Archive for the ‘FreshNetworks news’ Category.
19th January 2010, 02:13 pm
FreshNetworks, Social Media Agency
You may have noticed we’ve just rebranded, launched a new identity and redesigned our site. I thought it might be worth giving a quick explanation. I also wanted to take the opportunity to mention what it is we do (just in case you only know us for our blog).
Back in 2008, FreshNetworks was primarily a provider of social media technology. Whilst we always had a range of social media agency services wrapped around the tech (Community Management, Social Media Strategy and Social Media Monitoring), we led on being a technology provider – a builder of online communities.
The change in brand and design reflects our progression from being primarily a developer of online communities that happens to offer supporting social media services to a full-service Social Media Agency with in-house community building capabilities.
On it’s own that flex in emphasis was perhaps not worthy of a rebrand. However, as most entrepreneurs can attest, you often kick off with a brand and identity that you’re only 80% happy with because it’s more important in the early days to focus on your attention on delivering some great results for early clients. Thus the change in emphasis to a Social Media Agency was an opportunity to rethink our identity.
What are the services of a Social Media Agency?
Our services cover three areas: Listening, Planning & Execution and Technology
Listening
We use a range of different social media monitoring tools to carry out one-off Social Media Audits and on-going buzz tracking and reporting.
Planning and execution
These cover both consulting and on-going agency services. From helping organisations tie down their Social Media Strategy to providing ongoing Online Reputation Management and Community Management support.
Technology
We use our Online Community Platform to embed social tools (e.g. blogs, video sharing, ratings and reviews) into exisitng websites. And we also create standalone online communities. Some communities are closed (e.g. research communities or VIP advocacy communities) and others are open to all to help encourage search or directly increase sales by activating Word-of-Mouth.
We’re very keen on our new design. And we’d love to get your feedback.
15th May 2009, 06:20 pm
It’s all go here at FreshNetworks; we’ve got online communities, social media strategies and web 2.0 conferences coming out of our ears. And with the social media wave gathering speed across Europe, we’re growing apace to stay on our surfboards.
At the moment we’re looking for two shiny new people to join our team. Specifically we’re looking for a social media project manager and business development manager for our online research community offering. We’re always on the look-out for great community managers too.
If you think you might have what it takes to join the team, then click on the links to check out the full listings or head to our careers page.
23rd April 2009, 02:18 pm
We all know that social media is all about sharing. We talk about collaborating and learning from each other all the time on this blog. But we’re more than just big talkers here at FreshNetworks – we like to put our money where our mouth is. So without further ado, allow me to announce the FreshNetworks Social Media Training Series.
This set of half-day seminars over the course of the year will focus on social media education and practical training. Each session will delve into a particular sector, focusing on the ways that social media can be used for marketing and insight through case studies and discussion. We’ll have speakers from brands who’ve used social media to tell their success stories and dispense useful tips and lessons learned along the way. And most importantly we’ll provide a forum for all of our guests to chat, share thoughts and ask those burning social media questions.
The first seminar is less than 2 weeks away and will focus on the retail sector. With James Hart of Asos.com speaking about the brilliant new online community Asos Life, and Joanne Jacobs of Xenial (creators of gurgle.com) helping us all understand the monetization of social media, we think it’s going to be a really informative and engaging event. Interested in attending? Sign up on our FreshNetworks Retail 2.0 event page. But hurry, places are filling up quickly!
Sign up for the event here
20th April 2009, 01:00 pm
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Crenk – Dedicated to finding and reviewing the best new web and mobile apps. They cover blogger tools and general internet news and analysis.
- 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
- 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
- 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?
16th April 2009, 06:19 am
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.
23rd February 2009, 05:47 pm
The exciting news at FreshNetworks today is that we’ve been selected to be part of Web Mission 09, a delegation of 20 of the best Web 2.0 companies in the UK and Ireland meeting the many inspiring people and supportive Web 2.0 networks which exist in Silicon Valley. It’s a great endeavour and a great opportunity for us and the other companies selected as part of the Mission.
For the team at FreshNetworks, this is just one of the trips we’re making to the US and across Europe this Spring. Innovation and sharing and learning with others is important in digital marketing and in social media. Things are moving so fast and in so many ways that it’s good to take time out, see what others a re doing and share our own experiences.
Charlie, our CEO, will be out in San Francisco for us from March 28th to April 3rd, and is looking forward to talking online communities and social media day in and day out. He’s also going to be blogging about Web Mission 2009, his experiences, the people he meets and what he learns. So we can all gain a little bit from what he discovers while he’s out there. Look out for our Web Mission 09 series, and Charlie’s posts form the March 28th to April 3rd.
Follow Charlie’s trip: Web Mission 09
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17th February 2009, 10:50 am
Anybody with even a passing interest in online communities and social media knows that things are changing and developing. And they’re doing it quickly. From the apparent 800,000 new profiles being added to Facebook every day, to the growth that we see at FreshNetworks in the number of brands setting up their own online communities, or engaging with their consumers through social media.
It’s also an area where there is a lot of discussion as we learn from each other and collectively define and shape the online communities space. Whether it’s the merits of focusing on how we build and manage online communities (rather than technology), the protocol for how to react when somebody talks about your brand online, or the ways your online community can work offline too. There’s a lot of great debate out there and even more to be had.
