Mike Stopforth
Blog posts
5 steps to building digital communities that really impact your business
Submitted by Mike Stopforth on Fri, 2012-11-09 11:07
One of the more appealing opportunities for brands engaging with customers in social media is soliciting candid feedback about their products and service. With the right amount of investment in your communities these insights can have a profound impact on the way you conduct research, design business processes, train staff, build products and more.
Strategy starts with defining clear objectives. The same applies to social media (or digital) strategy — without clear objectives at the start, engagement falls flat. Traditionally these objectives are defined by the business and are in line with your brand ideals. Your brand ideals are all those things you believe your customers think and feel about you.
Our Identity Part 3: A strategic framework for engagement
Submitted by Mike Stopforth on Mon, 2012-09-17 09:30
By now you would have read our posts Our Identity Part 1: The Cerebra Mission Statement and Manifesto and Our Identity Part 2: The Community Lifecycle about who we are and what we do, but in case you need a quick refresher; Cerebra helps companies build, engage and activate communities through strategic communication across a variety of digital and traditional channels. We are a strategy led agency and our clients’ brand objectives underpin every activity and campaign we initiate.
Our Identity Part 2: The Community Lifecycle (or what we do)
Submitted by Mike Stopforth on Tue, 2012-09-04 13:24
Cerebra’s tag line is ‘We are community’ which refers not only to the culture fostered within our company but also through our role as curator of our clients’ communities. In our last post Our Identity Part 1: The Cerebra Mission Statement and Manifesto (or who we are and why we exist) we spoke about our mission statement and manifesto - the answers to “who we are” and “why we exist”. In this post we’re going to talk about “what we do” – the lifecycle that all of our clients’ communities go through before reaching maturity and self-sustainability.
Our Identity Part 1: The Cerebra Mission Statement and Manifesto (or who we are and why we exist)
Submitted by Mike Stopforth on Wed, 2012-08-29 10:23
A few weeks back members of the management team at Cerebra got together to discuss how we could better integrate two particular departments within the business. What started as a simple discussion about a business process resulted in some extremely constructive debate and discussion around how we position our company to staff, stakeholders, clients and the market in general.
5 Things We Learned Building Cerebra's Offices
Submitted by Mike Stopforth on Mon, 2012-08-13 14:23
It’s been 18 months since we moved Cerebra into new offices in Design Quarter. We’re quite proud of our spot – our clients love coming to see us and our staff love the fact that we’re accessible and in the middle of a shopping centre that offers multiple lunch options! 18 months is about enough time to figure out what we did right and what we did wrong, and seeing as we’re applying those lessons to the current expansion of our awesome work space, I thought I’d share our learnings with you too.
Shifting from Social Media to Social Business Thinking
Submitted by Mike Stopforth on Mon, 2012-04-16 11:08
The term social media refers to a set of web-based and mobile tools, technologies and platforms that enable connection, communication and collaboration in ways never before possible. Hopefully you’ve cottoned on to this by now.
The problem is that this definition doesn’t encompass the undeniable impact social media has had on society and business. I’ve been saying for years now that social media is not about tools, but about people. I believe that companies that grasp the ethos behind social media – and the behavioural changes resulting from the integration of these tools into daily life – will easily differentiate themselves from their competitors in years and decades to come.