The SMWF team are excited to announce that the fourth annual SMWF Europe event will be taking place on 27^th and 28^th March at Olympia in London. This year’s show is your chance to experience a packed agenda of interactive workshops, combined with unique networking opportunities, a bustling exhibition space and much more…

New for 2012 we have introduced an updated show format, delivering 6 individual conference tracks, each examining the latest strategies and cutting edge technologies across specifically focussed areas of social media marketing. (more…)

By Christer Holloman author of ‘The Social Media MBA’ 

For how much longer will we call ‘smartphones’ just that and not simply ‘phones’? ‘Smart phones’ will be the de facto standard in a not too distance future (it’s already the case in certain clusters), the long name will eventually be made redundant. The same will now happen to the words ‘Social Media’. (more…)

At Conversocial, we spend a lot of time working with companies who use our software to boost their customer service offerings on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve learnt quite a bit about the challenges they face along the way.

Two thirds of customers want to use social media to communicate with companies about customer service issues,an inevitable consequence of opening up real two-way conversation. Yet brands managing to bring the same level of service to the Facebook wall as traditional communication channels are in the minority.

Here are a few tips on how to deliver great social customer care, taken from our research into the performance of top international retailers. We’ll be releasing our US-focussed study “Who’s ignoring their customers” at the Social Media World Forum on Tuesday.

(more…)

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.

(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.

(more…)

To brands Facebook isn’t about playing games, it’s all about starting new relationships as well as building and supporting existing ones. With over 550 million users Facebook is something at brands cannot afford to ignore, but with over 3 million fan pages how do you stand out from your competition?

Pagemodo have created the fastest and easiest way to customize a fan page and make it stand out from the crowd. The Pagemodo’s Pagebuilder provides businesses with everything they need to create page that will:

1. Engage visitors from the moment they arrive with a dazzling welcome tab that tells your story.
2. Promote a business in a fun and effective way with video.
3. Hide special content behind a cover to entice visitors into becoming fans of your Facebook page.
4. Brings your Twitter feed to your Facebook page.
5. Make it easier for fans to reach you with questions and comments. Plus, those who submit a form to you are hot, new leads for your business!

You can learn more from Pagemodo’s co-founder Jakob Lykkegaard at SMWF Asia’s free-to-attend Social Media Hub at 1300 on the 2nd Sept who will be covering the benefits of creating a compelling facebook pages, using tabs and templates.
To register for day two of the SMWF Asia please click here.

There was a time, when marketing and PR professionals could take their time, having hours until daily newspaper deadlines. Today, however, it is a completely different story and minutes can make the difference between being part of the buzz of the latest headline or being yesterday’s fish and chip paper. This development caused PR professionals to adopt a new method of communication – social media.

The power of social media has given public relations specialists and journalists a myriad of choice when deciding how to connect with their target audience. As a result they’ve been seen to be some of the first people to embrace social media and have become leaders in the field. (more…)