social media week

You’ve probably seen a lot on the blog here of late about our Social Media Week conference Making Social Part of Your DNA. I’m pleased to say it was a spectacular day all around, with a lively audience, great speakers and crucially lots of talk and debate. It couldn’t have gone any better and I congratulate the crowd sourced team who pulled it together.

If you  are interested in watching any of the presentations you can see the full set here. Otherwise check out a video with highlights of the day below or view some great photos here.

You should also read some pretty strong write ups from Simone Schuurer in the Microsoft Advertising community blog, Girish Balachandran on the B2B Marketing magazine blog and a quick summary from one of our speakers, Neville Hobson.

For me the three sessions that stood out were JP Rangaswami from Salesforce.com, Fergus Boyd from Virgin Atlantic and the agency panel session on who owns social. JP painted a picture of the connected consumer who lives in the present and future tense and how this will impact the way in which brands manage the customer relationship. How do you capture data on expressions of interest i.e. the future tense, and use that data to make decisions on how to address your customers needs? Marketing just shifted up a gear right.

Fergus talked about how social must wash it’s face, i.e. its time for social media marketing to grow up and prove it’s worth through solid ROI. After all, business is a commercial enterprise right.

The agency panel debate didn’t really draw any conclusions. The predicted fight between the agencies didn’t happen. Instead a general consensus seemed to appear in which the PR, marketing and Ad agency predicted a blended approach was best for clients and predictably the digital shop – We Are Social – confidently stated this was the only way to go.

The best insight for me from this session was the general move away from agencies providing execution services for their client (incidentally a great quote on this came up during the day from Jeremy Waite of Phones4U “why would I outsource my tone of voice”) to strategy and creative services. Clients are increasingly taking community management and engagement in house which depending on the resources available may be a very smart move.

Overall a very enjoyable and valuable day and we raised approx £3,450 for our chosen charities too.

As part of Social Media Week London this year we organised a bloggers meetup called ‘How Blogging has Changed my Life’. We had a panel of four great bloggers talking about what they have achieved. Many had achieved a book deal, but all had made lots of new friends and connections, learned a hell of a lot, gained acess to great places and people – one had even met the queen. We’ve been running blogger social events in London for over 4 years now and it’s been a grand journey for us too.

You can enjoy a handful of photos from the evening below. If you are a blogger and would like to know more, visit the London Bloggers Meetup page.

As we countdown to Social Media Week we’ll be posting interviews with some of our speakers here on the blog.

Here’s a short video with Eve Critchley, Digital Officer at mental health charity Mind, where she introduces the topic of her presentation. It’s going to be fascinating to hear how a brand has been using social engagement for good and not simply for profit – but there will undoubtedly be lessons for us all here.

You can follow conversation around this event on twitter using the hashtag #smwdna. You can also follow Eve on twitter at @EveGwendo.

We hope you will join us at Making Social Part of your DNA. Tickets are available here and all proceeds are being donated to Mind and CRY.

Social Media Week is just around the corner and we’re delighted to be organising two events in London:

1. How Blogging Has Changed My Life – Monday 13th Feb (SOLD OUT)

We have 225 guests registered to attend and hear four great bloggers describe how their lives have been changed for the better since they started blogging.

There will be a Q&A panel as part of this evening event which will give attendees the chance to quiz our panellists on how to become a great blogger.

2. Making Social Part of Your DNA – Thursday 16th Feb (TICKETS AVAILABLE)

This is our keynote event and we have a line-up of fantastic speakers and brands (Virgin Atlantic, 02, Cisco, Dell, Barclays to name a few) describing how they have used social media for marketing, internal comms, customer service and engagement.

The focus is largely on looking at the results that have been measured and return on investment achieved, rather than ‘how to’ content, with a heavy emphasis on how companies need to look at social media from a holistic point of view and not just from a marketing communications perspective.

This will be valuable for everyone from marketing managers at blue chips, to business owners / directors who want to ramp up their social media programmes.

Watch this short interview with our Chairman, Martin Thomas, to hear about why you should attend:

You can also follow conversation about this event on twitter using the hashtag #SMWDNA.

Outside of our own, there are also many other fantastic events being held during Social Media Week. I’ll be attending:

The Future of Brand Communications – where marketing, PR and Social Media collide

From Social Data to Social Insight

For the full list and schedule of events click here.

As part of our forthcoming conference ‘Making Social Part of your DNA‘, we’ll be showing videos and interviews with our speakers to give you a taste of what’s to come on the day.

Keynoting this year is JP Rangaswami, Chief Scientist at Salesforce.com. Watch this short video to learn more about how he is going to blow your mind on 16th Feb in London.

Want to know more about how to listen and engage your customer in the present and the future tense? Me too…

It was Social Media Week last week and I won’t be the first to say it was great. At Klaxon we had our fingers in two events: the Meetup Organisers Group party at the start of the week and a speaking session on blogging at the end.

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I’ve spoken at a few events recently about business blogging. In fact, I’m talking about this exact subject again on Friday as part of Social Media Week London. This time the event is being hosted by the good people at TalkTalk’s Customer Experience Centre.

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