’s online or in the real world, the most engaging conversations involve other people’s stories. In this post, Charlie Osmond looks at what makes storytelling so important in social media and shows how a story can sometimes be told as effectively in a picture as it can be in words.

5. Dell makes $3 million on Twitter. What can we learn?

Dell has reportedly made $2 million in sales directly from their @DellOutlet Twitter stream, and a further $1 million from sales that started on Twitter but were completed elsewhere. That’s $50 in revenue for every Twitter follower they have. In this post we look at three reasons why Dell has been so successful with Twitter and what others can learn.