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

Companies in the social media space are constantly looking for advice and new ways that they can make sure their efforts in the space are working. While there are no definitive answers, as every company’s goals will require different methods of showing success, there are a few tips that can be followed for guidelines along the way

The following is 10 tips that I’ve learned from the fantastic community that participates in #SMmeasure. #SMmeasure started off as a weekly Twitter chat that I’m fortunate to host. It has since turned into a community that shares interesting articles and ideas throughout the week, but still gather to chat for an hour every Thursday at noon(EST)/9am(PST). This list is the second part in this series. If you missed part one, be sure to check out our first 10 tips learned through #SMmeausre here.

Choose What Social Media Metrics to Measure

11.Friends/Fans/Followers – it’s great that you have people who want to follow your account(s). Without them, no one would hear what you have to say. However, don’t place too much emphasis on this number. Sometimes having a lower number of friends/fans/followers who are more engaged can be better than a large amount of uninterested and unengaged people.

12.Soft metrics – depending on your goals for being in social media there are a lot of non-traditional metrics that your organization may be interested in tracking such as response time, response percentage (how many people spoke to us that we responded to), customer satisfaction and many others.

Make Your Social Media Metrics Easily Digestible

13. Show trending in your metrics.  Not only does it help your case to show before and after social media, but you can use graphs to visually present the data.

14.Use ratios in your data to compare your social media metrics to other campaigns.  Are you converting 0.5% of your social media traffic while you convert 0.25% of your organic search traffic?

15.Show context in your numbers.  Compare what your social media efforts are doing compared to other campaigns.  Use benchmarks with your industry, competitors, or start internally.

Learn from Your measurement Analytics

16.Re-evaluate your social media measurement objectives preferably every quarter.  Don’t be afraid to adjust for the following quarter.

17.Gathering your social media measurement metrics isn’t the end of your measurement responsibilities.  Analyze the benchmarks you have created, evaluate the data you have gathered, look at trending, and revise your processes.  Always work on improving your goals and objectives.

18.Turn your data into action item – did you notice in your data that

things weren’t going exactly as you planned? That may mean it’s time to change up a few things in your plan. Did certain content get a much larger response than others? Perhaps you should focus more content around that subject.

Read, Review, and Adopt Best Practices

19. Social media measurement is an evolving aspect of social media.  However, there are many case studies available that outline best practices.  Read and review social media case studies and then adopt best practices that you can apply to your business

20. #SMmeasure – social media is a great place to learn from others and being part of a community like #SMmeasure is a great way to keep up to date on new and best practices (Yes, this last one was a shameless plug, but we want to make sure that you all come back time and time again).

According to a study by SAS and the Harvard Business Review, by 2012, 88% of companies will use social media worldwide.

Well, 2012 is just around the corner, and if you haven’t taken the steps to make your business socially active and aware, now is a great time to start! Meltwater Buzz, our social media monitoring, engagement and management platform, is the perfect tool to help you build and drive your social business.

How?  We’ve broken it down to six core steps.

1. Listen. Many organizations have already taken this first step—they’re monitoring social media for conversations about their brand or business. This first step is vital—it gives you a basis for understanding the volume, sentiment, tone and topics that surround your brand. You can use it as a baseline to measure how your initiatives are impacting these metrics over time. You also need to constantly monitor your brand to ensure that any crisis situation comes your immediate attention for swift and positive action.

2. Plan. Use the knowledge that you gain from monitoring your brand to determine what you really want to accomplish through your social presence. Define the “why”—the use case(s) for your social media presence. Do you want to reach out and draw customers closer to your brand? Provide better service and customer care? Gather feedback and ideas for new products? Sell more widgets? The choice is yours. After you define the “why” then detail the “how.” Create a strategy and plan, get everyone on the same page and define roles and responsibilities. Train ALL your employees on your strategy and draft your social media policies and procedures for everyone.

3. Engage. Now that you’ve done all that planning, start engaging! Make sure to publicize your social presence through email, your website, your advertising and more! And start getting active on your social accounts. Post great content to share with your community. Canvas social conversations to find potential new contacts to draw to your brand. And start making connections with your brand’s social fan base!

