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Tomorrow I leave for the States on a journey to be inspired, receive an award for my work and charge positive energy. To all of you out there who supports and beliefs in Awoque, our values and share our High5:s, the Gutenberg Award is for you.

“The Gutenberg Award recognizes individuals for distinguished professional achievement. We are so pleased to honor Victoria Ahlen for her excellent work as a leader in the use of social media for not only effective dissemination of news and marketing information, but also for her commitment to its use for the greater good. She emulates what we want our students to accomplish as professionals in mass media”, says Dr Cheryl Bacon at Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at ACU.

Awoque socialized the World Transplant Games in Göteborg in the summer of 2011 and increased awareness for organ donation. Our team at the time – Maria Gustafsson, Björn Kåberger, Paul Williams, Martin Lindeskog, Kristina Svensson and other fantastic co-workers. I will blog more about you in the days to come.

Follow my journey in a videoblog. High5 to you.

Awoque believes that passion and courage is at the heart of all successful social media initiatives. We like to look at the bigger picture, helping organizations to develop and transform their business through sustainable social networking. This is what a common process looks like:
- a couple of meetings with the management to get to know the company, values and goals. We look for the story to tell
- a workshop with as many of the staff as possible
- Awoque scans the online market to get a current view on the brand, its fans and the work field
- our client gets an report and a suggestion on a starting strategy and suggestions of activities

After many successful business cases, we encourage our clients to spend sufficient time on understanding and educating themselves about the various aspects of social media. It is an earned media.  It takes a personal engagement from as many of the staff as possible to increase the chances of becoming a social organization and reaching set business goals.

A great book to read is the “The Thank You Economy” by Gary Vaynerchuk.

I got inspired yesterday. Jonas Bauer, CEO at Vasaloppet, visited the popular breakfast club in Kungsbacka yesterday to tell us the story on why/how a ski race got to be so much for than just a single event. The event inspires thousands of volunteers to get involved, more than 7 000 fans on the Facebook, and a leader who talks strategically and passionately about all events, actions and communication plans. A big High5 from my heart. Go Go!!

Here is a glimpse of one of Västsvenska Handelskammarens events for members in one of their business networks at Liseberg yesterday broadcasted through Bambuser. Guests on stage were Anna Mannheimer and Peter Apelgren interviewed by Johan Trouvé. The subject in focus was “Interaction between the culture and businesses, is it necessary?”

Should one show what happens in an exclusive members network at a business event? Or should it stay off limits for non-members? Or could it be used for recruitement/marketing purposes? What do you think?

Yesterday Twingly, a blog trackback service, launched its own Analysis feature. According to Anton Johansson, Product Strategist at Twingly, the service is targeted at PR agencies helping their clients keeping an eye on the blogosphere. So what is Twingly Insight?

Twingly Insight is not going to be a Monitoring tool like Meltwater Buzz. Instead it will give the user access to the huge database (500,000 new entries per day, according to Twingly.com) of blog posts that Twingly has gathered, and search it for the keywords you are interested in. One thing Twingly Insight provides that most other services don’t is a wide array of meta data, mainly concerning stats like trackbacks (“blogs about this blog post”), a “blog score”, etc, helping the user in finding the key influencers.

Not having used Twingly Insight (yet!), I can not give you a rundown on how it actually works, but through Twingly’s website you will find a demo version and an example on how it’s supposed to be used. It sure looks promising though, and considering how many cool partners they already have, I look forward to see what the guys are up to next!

Here are some other news on the subject:
Twingly släpper analysverktyg - Article in Swedish from dagensmedia.se
The official launch blog post – from blog.twingly.com

At Awoque we have a passion for socializing events and we understand that one of the keys to successfully marketing your event through social media, is to have a strategic plan for your communication. It’s as important as finding a brilliant location for the event to take place.

CSR Faktum Event

From the beginning think like a publisher. Start, asking yourself key questions, what are people looking for?  Why should they come to your event? What do they expect to get out of it and what they will encounter by being there?  Your publishing plan should incorporate three stages; pre-event, event and post event content. To make it interesting, use a mix of different media to get people involved; text, graphics, video and audio to engage with your fans and to attract others.

Remember, no one likes to get spammed. Sending out message after message is boring and will turn people away. Your publishing plan should include detailed timings and the release of your content or message should have a purpose, be of interest and designed to initiate feedback.

Do your research! When are your fans most active and what social channels do they use? What information are they sharing, blogging, tweeting or posting about?  Make your publishing plan with this in mind. However, be respectful, listen and observe, as it may not be appropriate for you to promote your event through these specific conversations.

If you want to successfully socialize your next event, then give us a call.

