Matt Rhodes, this week's Blogger of the Week, is head of Client Services at FreshNetworks, a London-based tech start-up that builds and manages online communities for brands.  The company is part of FreshMinds, a research company that has been named UK agency of the year for the last two years running, and originally built online communities for research.

"Over the last twelve months we've developed beyond research communities into a digital marketing agency that builds communities for innovation, advocacy and amplifying word-of-mouth and customer engagement as well," he says. "We've grown quickly since the start of 2008 and have clients including two of the largest media firms in Europe, multinational telecommunications companies, FMCG and travel firms." FreshNetworks won £5 million of funding last month as London winners of a competition to find the UK's best entrepreneurs, run by HBOS.

"The FreshNetworks blog is very much a team effort, even if it is mainly me who puts the words down in the posts the ideas and content come from right across the team," Rhodes says. "We started blogging really for two reasons; shortly after joining FreshNetworks, I took part in a barcamp in London and came back with lots of great ideas for the team. This usually happens with conferences, you come back with great ideas that you'll pass on to others that you meet in meetings and events over the coming months. The blog was a way of getting these ideas out straight away.

"At the same time, we run quite a collaborative team and sharing information or developing your own ideas is actively encouraged. Some ideas are great and make it into our strategy and offer, others are just great ideas. The blog provided us with a way of getting these ideas out and, in time, to build on and develop these with others."

Rhodes says his role today is a mix of both helping to build and grow FreshNetworks, and spending a lot of time with clients, working with them on their social media strategy and where online communities fit into this. He also speak sa lot at conferences (next at an ESOMAR conference in Dublin later this month where he'll be speaking about how online research communities are forcing a change in the agency-client relationship in the research industry), and, of course, blogging.

"I imagine everybody says that when they started blogging they didn't expect anybody to read," he says.  "The same is true of us. But people do read, and it's now a main way that the team get their ideas out, and often the way that people and new clients hear about us first. As a business that help's people with their social media strategy, I suppose that's fitting."

As for the future, Rhodes says we're seeing a real change in the way that brands are using social media.

"First we saw many people trying to take a traditional approach to marketing in social media, but banner ads in the likes of Facebook have proven to be not always as successful as you might like," he says Then we saw people trying to take advantage of the conversations that are out there about their brand, listening in and sometimes trying to contribute. At times this is successful, but it is a difficult area to operate in. Social networks are me spaces, they are places people go to talk to their friends, share their photos, plan their events. Interrupting this is difficult for brands, and even if they do get it right they will never be able to have a conversation on their own terms."

That’s why he thinks the future of social media for brands is online communities and sees a shift in the way people use the Internet that supports this notion.

"We know that more people search for social networks / online communities now than search for porn, but people are using the Internet to find answers from each other – it’s becoming a true peer-to-peer interactive medium than just a place I go to to read information," he says. "Online communities grow and develop around shared interests, goals, aims or activities; the Internet is become more a set of online communities."