4. Measure. As you’re growing your social community, make sure you’re constantly measuring value. Which content drew the most re-tweets? The most likes? The most comments and shares? Which activities drew the greatest engagement? How has your activity changed the volume of conversation around your brand? How have your other marketing initiatives impacted social chatter? Regular measurement will give you an idea of what works (and what doesn’t) for you brand and market. Let those measurements be your guide to zero in on the things that resonate with your community.

5. Evaluate. Along with measuring key performance indicators, you need to evaluate your long-term results to see what ROI you’ve achieved through your social campaigns. Did your Facebook contest generate a huge new fan base? Did you see a rise in dog bed sales after you created a “star dog” photo promotion? Which social channels are generating the most engagement? Are you doing the right things for the channel that’s lagging?

6. Evolve. The answers you see in the metrics and results you see for particular campaign types are going to change drastically over time. That’s because this market is changing and evolving every day. New marketing ideas and campaigns are driving new business opportunities—and rules for social engagement. By being a part of this movement, you’ll be able to evolve with the market rather than be left behind.

This is a lot of food for thought. We’re here to help you make all this happen. Meltwater Buzz is a great tool that can help you manage through the steps of building your social business, and our Social Advisors are a great resource to guide you through the process. We’ll be at Stand 79 at Social Media World Forum in New York.

Please come by to see us and find out how we can help you drive your social business to success.

About the Author:

Margaret Donnelly, the former VP of Marketing & Business Development of JitterJam, spearheads the marketing efforts for Meltwater Buzz. Meltwater Group acquired JitterJam in March 2011.

Margaret has over 25 years of technology marketing and business development experience in the social media, telecommunications, services, and computer hardware and software industries at companies such as Firetide, ArrayComm, SkyTel, Commtouch and Pyramid Technology.

Margaret co-founded the Personal Broadband Industry Association and has served as an industry analyst and marketing advisor for a diverse set of businesses. A transplant from Silicon Valley now living in the wilds of New Hampshire, Margaret is active in the local arts community.

Twitter: @mwdonnelly

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mdonnelly

SMWF Asia are delighted to welcome back MEF for the 2nd year.  The Mobile Entertainment Forum will be hosting a free to attend session within the Developer/Social Media Hub on day two from 11.30am.

The MEF line up of sessions will explore the cross-over between the mobile app platform & social media and provide an insight into monetising, social commerce, location based marketing, mobile video and more

Kicking of the session, MEF Asia chairman, Colin Miles, will be presenting on how the mobile platform amplifies social media, followed by Arsenal F.C’s global  partnerships Rupert Daniel who will provide an insight into how premier league clubs are adopting mobile social media to engage with fanatical Asian supporters.

Other MEF sessions include:

•    How geo-location can help you monetize your use of social media applications
•    Harnessing social media and mobile together in the fight against poverty
•    Panel: mobile social commerce & location based services: integrating m-commerce into your social networking campaigns
•    The mobile video phenomenon – unwrapping the social force, monetizing the opportunity
•    Leveraging mobile social media to build communities
•    Closing panel: BIG BANG: Asia social mobile revolution!

To attend the MEF free to attend workshops click here to register for your pass.   The full agenda for the two days can be viewed here

MEF is the global community for mobile content and commerce. It is the leading trade organisation for companies wishing to monetize their goods, services and digital products via the mobile connected device. MEF provides competitive advantage to its diverse membership, shapes industry growth, connects thought leaders and spearheads groundbreaking initiatives which explore and promote monetization opportunities.

With global headquarters in London and operational chapters and offices in Asia, EMEA, Latin America, Middle East and North America, MEF is a member network with global reach and strong local representation, ideally placed to drive market growth. Established in 2000, MEF provides an impartial, consistent and powerful voice for the foremost companies and entrepreneurs from across the mobile content and commerce value chain.

Guest blog from Demand Media, silver sponsor of SMWF Europe and in the comScore Top 30 Global Network of Premium Online Brands .

