As experts in social media marketing we are often asked to comment on topical industry discussions in the press and at a range of social media events. Here is a selection of our latest media coverage, as well as information about social media events at which we’ve been invited to speak. We are heavily involved in industry discussions about key social media trends and the constantly evolving social media landscape. We are continually being asked to speak at key marketing and social media events around Europe providing social media advice and insights for businesses.
agency:2 Spreading the power of social media
- 2011
-
- October
-
Call Centre and Customer Management Expo, Event
Integrating Social Media within a Multi-channel Service Solution.
Joel Davis was asked to discuss how to integrate social media within a multi-channel service solution approach at the Call Centre and Customer Management Expo. As more communication between companies and their customer’s moves onto social networks, dealing with complaints and queries quickly and effectively becomes a necessity.
Sales and marketing are typically equipped to push promotions but don’t have the structures in place to deal with those who speak back. Customer service teams provide the best channel for dealing with complaints and questions, but do they have the expertise in manage public brand communication?
You can read more over at Call Centre.
UTalkMarketing.com
How to create a successful social media strategy.
For many companies it can be difficult to gain a clear view of the bigger strategic picture when it comes to social media. Businesses often make the mistake of trying to build their strategy around platforms instead of their own unique business objectives.
Yet there are fundamental questions that need to be answered before engaging in any form of social media activity: how does social media investment relate to business value? Is an acquisition or retention model the best strategy for your business? How does your social media strategy align with your business and other marketing strategies? And what are the real costs?
You can read more over at the agency:2 blog.
- August
-
Some Comms Awards
agency:2 have been nominated for Best Viral Campaign Award.
For the second year running agency:2 have been nominated for a Somecomm award. This year we have been nominated for Best Viral Campaign award for the Brian Badonde’Art of Technology’ video seeding campaign.
Don’t Panic launched the somecomms awards in 2010 to celebrate the best in UK social media communications and recognise the individuals, companies and organisations who are revolutionising the use of online to communicate in cool and innovative ways.
The Marketing Lounge
How to monetise your facebook presence
Social networks are becoming increasingly business minded. Facebook has always been a platform that has been aware of the commercial possibilities that it offers – and throughout the last year it has added features that show an understanding of the needs and interests of brands across industries.
The emergence of Facebook Deals, Facebook Credits and Facebook Commerce are all evidence of the platform’s willingness to offer brands opportunities to monetise their presence on Facebook.
You can read more over at The Marketing Lounge.
- July
-
-
UTalkMarketing.com
How to manage your reputation online
The reputation of a brand takes years of careful and meticulous development and maintenance – but it can all be lost in mere minutes. That’s why having a proactive reputation management programme in place is vital, both offline and online.
Online your company’s brand personality is communicated through many channels – your corporate website along with your social presence such as your Facebook Page, Twitter account, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube channels. Increasingly these are the first places that people will go to find information about your company, especially if a news story has just broken about your business.
Brands must therefore take a highly flexible approach to proactively manage their online reputation. Planning is key – there must be a comprehensive reputation management strategy in place and brands have to be ready for challenges as they occur, it’s no use simply being reactive and constantly fire fighting issues.
You can read more over at UTalkMarketing.com.
- June
-
Social Media Today
How to Proactively Manage Your Reputation Online Using Brand Ambassadors
As you will be aware, the reputation of a brand takes years of careful and meticulous development and maintenance – but it can all be lost in mere minutes. That’s why having a proactive reputation management programme in place is vital, both offline and online.
Online your company’s brand personality is communicated through many channels – your corporate website along with your social presence such as your Facebook Page, Twitter account, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube channels. Increasingly these are the first places that people will go to find information about your company, especially if a news story has just broken about your business.
Brands must therefore take a highly flexible approach to proactively manage their online reputation. Planning is key – there must be a comprehensive reputation management strategy in place and brands have to be ready for challenges as they occur, it’s no use simply being reactive and constantly fire fighting issues.
