Welcome to adventures with Autism Works. After a busy week of conferences and presentations the previous week, this week has seen me enjoy some 'lighter' work for a change that had been sidelined or a few weeks while sorting out the move to Grey Street as well preparing for conferences, as well as getting the Internet connectivity right at the new office, so that it wasn't too excruciatingly slow to complete and amend each entry!
In a ever-faster moving technological world, it is so easy to forget just how 'useless' we are without fast Internet connectivity. Because we are so used to fast Internet speeds, it can be also be so easy to become impatient when computers freeze, because we don't expect to have to wait so long as in the old days of dial-up connections, which now seems like a bygone era. But nevertheless, it was nice to go back to doing some repetitive work that required concentration and attention to detail, particularly when checking company addresses, postcodes and E-mail addresses so that we can promote our services to them when we get our marketing campaign running full swing. Such tasks are great for me as a person with Asperger's Syndrome, as it uses what I feel are my personal strengths in relation to the condition and doing them helps one to take the mind off any anxieties.
We have also had a visit this week from Alpha Graphics, to whom we have been very grateful for the support that they have provided, not least because they managed to put together two fantastic promotional banners for us at very short notice for the conference at the Riverside Cricket Ground last week. Alpha Graphics are working with us on promoting Autism Works and our services through their modern marketing system which covers Cross Media Marketing. Kirsty White, a Marketing Executive from Alpha Graphics, who combines her passion for digital photography with work, took some shots of Peter and I standing next to the Autism Works banners which you will be able to see on Facebook soon.
Kirsty took Peter and myself through some of the tools that Alpha Graphics use to run a marketing campaign. One of the areas that interests us at Autism Works, particularly in relation to the needs of employees with ASC or Asperger's Syndrome, is the use of Social Media to promote our services. As we have seen, social media like Facebook and Twitter is a hugely useful tool for people with ASC and Asperger's Syndrome in the sense that it removes many social barriers that we can face in conventional social environments, as well as removing the need to have to balance verbal communication with non-verbal communication, making communication much more manageable. Another exciting aspect of social media for Autism Works though is that as traditional business models are changing in relation to the development of social media, we can get our message out to wide audience without the need to travel, thus saving a lot of time and money, as it doesn't cost so much with social media as opposed to traditional marketing models.
In an age where technology seems to be moving so fast, something I often find is that I am aware of the possibilities of such tools but I don't quite take to how to utilise them initially. But with a bit of learning and practice, I should become accustomed to it all over the next few weeks. We are going to publish how we are going about our marketing and I will continue to update our marketing progress in this blog, so that it will be of benefit to others who want to replicate us.
Working with Alpha Graphics means we can help them get their name know not only in the autism community but also to the business that Autism Works will be marketing its services to. These are the kind of positive partnerships we want, where organisations can benefit from working together as well as helping to develop good working relations, which help us look forward to coming to work, thus enabling us to be more productive through being happy in our jobs. Good working relations are important to me a a person with Asperger's Syndrome, not least because I sometimes find it hard to understand where and why working relationships go wrong sometimes!
Be sure to keep following Adventures with Autism Works for further developments as well as more marketing magic!
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