Thank you for attending the Social Media World Forum and for joining our discussion panel “Examining the Social Shopper” where you met our VP of European Sales & Business Development, Stephanie Himoff. We really enjoyed meeting with you and learning about your business! In the discussion, our VP shared real-life examples of leading brands that increased conversions with basic social media tools.

Optimizing the Social Mix
One of the things we love about the Demand Media Social Solutions group is the opportunity to work with thought leaders at brands and agencies. Via a variety of meetings, conversations and exchanges recently, it’s become clear that marketers are evolving their perspectives on social media.

While Facebook and Twitter, along with owned & operated websites, continue to dominate spend and emphasis, leading organizations are starting to think broadly and holistically.

Like marketers traditional work on their Media Mix, we believe that 2011 is the year to strategically consider your Social Mix. We’ll define the Social Mix as the investment in community activities across digital channels.

Key elements of the Social Mix to ponder include:

• Mobile: how are you incorporating customer interaction into your mobile apps and mobile-optimized web experiences?
• Web: in what ways can customers and prospects communicate with one another, and with you, on your owned media assets, including campaign, corporate, product and other properties?
• Facebook: are your social experiences invigorating and authentic across your pages or are you merely seeing fly-by Likes?
• Twitter: how do you post, listen and respond?
• YouTube: is the conversation around your video content in-line with the expectations of your brand voice?

And for each channel, it’s important to consider your interaction, identification and response approaches:

• What can customers do? Are they able to comment, post, rate, review, submit, or respond?
• How do they present themselves? With a channel-specific persona, a Facebook name, other some other identity?
• How do you seed, guide, moderate, listen and respond to them?

2011 is particularly invigorating as, for the first time, customers’ comfort with Facebook-powered authentication in third party services allows brands to truly think of one customer across touch points. And with an increased understanding of each customer, coupled with a multi-pronged Social Mix, marketers can strive for the digital holy rail: one community, regardless of how and where customers encounter your digital presence.

Each channel can have access to appropriate social content along with tuned and presented read/write experiences from a single set of infrastructure. And it can all be moderated, managed and analyzed from a single service and set of people.

Demand Media would love to help. Through our Professional Services team, we can assist with identification and prioritization of approaches for targeted channels. Through our Pluck and CoveritLive products, we can power asynchronous and real-time engagement, across channels, asset types (text, photo, audio, video) and communication frameworks (rate, recommend, respond, comment, review, post, answer, submit, bet, friend, follow, etc.).  And through our Community Services, we can Manage and Moderate your initiatives, enabling your in-house staff to focus on strategic social media decisions and efforts.

It’s been incredible to see customers like the Dallas Cowboys go from less than two thousand discussion posts on Facebook, to offering a seamless cross-web and Facebook forums experience, powered by Pluck, with hundreds of thousands of vibrant posts.

Microsoft has experienced the power of Demand Media Community Services across Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the web during their high-powered Windows Phone 7 launch.  And clients like Conde Nast, the NFL, McGraw-Hill and others use Pluck to power their rich mobile experiences, in conjunction with their core websites.

Please visit our Customer Profile section to learn more or give us a shout. We’d like to explore your thoughts on the Social Mix, provide insights based on client best practices, and ideally help you increase return on your integrated community initiatives.

For more information, please visit www.demandmedia.com/pluck.

Demand Media provides media, content and social solutions to global leading brands. With Web properties like LIVESTRONG.com, Cracked.com, eHow.com, a breakthrough content studio, and the Pluck and CoveritLive community platforms, Demand Media helps marketers deliver meaningful engagement, insight and conversion results.

Pluck, our integrated community platform, supports dynamic experiences on your brand site(s), on social media services like Facebook, and on all of the major mobile platforms, delivering a single view of your customer across all channels. For more information on Demand Media, our Social Platforms, or any of our whitepapers, please email: Natalie.Cheung@demandmedia.com

LEWIS PR COO Paul Charles will be chairing the SMWF “Social Media for crisis management” panel at 16:50, on day one of the event on 29 March.

