Leading Surrey corporate events venue, Farnham Castle, has today announced visitor numbers to its website have grown by a third since first taking advantage of social networking sites such as Twitter, in summer 2009.

Farnham Castle, which is due to be the venue for the forthcoming, social networking festival, Twestival, on 25 March, has up until now, seen around 10% of its total web traffic come through Twitter, “but this is rapidly increasing,” explains Jeff Toms, director of marketing and client services at Farnham Castle. “We are now using Twitter to promote our intercultural and language training courses and even availability for wedding dates at the Castle, from which we have received numerous enquiries.

“Social networking is a great promotional opportunity for all sorts of organisations, because it is free and requires minimal effort,” continues Toms. “The global reach of sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked-in will ensure their popularity continues to grow significantly over the next few years and we would encourage other businesses to learn how social networking can help them communicate with customers and prospects. The Twestival is an opportunity for local people to find out about this exciting new medium of communication and promotion.”

The Twestival will be celebrated at the same time in cities across the world and the Farnham event is being organised by Surrey based PR agency thebluedoor and supported by sponsor iBundle. Tickets for Farnham’s Twestival range from a minimum donation of £10 up to a maximum donation of £30, with all proceeds going to the international educational charity, Concern Worldwide. Tickets are available from the Farnham Twestival website.

For more information on Farnham Castle please call 01252 721194 or visit www.farnhamcastle.com

A bigmouthmedia survey has identified the UK Finance sector's biggest users of online social networking tools and confounded many expectations by revealing that the Finance sector has embraced the social media phenomenon more readily than those in other established industries. Some 74% of the leading executives surveyed regularly engage in the use of tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, a statistic which demonstrates the extent to which a normally conservative sector has adopted the latest working trends.

Their performance compares extremely favourably with that of leading executives in the FTSE 100. In a bigmouthmedia survey earlier this year, of the FTSE executives sampled only 25% actively engaged in social networking, compared to 85% of business leaders representing companies from the Sunday Times Fast Track 100.

"The evidence clearly shows that the Britain's financial businesses are rapidly coming to terms with the social media revolution. However, there is still over a 10% gap between the use of social media by finance execs and those in Fast Track companies," said Chris Cathcart, Senior Finance Strategist at bigmouthmedia.

"I believe it is key for finance execs with a focus on digital marketing to understand the social sphere more. A targeted and strategic social media campaign can not only help build better brand relations with customers, but can also highlight easily fixed customer based issues and create greater brand loyalty, not to mention a beneficial impact on organic search results."

While the social media has been one of 2009's most hyped phenomena, little evidence exists as to what extent businesses are deriving benefits from the plethora of available services. However, bigmouthmedia's survey indicates that leading industry players are increasingly using social networking as part of the essential business toolkit.

The research revealed that former Lloyds TSB Head of Innovation James Gardner is the finance sector executive who has most readily adopted social networking as a means to communicate with colleagues and the public. Gardner, who recently moved to the Department for Work and Pensions, uses LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo and a blog to reach out to past, present and future customers.

Gardner emerged as eventual winner in front of a field that included Martin Peterlechner at Tesco Personal Finance, HBOS head of banking Mike Regnier and Stephan Daquaire of Swiftcover.com.

LinkedIn emerged as the finance executive's networking tool of choice, with 76% of those surveyed using the service.

Linus Gregoriadis, research director at internet marketing research and training company Econsultancy, said: "It's great to see financial services company executives really involved with social media. This sector has historically been quite slow to engage in new digital channels but, in recent months, there are some great examples of financial services brands who have been really dynamic.

"An example which springs to mind is First Direct, which showcases customer opinions and sentiment about its brand and has created a great multichannel campaign around this. Engagement through social media has been a way for banks to differentiate themselves, but is now fast becoming something which is essential rather than a 'nice-to-have'. You need to have a presence where your customers are, and this applies to all business sectors.

"There is no set formula around what works with social media so companies need to experiment and see what works for them. Whether the objectives are around hard financial targets or softer, brand-building goals, companies need to have metrics in place which help them to measure their success and build the business case for further investment."