You can read more over at Social Media Today.
Reputation Online
Key considerations when developing a global Facebook strategy
Joel Davis explores the best way to create a global Facebook strategy. If you’re devising a global Facebook strategy, one of the most important decisions that needs to be made is whether to develop one centralised, global Page, or to create one for each of your local markets in order to increase relevancy and to speak directly to your different audiences.
You can read more over at Reputation Online.
New Media Age
Kelkoo appoints agency:2 to develop social media strategy in Europe
agency:2 today announces that it has been appointed by Kelkoo, one of Europe’s largest shopping comparison websites, to develop and manage its Community Management Strategy on Facebook and Twitter in Denmark, Italy and the UK for the next three months.
Kelkoo’s social media strategy is customer-centric and focused on the design and creation of localised Twitter and Facebook Pages, based on their customer’s passion points.
The creation of localised content and community management will be in line with each market’s individual needs. agency:2 is providing project management, training and engagement support to Kelkoo’s European Marketing and Customer Service teams.
Chris Simpson, Marketing Director of Kelkoo commented:
“With the growing impact of social media on shopping habits, we believe it’s the right time to take the lead and maximise Kelkoo’s presence in social spaces. agency:2 impressed us with their experience, ideas and enthusiasm and were the natural choice to help us launch our social media activity. We believe our European audience will really benefit from the engagement that social media will enable us to provide, and we can’t wait to see the results.”
Joel Davis, founder and Director of agency:2, commented:
“This is a great fit for the agency:2 team and we are delighted to be working with such an innovative business. By using the power of social media in Kelkoo’s European markets, we will help confirm the brand’s position as the leading name in comparison shopping sites.”
You can read more over at NMA.
- May
-
-
The Marketing Lounge
Gain the edge for your brand on Facebook
Joel Davis explains Facebook EdgeRank and the factors that contribute to the EdgeRank score.
You can read more over at The Marketing Lounge.
Social Media Week Blog
Top 5 Tips for improving your Facebook EdgeRank
Joel Davis provides his 5 top Facebook content optimisation tips. By explaining Facebook’s unique algorithm – EdgeRank. This complex algorithm controls post rankings within the ‘Top News’ stream.
You can read more over at the Social Media Week.
-
New Media Age
Blaine Pike hired as European Social Media Community Manager at agency:2
Due to continued client growth and our focus on delivering exceptional social media campaigns with a measurable ROI agency:2 have hired Blaine to compliment our European Account Management team.
You can read more over at the New Media Age.
Internet World 2011, Event
How to seamlessly integrate social media
As an active member of the DMA Social Media Council, Joel Davis was asked to speak about how businesses can seamlessly integrate social media whilst maintaining an ethical and legal approach to all social activity.
- April
-
-
The Marketing Lounge
Are you flying blind to changes in cookie laws
Joel Davis follows up on his previous article on the new challenges to online Cookies. Joel presents 4 top tips to help UK businesses comply with the new changes in privacy laws.
You can read more over at The Marketing Lounge.
-
The Marketing Lounge
How new cookie laws affect your business
Joel Davis focuses on whether your online business is ready for the May 25th privacy and cookie law changes and helps you get to grips with?
You can read more over at The Marketing Lounge.
-
Social Media Week Blog
Top 5 Tips for Social Commerce
Joel Davis explores whether Facebook commerce will be a game changer in 2011? Many brands have already started to utilize Facebook as an e-commerce platform to deliver a truly social shopping experience.
You can read more over at the Social Media Week.
- March
-
Top 10 Social Media Agencies in the UK
agency:2 are pleased to have been ranked within the top ten social media agencies in the UK by econsultancy.com
You can read more over at the econsultancy.com.
Exploring key twitter strategies for brand building, PR and CRM, Event
agency:2 were asked by the Social Media Forum to discuss how businesses can use Twitter.