The session will cover some of the recent catastrophes to have hit the news, and will involve some of the people who were, for better or worse, caught in the middle and forced to make their social media strategy work to deal with the situation.

Aurelie Valtat, for instance, covered last week in this blog, ran the EuroControl air traffic hub social media information feed single handed, keeping virtually all of Europe, passengers, airlines and worried relatives, up to date with the latest developments surrounding the Icelandic volcano crisis and what it meant for air traffic.

This is sure to be a fascinating panel discussion, and you’re almost certain to be in need of a stiff drink after hearing so many tales of social media heroism. Fortunately, Paul and the LEWIS PR team will be heading to the SMWF bar at the end of the session to continue the discussion with a few drinks on them.

For more  information about LEWIS PR click HERE, and to register for the event click here

Below Huzu asked brands and agencies from the Social Media World Forum March just gone ‘Why Are some brands still reluctant to put spend into Social Media Marketing?’

The Brands’ Perspective

Huzu is a social media technology company. Licensing its white-label social media platform to brands and agencies. Allowing them to provide their customers with an engaging community and reducing the cost of building the technology in – house. The platform is flexible and can be customised for each brand, with functionality that includes profiles, forums, video, blogs, picture galleries, friends network, calendars, instant chat, plus Facebook share and connect, amongst others. Designed with easy-to-use administration and content management tools, Huzu also benefits from fully controllable ad space. TUI, Eircom, Racing UK and Durex have built successful communities using the Huzu social media platform.

Social Media World Forum Asia is back for 2010!  The event  will be taking place at the larger venue – The Suntec Conference Centre on the 22nd & 23rd of September 2010, before the F1 Singapore night race, allowing people to stay over the weekend and visit the race, and enjoy the parties

New look website launched

The team have been working hard over the last few weeks and have just launched our new look website www.socialmedia-forum.com/asia

The website has a vibrant new look, new content, significant updates and features to provide a more engaging and interactive platform for event attendees to network and connect before and after events.

So who is going to be speaking?

Some of the speakers already confirmed include:

•             Blake Chandlee, VP & Commercial Director, EMEA, Facebook
•             Lito S German, Marketing Director, BMW
•             Jeremy Khoo, Deputy Director, Marketing Communication and loyalty, NTUC Fairprice
•             Derek Yeo, Head of Corporate Marketing & Ancillary Finance, Tiger Aviation
•             Argha Sen, Head of Marketing & CRM, Toys R Us
•             Laurel Papworth, Social Network Strategist
•             Shalabh Pandey, Author and Founder, Chasingthestorm
•             Nicki Kenyon, Vice President, Digital Marketing APMEA, MasterCard Worldwide/APMEA
•             Reynold D’Silva, Global Brand Marketing Manager, Unilever
•             Damien Cummings, SMB Online Director – Asia Pacific & Japan, Dell | Consumer & SMB
•             Ranjeet-Shandu Singh, Digital Project Manager, Ogilvy One Singapore

Speaker Submissions & Suggest a Topic

We are looking to create a cutting edge, thought provoking, interactive conference line up covering the advances of Social Media in the dynamic world of online marketing. In true Social Media style we want to hear from you guys, on your thoughts, ideas and views to ensure the event provides a fully educational and inspiring experience for all our delegates SMWF Asia 2010 will take place on the 22nd & 23rd Sept at Suntec Conference Centre Singapore.

Speaker submissions will open online shortly

New for 2010!

‘SMWF networking lounge’ – a place to network before, during and after events to enhance your conference experience and to increase your ability to meet and build relationships.

‘Your Event, Your Questions Answered’ -  Sometimes you get out of an event, what you put into it – and we want to help everyone of our delegates attending our events learn the key areas that they want to get covered.

‘SMWF F1 Networking’ – With the Social Media World Forum taking place alongside the Singapore F1 night race, we will be arranging some networking trips to the F1, allowing people to stay over the weekend and visit the race, and enjoy the parties. Tickets are going to be limited so it will be on a first come first serve basis.

Get Involved?