That’s why it’s great to see the launch, today of Communities and Networks Connection, a collection of articles from blogs and the web about online communities and social networks from people who are passionate about them and are keen to add to the debate. I’m pleased to say that FreshNetworks is one of those contributing to the site, but more that we’re alongside people that we follow here including: Community Guy, Connectable Dots, Full Circle, Making CommunitySense, socialreporter and The Bumble Bee (to name just a few). Should be an interesting collection of thoughts and a great way to keep up with what people are thinking, saying and doing.
But perhaps more than anything this shows benefit of distributing content. In a world where user-generated content and ‘editorial’ content have merged, and where people are interacting with websites rather than just reading them, I think that distribution and sharing of content will become one of the main ways we organise and gain benefit from what we find online. We see it already in the way people are interacting with blogs. Whilst RSS feeds and email updates are still popular, many people are turning to sites which aggregate content on a similar issue, often with a level of community-organisation or editorial control. At FreshNetworks, our content is already distributed to Futurelab, Social Media Today and Community 2.0, and many people see our content on these sites rather than on our own. That’s fine. That’s great actually. We get more good content to more people rather relying on you stumbling upon the odd post or site that’s may be of interest. In the end, content is what’s most important, and we need to let people find and interact with it as easily as possible.
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6th February 2009, 04:34 pm
Yesterday we posted about statistics from MarketingSherpa showing that a lack of knowledge hampers social media marketing, with 46% of firms who had not adopted social media marketing citing a lack on internal understanding as their main hindrance. Another set of statistics from MarketingSherpa paints a more positive outlook for social media agencies.
In September 2008, just as we were recognising the full potential of the economic downturn in which we now find ourselves, they surveyed almost 400 firms asking them about their marketing spend for 2009. Which lines would increase and which lines would decrease.
A total of 48% of the firms interviewed predicted that their spending on social media would increase in 2009, with just 20% predicting a decrease. This compares with print advertising, where just 4% predicted an increase and 60% a decrease, and Radio / TV ads which saw a dramatic 83% of companies predicting a decrease in expenditure in 2009.
This data supports what many others are seeing: social media agencies and social media marketing could boom during the economic downturn. Part of this is due to the positive growth trajectory that the social media business was on before the economic downturn. The industry was growing anyway, and so even in an economic downturn we would expect some level of growth to continue. But the industry is feeling more buoyant and optimistic than that.
Today we at FreshNetworks are reporting a strong 2008 with good performance, client wins and the release of version 2.6 of our online community platform. For us, the social media and online communities markets in Europe feel very positive at the moment. Firms are recognising the need for closer engagement with the customers, want to use online research communities for a greater depth of insight and want to innovate and stay ahead of their competitors.
We think that 2009 is going to be an exciting year for the social media marketing industry, and for online communities in particular. We expect to at least double in size by the year end and will be releasing version 3.0 of our platform during the year. Many others that we know and speak to in the industry are also feeling confident and whilst some industries are suffering from the current economic conditions, it’s important to remember that not all will.
So the economic downturn is not bad news for the social media marketing industry. In fact for some it could be a real catalyst for growth in demand with these services being more in demand, and traditional marketing and media contracting. Should be exciting times ahead.
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25th January 2009, 11:11 pm
It’s almost a year since we started the blog here at FreshNetworks. When we first did it was a way of sharing with a wider audience the discussions and thoughts we have internally, in our team meetings and across the office on a wet Wednesday afternoon. Although I write most of the posts, they actually reflect the discussions, ideas and thoughts that we have had right across the team. Sharing our thoughts on social media, online communities, market research and online research communities and everything related to it.
If you’re new to our blog (or have just been a long-time reader) I thought it would be interesting to reflect on what we’ve written, and after the proliferation of word-clouds for Obama’s Inauguration Speech, I thought I’d create the same for the FreshNetworks blog. Take a look below (thanks to the lovely people at Wordle) and see if you think this reflects what we’ve written and you’ve read over the last twelve months.
For me, it’s great to see the prominence of two words: people and social. We write about online communities and social media. That’s what we know and what we do. But in doing so it’s important to remember that what we’re really writing about is people and how they interact in a social environment. It’s why we think that we need to focus on how we build and manage online communities. In a good online community, the technology should be invisible, it’s about the people and the way we work together in a social environment than makes the difference.
More of that in the next twelve months.
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21st October 2008, 06:21 pm
I’ve been away for a couple of weeks (on vacation in Japan – more about that in a post later) and things have been busy as ever back at FreshNetworks. One of the biggest announcements was the launch of K-Networks, a new joint-venture with independent creative agency Karmarama.
We’ve been working with the team at Karmarama for some time, and in addition to being a really great bunch of people there is also a real opportunity with them to build online communities as part of integrated communications campaigns for brands.
In our experience, online communities can work at their best when they integrate with brand and marketing activities. Whilst some of the communities we build and manage are online research communities, and others are more focused on amplifying word of mouth, they all share in common a connecting of the brand and the consumer. Bringing the creative and communications campaigns together with the online community work helps to maximise the benefit of this.
We have some exciting work in the pipeline with Karmarama and so you’ll probably hear much more about K-Networks soon…
Some coverage of the launch
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