Joel Davis explores the most effective Twitter strategies to optimise brand reputation and community engagement – together with advice on best practice and future trends.
You can read more over at the socialmediaworldforum Europe.
Top UK agencies ranked by social media influence
The Wall Blog included agency:2 in their top UK agency list based on agencies that are the most influential in social media.
The term ‘influence’ is always being heavily debated and is a very controversial topic within social media marketing, however you can use PeerIndex to understand your influence within one very poualr social media site: Twitter. Peer Index uses three scores (authority, activity and audience) that are normalised to give a score. The normalisation is non-linear, so to get a score of 90 you need to be in the top 0.001% of the community. Peer Index starts by looking at your Twitter profile and the tool also allows you to register to link up more of your online profiles and gain better analytics.
You can read more over at the The Wall.
No one can afford to ignore the value of social media
Joel Davis speaks to Nicola Culley from the FT Adviser about the value of social media
This month Joel Davis was interviewed by Nicola Culley from the FT Adviser about the value of Facebook and Twitter and how brands can effectively use these platforms. Joel Davis for example said “An IFA can use Twitter to share his expertise and developments and also to position them among their competition”.
You can read the full story over at the FT Adviser.
Brand relevance: making competitors irrelevant event
agency:2′s event at the Southbank Centre, London on the 7th March 2011
We were asked by the Marketing Industry Network to share our expertise and explore how brands can maximise the return on their social media marketing programmes and stand out amongst the competition.
You can read the full story over at the Marketing Industry Network website.
- February
-
MarketingDotCom Magazine
Joel Davis’s interview with Marketingdotcom.com on social media marketing.
Earlier this month Joel Davis of agency:2 and David Wilson were interviewed by Mike Filsaime of Marketingdotcom.com about social media marketing.
You can read the full interview here.
- January
-
Social Media Week 2011, Event
agency:2′s event at Wahaca on the 09 February 2011
As the UK’s first social media agency we’re thrilled to be involved with Social Media Week 2011. The event promises to demonstrate the importance of social media, the vast range of opportunities that it offers and the measurable success it can help achieve.
Register for your place here.
- 2010
-
- December
-
Happy Christmas from the agency:2 team
agency:2’s charitable donation to Shelter
This year agency:2 sent Shelter e-cards to all of our clients as we wanted to make a difference to the lives of homeless and badly housed people this Christmas.
You can read the full story here.
Online Information 2010, Event
ROI in Social Media Advertising
We were asked by the Online Information show to share our expertise on ROI in Social Media Advertising.
You can read the full story over at Online Information.
- November
-
-
MediaPro 2010, Event
ROI in Social Media Advertising
We were asked by Media Pro 2010 to share our expertise on ROI in Social Media Advertising.
You can read the full story over at MediaPro.
-
- October
-
-
Some Comms Awards
Nominated for Best Small Agency and Best Social Media Public Sector Awards
Don’t Panic launched the some comms awards to celebrate the best in UK social media communications and recognise the individuals, companies and organisations who are revolutionising the use of online to communicate in cool and innovative ways. agency:2 have been nominated for Best Small Agency and Best Social Media Public Sector campaign for Hertfordshire Constabulary.
-
- September
-
-
Ri5
Making Social Media Work
Hodes’ Social Media Breakfast – held at One Aldwych on Monday 27th September – sought to illustrate the kinds of success that employers can achieve by using social media through a series of practical case-studies.
Welcoming invitees to the event, head of business development Cassie Sissons said its real aim was to demonstrate how to harness social media effectively within recruitment and employment strategies. Andy Hyatt, who heads up the agency’s digital team, began by noting that many ‘evangelists’ for social media tend to state “extreme” cases for its use while providing little in the way of real advice. But hard evidence that social media is already being widely used for recruitment purposes comes in the form of a recent Jobsite survey, indicating that that 28% of respondents have already hired successfully via Facebook and 14% via Twitter.