If you would like to get involved with SMWF Asia, as a speaker, sponsors, exhibitor or media partner contact Richard(at)sixdegs.com

The Six Degrees team have just about recovered from the Social Media World Forum #SMWF last week. We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came along, tweeted, networked and blogged.

Social Media World Forum 2010 video – can you spot yourself?

During the two days a lot of issues and topics were covered! below are some blog posts with some good overviews.

•    Viralblog Part 1 – http://www.viralblog.com/social-media/social-media-world-forum-part-i/
•    Viralblog Part 2 – http://www.viralblog.com/social-media/social-media-world-forum-part-ii/
•    Viralblog Part 3 – http://www.viralblog.com/social-media/social-media-world-forum-part-iii/

•    Top 5 trending and hot topics at #smwf 2010 – http://ow.ly/1nCpn

•   77Agency Roundup- http://lab.77agency.com/news/roundup-of-the-social-media-world-forum-in-london-5466/

With the attendance doubling from last year, our exhibition grew considerable and generally a lot more going on this year including some very popular workshops!

We would also like to say a big thank you to all the event sponsors & exhibitors (http://tinyurl.com/yj85h9x)
So what are we planning for 2011 we hear you ask? The team are putting their heads together to coming up with some buzzing exciting ideas for next year show, watch this space…
We are always looking for feedback and suggestions for next year…so if you have any recommendations, ideas or just comments please drop us a line and let us know!

Interview with Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy, SapientNitro

Freddie Laker from Sapient Nitro will be keynoting at the social media world forum on the 15^th March, and we caught up to ask him a few questions pre event on his tips using social media.

1. From your experience, if you had to recommend one tip for using social media what would it be?

So many companies are excited about their first corporate blog, viral marketing campaign or Facebook group, yet the pioneers and the bold are those already looking ahead at what’s next. To maintain hard-won, relevant profile and share of voice in a world of increasingly fickle consumers, marketers need to understand how social media is going to intuitively evolve and anticipate how to make existing and new tools and strategies work harder and smarter to keep the conversation going. I’d even go as far as arguing that in a couple of years only ‘silver surfers’ will still be referring to online collaborative tools as ‘social media’.

2. What do you think is the biggest thing that marketers fail to realize about social media?

Reaching marketing goals is less about the tactics employed and more about addressing and engaging today’s complex, modern consumer. Falling behind technology trends will lose you customers as they move forward without you but failing to meet customer expectations through the ‘right media’ will have exactly the same effect.

3. How do you measure success in social media?

Without a doubt, customer interaction and positive feedback. Any marketer worth his salt should recognise that the benefit of using social media lies in conversation: find out what customers like and dislike, get their views on your products, allow them to interact with your brand and build a brand personality. If your brand is failing to interact with consumers, the social media strategy is flawed and should be readdressed.

Social media monitoring tools can be set up for businesses to help deliver intelligence while facilitating a deeper understanding of the consumer but, ultimately all this analytical intelligence means nothing unless there is a continuous bi-directional and satisfactory relationship between customer and brand.

4. What have SapientNitro been working on recently?

Having a relationship with customers is no longer about just online, just offline or just mobile marketing strategies. It’s about culminating all of this to create one single, succinct multi-channel offering. As a result, we have been working with a wide variety of our customers to create strong integrated campaigns that engage consumers across a wide variety of channels.

We’re also leveraging our strengths in technology to develop very engaging cross-channel experiences that allow consumers to drive commerce from store to mobile to web and back again. I think some of the most interesting examples you will see from us in the near future is the continued integration of social media into more and more of our client’s work outside of traditional digital marketing in areas such as mobile, digital outdoors and online commerce.

5. Which other areas do you think will grow over the next couple of years?

Socially-enabled digital outdoor advertising will become widespread. Brands and businesses will become more and more open to user ratings and open feedback on their websites and those who fight it are likely to suffer the consequences. In addition, although it’s still early days, Google Wave will really take off. It has the potential to completely revolutionise collaboration and engagement.

Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy, SapientNitro, will be presenting on day one at 14.00 – “Redefining the brand experience through Social Media” at the Social Media World Forum.