We’re soriee’d out after a lovely night at the hospital club with Vitrue and friends of SMWF!  It was great to see everyone last night at the ‘Social Soiree’. The night at the Hospital Club was a facebook gaming, live art creating, ipad dj’ing &  social media chattering  networking night, even the drive back to Bristol didn’t damper our sprits on the evening.  We really enjoyed catching up with everyone at the event, and great to see many  of our speakers before our event in March.

We’ve compiled the evening’s highlights in pictures; see if you can spot yourself! Thanks to everyone who came along and look forward to seeing you end of March!

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This week we wanted to put the spotlight on the Mobile Marketing track taking place on day 2 of this year’s SMWF Europe (27th-28th March, Olympia London). According to a recent report by Berg Insight, the mobile advertising market is growing by over a third year-on-year, and is expected to be worth EUR 17.2billion by 2016.

The growth in this market is due to the surge in smart phone ownership, which has also led to a knock on popularity for location based services; creating a new frontier for consumer marketing. We caught up with Omid Ashtari, SMWF speaker and Director of Business Development for one of the trend’s leading services, Foursquare. (more…)

By Lloyd Salmons and Ronnie Crosbie from Outside Line

This is the year that the Superbowl got all social on itself. With an estimated 60 per cent of its 100 million viewers tuning in via a ‘second screen’, it’s no wonder the main players have woken up to social plug-ins.

The Superbowl has – until now – been the primary platform for blockbusting TV ads. So it’s interesting to see how the big 30-second spot is evolving in the era of social media.  This year’s event set two new records on Twitter for the number of tweets per second. During Madonna’s half-time performance Twitter traffic reached 10,245 tweets per second and after the Giant’s won, Twitter traffic reached 12,233 tweets per second. The relationship between an increase in tablet usage and social media this year, mean that major televised events are increasingly becoming a two-screen experience.

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By Lance Concannon, UK social media lead at Text 100

Speak to any senior corporate comms exec about the barriers that prevent them from using social media more in their organisation, and I guarantee that the issue of ‘risk’ will usually come close to the top of the list. This raises a couple of questions; what exactly are the risks posed by social media, and how can we negate, or at least mitigate, them?

What if people say bad things about our brand?

People often think that creating social media channels for the brand will add fuel to the fire of criticism, but that really doesn’t make any sense. Almost all brands have detractors, and social media makes it easier than ever for those detractors to share their opinions online and there’s not a lot you can do to stop that. (more…)

Following a landmark year for location based services, mobile marketers are looking towards 2012 as the year when location based technology will pervade many of the services available on users’ handsets.

Last year Foursquare reported that over 15 million users and 600,000 businesses had joined the platform, resulting in over a billion check-ins. Location technology is firmly on the radar for many leading brands, and makes up a key part of the agenda at SMWF Europe in London in March. (more…)

A big thank you to those that attended the Social Media World Forum in New York.

Also a special thank you to all the speakers, sponsors, exhibitors & media partners we enjoyed working with you and look forward to meeting you all again next year!

Greg Cargill kicks off the Social Media Hub with the Fundamentals of Social Media.

Panel Discussion: Examining strategies for using social media for business to business marketing

Chairman/Moderator: Joshua March, Co-Founder,  Conversocial 

 Linette Gomez, Senior Director, Internet Marketing – Social Media,CA Technologies
Jeannine D’Allegro, Marketing Director, Social & Digital Engagement Strategy, Dun & Bradstreet
Price B. Floyd, Vice President of External Engagement and Digital Strategy, BAE Systems

Keynote Panel Discussion: What is Social Reputation and why this should matter for your business

Chairman/Moderator: Joshua March, Co-Founder,  Conversocial 

 Garth Holsinger, VP of Sales and Business Development,Klout 
Ted Rubin, Social Marketing Strategist & Brand Evangelist & Chief Social Marketing Officer,Collective Bias
Paul Papadimitriou, VP + Principal Analyst, Constellation Research
Jason Wellcome,  Head of Digital Group, Weber Shandwick

Networking bar

Social Media Hub chair Greg Cargill introduces Adam Singer from Lewis PR

Exhibition

Some great discussion this morning at SMWF in New York, Ted Rubin, social marketing specialist and social media entrepreneur Pete Shankman hosted an engaging discussion about how the meaning of the word ‘friend’ is being warped by peoples’ use of social media.

Clicking on a box does not make us friends, was the gist, and the way the immediacy and ease of connection is ameliorating the term friend had the panellists concerned. “I want 2012 to be the year of taking back the word friend,” said Ted Rubin. (more…)

Social Media World Forum N. America is almost upon us. The event is designed specifically to help delegates build valuable connections in New York and the rest of the digital world. We have compiled a few of suggestions suggestions for how you can get the most out of getting connected at the show.

Social shindig – come join the party at the Social Shindig, this year hosted by I AM DIGITAL at Studio Twenty Onein Chelsea kicking off from 7.30pm, an excellent opportunity to catch up over a few beverages in a chilled atmosphere. (more…)

On Nov 1 -2 at the Javits Center, Robert Harles, Global Head of Social Media for Bloomberg will be discussing how to integrate social media into a traditional organisation. We caught up with Robert to ask him a few social media based questions:

1. How did you get your start in the industry?

A road less traveled…I started in consulting with McKinsey & Co. I did two start ups including comScore where I learned how to build customer communities, from there I was asked tojoin Sears Holdings to build and run their social media program five years ago. We created the mysears.com community which now has over 1M registered members and drives Millions of $ in direct revenue. That gave me a lot of solid experience: dos/don’ts, building capabilities, moderation and measurement, developing and executing social strategy, integrating these activities within a business.

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Image via Wikipedia

Back in 2010 NASA rolled out a new branded partnership with Foursquare, straight off the heels of announcing the space agency was teaming up with another geo-location based social platform, Gowalla. The partnership features a customised section on the Foursquare website, where NASA provides official information about the space program in locations throughout the US and encourages users to “explore the universe”.

To launch the Foursquare campaign, NASA left tips at visitor centres across the US to encourage visits and create awareness about the facilities. By following NASA on Foursquare and checking in at the visitor centre locations, science museums and planetariums users could unlock the new NASA ‘Explorer’ badge and receive a free scoop of Astronaut Ice-Cream. (more…)