Hodes’ Stacy Cotton and Herts Constabulary recruitment manager Claire Fordham co-presented the first case-study, which had the objective of boosting applications for the force’s (voluntary) special constable roles. A campaign developed in partnership with social media specialists agency:2 led to a variety of engaging posts being placed on relevant forums and community sites, along with a viral video, a carefully targeted pay-per-click campaign and some advertising on Facebook.
Ri5
Click here for further information on the Hertfordshire Constabulary Case Study.
Social Media Advertising London, Event
New Forms of Measurement: ROI in Social Media Advertising
Joel Davis was kindly asked to present New Forms of Measurement: ROI in Social Media Advertising at the Social Media Advertising event in London. Using case study examples such as Royal Caribbean and Hertfordshire Constabulary, Joel illustrated how social media marketing can influence the buying process and explained how to measure the ROI of different types of advertising, including paid, earned and free media. Within this session Joel discussed popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogger outreach programmes.
Read more about the Social Media Advertising London Event.
-
- June
-
-
Online Marketing Show 2010, Event
Maximising ROI from Social Media
The team at agency:2 shared our unique social media expertise by illustrating how social media marketing can influence the buying process and drive ROI.
-
New Media Age
Promoted tweets
It may be an unknown, but there’s certainly room for brands to experiment with Twitter’s latest initiative, and it seems most agencies are positive about encouraging this. Joel outlined this further in NMA:
It’s the type of thing one should test, as long as the content is useful for users and relevant to the brand.
Joel Davis
You can read more at New Media Age.
-
- March
-
-
EConsultancy.com
Using hard metrics to calculate ROI
We were recently asked by EConsultancy.com to offer our expert opinion on how to drive ROI from social media activities. Here is a short excerpt:
Calculating ROI should be at the heart of any social media marketing planning process. Hard metrics such as sales, conversions and applications should always focus on defined measurements. An approach like this allows for campaigns to be optimised throughout any live programme and it allows marketers the insights to compare channels and their respective performances for future campaign planning. It’s worth noting that ROI should not be at the cost of brand reputation. Proper quality assurance should always be implemented throughout every campaign to ensure that both the brand and the results shine through.
Joel Davis
Read more at EConsultancy.com.
-
- January
-
-
New Media Age
Facebook’s Zuckerberg calls online openness the “social norm”
Joel Davis was asked by NMA to comment on personal data being shared online:
While anonymous information about users’ favourite movies or music was harmless, there was potential risk in more personal data being shared.
People still don’t realise the difference between the public and private environment, Google’s increasing attempts to index what’s happening on Facebook mean it’s getting easier to pick up what people are saying. Leaders will always come and go and it’ll only take a few mistakes for it to all go wrong for Facebook.
-
- 2009
-
- November
-
-
Innovation Awards 2009
Innovation in social media 2009
agency:2 were nominated for the Innovation Award 2009.
-
Marketing Week
Using social media to target expat communities
When HSBC International research found that expats are far more digitally connected than other people, it shared the findings online to build rapport and get the dispersed group to spread the word. Joel outlined that the strategy fits in well with the brand’s claim of being the “world’s local bank”.
It makes sense for HSBC to start talking about how it knows about the local culture, and issues expats may face.
Since expats use online forums to connect to like-minded people, penetrating these is a good strategy. It makes sense for the brand to be there to help out with issues, whether they are business or personal issues.
Davis points to publisher Dow Jones as another brand that has been using forums online to convince expat communities to sign up for various publications. agency:2 helped out on these, which Davis claims were done in a “support capacity, not in a salesy way” and he reports that this has helped treble monthly subscription rates since the initiative began in February.
Joel Davis and Marketing Week
You can read the full story over at Marketing Week.
-
- October
-
-
Digital Mission, LA and San Francisco Event
Digital Mission 2009
agency:2 were successfully selected to participate in Digital Mission which was organised by Chinwag and the UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), enabling digital companies to expand into overseas markets and attract investment outside the UK.
