Advertising the UKASFP conference through the networks

[Carl Plant]

The UKASFP conference tickets will be available soon and no doubt in great demand. Over the last few years we have advertised the event through email campaigns, adverts in journals and word of mouth, it's safe to say we have had success. Much of this success has been down to the viral effect in the network connections between people so in the spirit of SF we need to be doing more of what works here.

This year we are moving with the times and advertising through a number of online social networks as well as continuing with the previous approaches. You can now find the UKASFP conference through a number of online features, for example the RSS feeds from this blog, through facebook, linkedin and even twitter. This will hopefully tap into the mass viral effect evident in these networks and also provide more diversity in the membership of the UKASFP.

Let me give an example of how this viral effect could work. On the facebook network each person has a profile page that updates every time that person posts something or links to another persons posts, this information is then visible to others connected and if they comment or indicate interest in some way this becomes visible on their profile, creating a viral effect.

My hopes are that as a build up to the conference and even following, we can create a form of viral advertising for the UKASFP. We can do this is a number of ways.To give a example those who frequent facebook can now become a fan or add the UKASFP application/page to their profile and this will increase curiosity in what we have to offer, this will then potentially lead to interest in the conference.

The UKASFP also has a twitter profile and this has been running for around 7 months now and is gathering followers as the use of twitter expands in the UK. The conference details have been published in small amounts through this network.

There are a number of UKASFP members on linkedin and we now have an event on their too hopefully promoting the conference through this professional based network.

During the conference we will be gathering video, images, blog posts, comments, tweets (twitter posts) and hopefully an updated SF practice google map. This media will then be added to the social networks and tagged with the name UKASFP, again potentially increasing interest into what we have to offer.

We already have a small team of contributors developing a Solution Focused Practice wikipedia page and this will eventually add a strong link to the UKASFP.

I hope that those of us who are using these social media and networking tools can spend a small amount of time linking and posting information regarding the association as this will be a sound investment in the future of the knowledge and conversations offered through the SF community in the UK.