FreshNetworks Blog

We like a challenge at FreshNetworks. We’re a competitive bunch. As, it appears, is most of London agencyland, be they a pure play social media agency or any marketing, advertising or PR agency with a passion for social media and for competition. So, following a weekend of Twitter banter we’ve decided to accept the ultimate challenge to find the fastest agency team in London, and also the one that can raise most for charity. We’re inviting you all to join us in the 2011 London Social Media Agency 5km Challenge in June 12th. The #social5km as we’re calling it.

About the #social5km challenge

We’re taking part in the 2011 Race for the Kids for Great Ormond Street Hospital. A 5km ‘fun run’ around Battersea park on 12 June. The plan is to enter in agency teams and compete for some serious and less serious awards. And most notably for pride.

What are we competiting for

Aside from pride, there are some serious categories of competition, and it’s not just about being the quickest to finish. Current proposed categories are:

• Fastest team (mean time for the whole team)
• Most money raised
• Most enthusiastic supporters
• Best dressed runner
• Most impressive hair

If you want to add more categories, add them in the comments below.

How to take part

Taking part is simple. You need to do two things:

1. Enter for the race as a team (one person needs to create the team first and then everybody else join it)
2. Leave a comment below telling us: your team name, your agency (and link) and the people in your team (with their Twitter names)

We’ll keep a list here of the agencies taking part and keep you updated in the next few months.

Oh and the friendly, competitive banter can take place on Twitter – hashtag #social5km

The agency teams

1) FreshNetworks

• Matt Rhodes (@mattrhodes)
• Helen Trim (@helentr)
• Greg Hollings (@greghollings)
• Dan Harris (@gecko84)
• Alex Truby
• Joy Taylor
• Nic Gutteridge

2) ‘The caners’ from Hurricane

• Jon Holloway (@socialvation)
• Paul Cash (@zagology)
• Lindsay Davies (@lindsaydavies)
• Jo Bromilow (@redheadfashion)
• Mauro Niewolski (@mauroniewolski)
• Matt Simpson (@mrmsimpson)

3) Team TAMBA

• Kay Hammond (@TAMBA_Internet)
• Jon Broomfield (@TAMBA_Jon)
• Adam Keene (@TAMBA_Adam)

4) Team Tempero

• Dom Sparkes (@domsparkes)
• Kelda Wallis (@kelda)
• Lucy McElhinney (@lucym)
• Frank Sheahan (@FrankusDTankus)
• Julia Wolter
• Esther Ivshin

5) Team eMod

• Tearin’ Tia Fisher (@emoderation)
• Blazin’ Blaise Grimes-Viort (@blaisegv)
• Dangerous Dani W
• Hurricane Helen S
• Jumpin’ Joanne W
• Revving Roger W
• Tearaway Tom M
• Fiona R
• Janice P

We’re full of excitement as our co-founder, Caroline Plumb, is off to India with David Cameron as part of a UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) delegation to promote UK exports and investment in India.

As Caroline will be representing a social media agency, she will be promoting the use of  social media technology for businesses – an area  in which the Indian business community seem to have already made good headway.

Caroline’s invitation to join David Cameron’s delegation to India is an exciting prospect given that India has topped a recent survey about businesses who use social media for new customer acquisition.

The survey, commissioned by workplace solutions provider Regus, revealed that 40% of businesses around the world have successfully leveraged social media for new business development.

India topped the chart for the country with the highest percentage of companies using social media for new customer acquisition, followed by Mexico and then Spain. Rather surprisingly, only 35% of US companies and 34% of Canadian companies have successfully leveraged social media to develop new business:

• India – 52%
• Mexico – 50%
• Spain – 50%
• Netherlands – 48%
• China -  44%
• South Africa – 43%
• Germany – 41%
• Australia – 41%
• USA – 35%
• Canada – 34%

With 67% of companies in India also using professional social networking to source information about new customers, clients or competitors, compared to the global average of 54%, it seems that Indian businesses are leading the way in implementing a social media strategy that successfully helps with new business development.

Business leaders in each country were also asked whether they believed that social media was an effective enough marketing channel to be awarded its own portion of marketing budget. More than a quarter of businesses worldwide confirmed they have set aside a proportion of marketing budget specifically devoted to social media activities, proving the benefits of social media for commercial organisations.

More about David Cameron’s India trade mission

David Cameron will be accompanied to India by six Cabinet members and around 60 CEOs, including Michael Queen of 3i, Philip Dilley of ARUP, Andrew Moss of Aviva, John Varley of Barclays,  John Griffith-Jones of KPMG, Graham Mackay of SABMillar and Vittorio Colao of Vodafone, as well as our very own Caroline. You can see the full list at the link below.

Foreign Secretary William Hague, Chancellor George Osborne and  Business Secretary Vince Cable are also among the British government representatives travelling to India.

Read more about David Cameron’s UKTI delegation to India.

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.

Image by mikebaird via Flickr

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.

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

Some more reading

• Big Brands in Social Media: Ford and Southwest Airlines (futurelab.net)
• An Online Community Packing An ROI Punch (socialmediatoday.com)
• Social Media Marketing (sociallyminded.co.uk)
• Lack of knowledge hampers social media marketing. Let us help. (freshnetworks.com)
• 4 Tips to Successful Strategy in Social Media (kylelacy.com)