What is more powerful eyeballs or engagement? At a coffee store last week in Göteborg’s Central Station I pondered this, as people were tapping away on their tablets or smart phones. While, just across from the cafe was a large, rotating, advertising display, competing for audience attention.

Traditional marketing such as television and print relies on “eyeballs” to get the message across with no emphasis on the consumer. This makes traditional marketing one-sided and flat to younger generations. Unlike, social media which is about “engaging” with your potential customer. Social Media gives your company it’s voice or personality enabling new and existing customers to interact with your organisation on a more personal level. Social channels such as Facebook and Twitter allow people the opportunity to voice their opinions about your services or products in a casual manner.

With the percentage upon which people act on traditional or forced marketing estimated to be in the 1-2% range. It is easy to see why more and more companies are becoming interested in social media. Especially, when you factor in the rapid take-up of tablets and smart-phones.

We often find that companies focus on the big four channels: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and LinkedIn – Social Media, right?  Social media is a powerful medium for two-way communication.  But when companies take a different perspective and focus on the “Social” side, it allows their organization to think outside the box.

Focus on the social side

My issue with the term “social media”is that for the uninitiated it is biased toward digital marketing. This is why I often refrain from using the term when meeting clients. I want to avoid any perceived borders or limitations when looking at ways being social can positively impact an organization’s business, process, sales, development, inspiration, etc.

Companies need to stop trying to shoe horn social media into their business and instead start looking at the bigger picture of  becoming a social organization.

The past few years Facebook (and other channels) for businesses, have more or less been the domain of marketing departments. However, customer support managers and their teams are also getting involved.

For companies looking to harness social media, channels such as Facebook and Twitter can serve as an alternate customer support channel, providing customers with access to customer cervices (Live Chat, Click to Call, etc), frequently asked questions,product reviews, customer groups, store locations, etc.

Today a number of companies around the world are using, or switching to social channels to provide better customer and after sales support/experiences. As we are based in Sweden, we’d like to acknowledge a few companies we think are doing a good job.

SEB
SEB is a Swedish based bank that uses Facebook to extend their customer support and they do it very well. They have a team of dedicated staff monitoring and answering customer queries. It is fast becoming the support channel of choice for their socially savvy customers.

SEB Facebook Support

Binero

Binero, is a web hotel company based in Kista that has extended their customer support to Twitter. Binero answer any question, no matter what it is. They are quick at responding, will call you back if you leave your number and the service is available 7 days week (open times are posted on their Twitter account). You can also see the people who answer your questions in the Tweetologer.

Binero Twitter Support

SJ
SJ is Sweden’s state run train company, which is using Facebook to imprrove their customer service.

O.k, if you live in Sweden you are probably shocked to see SJ in this list. True the company has had serious issues. However, I have placed them in the list as an example of a company facing their issues head on. Most companies are afraid of negative comments but SJ are using social media to answer customer complaints. Hopefully, SJ not only respond to complaints but act on them too.

SJ Facebook Support

On another note, it is also very important for companies to consider how social media support services integrates into their existing customer support processes, in order to avoid inefficiencies and increased costs.

If you want to understand how social media can be used to enhance your customer support services give us a call.

Earlier this year Stall Rustorp a company that sells horse riding products online, contacted Awoque to help market their web and e-commerce site through social media.

Stall Rustorp, is located in the beautiful Swedish countryside approx. six kilometers from Trollhättan and they are passionate about horses and their well-being. The first challenge we had to address was that their website and online store did not communicate this at all. Stall Rustorp, desperately needed a new image and a more user-friendly online strategy to get their message across.

In order to deliver against the brief, Awoque undertook a comprehensive analysis of Stall Rustorp’s business and we reached out to the online horse riding community, valuable key influencers and fans. The result was concrete ideas (and input) on how to get key messages across, a better understanding of the community and their social media channels of choice.

This valuable information was used in the redesign of Stall Rustorp’s entire web and e-commerce site. The new design not only gives Stall Rustorp a modern and fresh look but it also reflects the values of the horse riding community. Another key item was to move Stall Rustorp to a blog friendly platform to promote much more engagement with customers and fans.

“The goal for Stall Rustorp was to create a modern, user-friendly website, whilst making ourselves more available through social media. Awoque has not only helped us create these conditions but pinpointed what needed to be done and made it happen. We now have a very beautiful web site that appeals to our customers and a social media strategy to engage with our fans. We are extremely happy and believe that we have a bright social future.” says Johan Söderlund, CEO. Stall Rustorp.

We too believe that Stall Rustorps has a very bright social future, they have the tools, a new web/e-commerce site that gets across a simple but powerful key message – their love of horses; and a community of passionate fans to engage with.

#High5