Read more at Chinwag.
-
- September
-
-
UTalkingMarketing.com
Why social media marketing gets the highest CTR rates
Much has been said and written about social media, in particular about its inexorable rise and its pervasiveness in today’s digital media environment. Less practical commentary have been made about the trackability and proven effectiveness of social media, especially in the context of a direct comparison with other digital marketing methods such as e-mail marketing and banner advertising. There are a number of ways of making these comparisons but within this article the focus will be on click through rates for each channel and how they prove social media can engage with consumers and stand within the overcrowded digital media landscape.
Consumers are undoubtedly looking for more personalised communications with their favourite brands and are increasingly dismissive of unsolicited messages. The emergent social media platforms provide an ideal way to do this.
Joel Davis
Read the full story at UTalkingMarketing.com.
-
- May
-
-
Advertising Age
U.K. Wireless Brand Turns Customer Service Over to Consumers
One of the UK’s biggest cellphone operators is launching a new mobile network called Giffgaff whose customers will be able to earn free calls and texts by actively marketing the service to their friends and families. Advertising Age asked Joel on how Giffgaff can make this programme a success:
They won’t be able to rely purely on goodwill. They’ll have to put money behind it in order to get the volume. If you look at the quality of their website, you can see that they have already put lots of thought and energy into it. This brings social media beyond marketing and into the business level, but I think they will struggle. It makes sense to bring something sexy into the dreary world of selling SIM cards and it’s perfect for young people, but it will be difficult to get momentum.
Joel Davis
Read more at Advertising Age
-
- 2008
-
- November
-
-
2nd Annual Mobile Multimedia Advertising and Marketing Forum
Social Media and Mobile Trends
agency:2 shared their opinion on social media and mobile trends in the UK. Mobile marketing has the potential to change the advertising and marketing space in the same way that the emergence of the Internet did a decade ago. The increasing availability of multimedia content is opening a large opportunity for sophisticated forms of mobile advertising. As content that already incorporates advertising – like live TV programming – makes its way to mobile handsets, brands and entertainment content providers are beginning to see the value of presenting full multimedia ads with programs.
-
- October
-
-
Eye for Travel Social Media in Travel Conference, Munich
Practical insights into how to monetise social media
agency:2 discussed the impact of social media and user generated content on the travel industry. Travel businesses cannot afford to dismiss social media as a fad. It presents an opportunity to gain an edge over competitors, rise above industry-wide challenges and engage effectively with business partners and consumers. Joel Davis used travel and hotel case studies to highlight the customer buying cycle and how to measure the success of social media campaigns.
You can read the full story over at Eye for Travel.
-
- July
-
-
Contagious Magazine
Measuring KUDOS within Communities
For brands to be accepted within communities they need to add value to the debate or chat. For some brands this means being a thought leader and being useful by sharing knowledge. For others it might be more about facilitating leisure time. In either case, the more a brand is able to help its audience to spend their time or waste their time, the more social capital it can gain. Joel Davis highlighted the four ways to attribute KUDOS in communities:
Knowledgeable and Useful
If a brand’s activity is deemed useful, users will respond by positively ranking their comments and thanking them. If brands are not adding value they could be banned.
Desirable
The number of visitors from a forum, along with any feedback on the postings, are some of the clearest indications of whether the activity is thought ‘Desirable’.
Open
Ironically, ‘Open’ can be measured by looking at instances in forums where brands have been banned or where they get flamed and become the unhappy recipients of a disproportionate amount of negative comment.
Shareable
By understanding where traffic originates and its volume over time brands can get an idea of the reach that their contributions achieve as well as the speed with which they spread. There are a variety of tools to help track this, including internal data such as the site’s own web logs as well as third party solutions such as Hitwise and Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
Read the full story over at Contagious Magazine.
-