On April 15, 2010, the Social Media 201 Conference will be hosted at Microsoft’s Conference Center in Redmond, Washington. Social Media 201 is designed to help organizations take their social media strategy, tactics, and implementation to the next level of customer engagement, profitability, and ROI. This one day event features powerful keynote presentations, insightful lightning talks, a collaborative round table working session, and a panel discussion from recognized experts in business strategy, customer-relationship building and monetization of social media. These industry experts include:

Eric Weaver – Account Director and Strategist at Tribal DDB Worldwide Dave Hanley – CEO & Principal at Banyan Branch Daniel Rasmus – Author of “Listening to the Future” Kristen Ruby – CEO, Ruby Media Group Dr. Udi Schlessinger – Managing Partner, U Labs Darren Williger – President & CEO, Regillo Consulting Group Bille Baty – COO & Managing Partner, Phi Concepts Jeff Dance – Founder, Fresh Consulting Joe Kennedy – Founder of Eastside Entrepreneurs and AKA “The Connector”

Social Media 201 is sponsored by the Microsoft Local Engagement Team and Comcast Business Class. Supporting organizations for Social Media 201 include Fresh Consulting, Eastside Entrepreneurs Social Network, Ruby Media Group, Banyan Branch, Regillo Consulting Group and Tribal DDB Worldwide.

 

Mike Whitmore, President of Fresh Consulting from Bellevue, Washington explains, "The concept for Social Media 201 stemmed from the Social Media 101 Conference the Eastside Entrepreneurs and Joe Kennedy hosted last September at Microsoft. The 101 Conference helped educate business owners about what social media is and why companies should participate. The new Social Media 201 Conference is designed for those businesses that have begun to delve into social media and want to take it to the next level, find a path to profitability and measure return on investment.”

Registration for the event is available at www.SocialMedia201.com with an early adopter discount available through March 15, 2010. Additional discount codes are available though the sponsoring organizations.

Twitter feeds on the event are available from Twitter.com/SM201CONF and you can follow the event tweets via the hashtag #SM201

The Microsoft Conference Center provides free wireless Internet connectivity. A complimentary lunch is provided for attendees thanks to Comcast Business Class.

For More Information Please Contact:
www.SocialMedia201.com

According to United Planet (www.unitedplanet.com), one of the leading developers of enterprise portal software in Europe, the opportunities presented by social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook have paved the way for a new kind of teamwork for business. Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, blogs and forums, have made it possible to support business-internal collaboration and knowledge management, transforming companies into an Enterprise 2.0 organisation.

Instead of ‘losing’ or ‘hiding’ company knowledge inside employees’ heads, Web 2.0 functionality in the form of wikis and blogs can provide an easy to use outlet for experience and expertise. This new way of working and sharing knowledge mirrors the Facebook approach to communicating. As this approach is very popular outside of work, employees are happy to engage with it, creating an invaluable tool for collecting, archiving and sharing knowledge with other employees in the future.

Employees can post past experiences or personal information in a company wiki, making this available to their colleagues on the portal. They can share information in forums or contact one another quickly when required which is particularly useful for project groups. The ability to exchange opinions on important topics of difficult issues informally in the run-up to a meeting means that the time needed to plan and conduct such meetings is significantly reduced.

Axel Wessendorf, managing director at United Planet, said: “Modern portal solutions such as Intrexx are equipped with templates for Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, blogs and forums, as standard. As a new way of doing business, Enterprise 2.0 not only allows companies to pool distributed knowledge on the central data platform of the enterprise portal, enabling the company to profit directly from the knowledge and experience of its individual employees. It also ensures that knowledge is easily transferred across multiple locations.”

“Agility will be vital for all businesses going forward and Enterprise 2.0 will make it much easier to share and discuss new ideas, and develop innovative solutions in a collaborative manner without delay. Accelerated distribution of information throughout an organisation not only empowers employees to learn from the knowledge of others, it also makes a real difference to employee morale and encourages team spirit,” he added.

For further information about Intrexx, as well as free live demos of Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, blogs and forums, visit www.unitedplanet.com.