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.

One workshop pass will get you access to all the tracks, detailed below, as an event delegate you will be able to mix and match your chosen session, creating your own agenda during the 2 day show. You also gain full access to the exhibition & official SMWF party.    Book your pass here today!

SMWF tracks explained…

This 2 day track forms is the backbone of the SMWF agenda; providing insight into how to strategically benefit from the accelerating growth of social media. Teaching subtle  techniques and approaches which can transform social media from a lip-service add-on, to the cornerstone of your co-ordinated communications strategy.

Whether you have an existing mobile strategy or are in the process of formulating one, the SMWF Mobile Marketing track will deliver a wealth of practical advice around using mobile social media, using apps to promote your business, integrating mobile into your existing marketing strategy, location based marketing and much more.

With the home entertainment landscape on the cusp of massive change, the race is on for operators, manufacturers and platform providers to grab their slice of this potentially lucrative new market. The track will explore the social aspect that is changing the way people interact with the media they consume as part of this new TV experience.

With the social media explosion changing the way customers and businesses interact, perhaps forever, the SMWF Social Business track will examine many of the fundamental issues and challenges you face as company culture is being forced to change and adapt to these new social operating systems.

The SMWF Social Shopping and ecommerce track will analyse how some retailers are truly harnessing the power of social media, allowing brands to create a new forum for conversation and interaction with their customers.

Delivered by our friends at MarketingTechNews.net, this track comprises a series of expert led marketing strategy workshops. It will equip you with many of the basic tools you need to begin planning and implementing your own integrated marketing strategy, tying in advice and insight around social media, SEO, branding, affiliate marketing, mobile, PR, blogging, content marketing, web-design and all manner of integrated marketing communications techniques.    To just attend this free to attend track register for your free expo pass here.

Look out for some exciting announcements about our speaker line up and agenda in the next few weeks!

We can’t wait to see you all again this year, keep an eye on the blog or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

We are pleased to have partnered with both the K West & The Hilton London Olympia to offer all SMWF visitors a discounted room rate for the 26th, 27th & 28th March 2012.

Only a limited number of rooms are available at each hotel, and the rate is only available until 24th February so book today to make sure you have somewhere to stay!

K-West Hotel
Richmond Way
London
W14 0AX

Room Rates:

Single occupancy £95 excluding vat & breakfast

Double or twin occupancy £109 excluding vat & breakfast

To book please contact Georgina Ainsworth on +44 (0) 20 8008 6605 quoting SMWF. Rates are available until the 24th Feb so book early to avoid disappointment, after this date hotels will need to be booked on best available rate.

Hilton London Olympia Hotel
380 Kensington High Street
London
W14 8NL

Room Rates:

Single occupancy £135.00 + VAT per room includes English Breakfast

Double Occupancy £145.00 + VAT per room includes English Breakfast

To secure your discounted room simply contact Agnieszka Stopa on +44 (0) 207 856 1902 or email agnieszka.stopa@hilton.com and quote SMWF before the 24th Feb. This rate will expire on the 24th Feb so book early to take advantage of the discounted rate.

Other Hotels Located Nearby:

Kensington Close Hotel
Wrights Lane, Kensington, London
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8008 6600
Best Available Rates from £99

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.

1.It Takes Two
For PR professionals it is no longer a case of blasting out PR releases or information about their brand and expecting them to be successful. Today two-way communication has become the norm with listening, engagement and thought leadership expected from all PR professionals.

2.A Wealth of Information
Social platforms provide PR professionals with masses of information on target markets, customer service and the media outlets they may be interested in, creating many more opportunities and insight into the target consumer.

3.Move Faster, Think Quicker
In our 24/7 customer-centric world social media has increased the potential for our complaints and gripes to become more visible to the wider world. The fast paced nature of social media means a crisis can develop quickly and the response needs to be made equally quickly to extinguish the flames. It is important for brands to create an online personality and be ready for the negative as well as the positive.

4.Measurable Success

For the first time in the history or PR Social Media has provided professionals with the ability to track their investment and calculate the return through measures such as website traffic and sources as well as staff time spent on tools. This means PR campaigns are becoming more specifically targeted and strategic in their approach.

5.The News is Changing
Traditional media is no longer the go to source when a big news story breaks. Twitter is increasingly being described as a personal news source with many news agencies updating news events in real time. News spreads across the site within minutes with a concentrated amount of activity views and comments from across the global. For example news about the Japanese tsunami disaster and more recent London riots was spread around the world in minutes via Twitter…

The Future of PR?
PR will continue to expand it’s capabilities for highly personalised creation, recommendation and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices and social media is the ultimate content sharing tool.

The changing role of social media in PR is one of the hot topics on this year’s #SMWF agenda and will be held on day 2 at 1500. Hear from brands such as Hershey’s, Lewis PR, mBLAST and Four Seasons and how the role of PR is changing in the social environment.   To view the rest of this year’s exciting agenda please click here.

To secure your pass to SMWF N. America, please click here.

In light of the recent negative publicity and criticism surrounding social media and in particular social networking platforms such as Facebook. It has become apparent that while everyone recognises that Social Networking is a powerful platform to help people and businesses share information and experiences, strong actions and immediate measures need to be put in place across the industry to ensure a safe and secure networking environment.

Social Networking is not a new concept and has been attracting the dark elements of society for the past 20 years.  Through the years Paedophiles and Terrorist organisations have been exploiting the unmoderated nature of chat-rooms and social media platforms in order prey on victims or corrupt opinion.

The blame for this activity cannot be left solely at the feet of service providers, as the government and society in general must take some element of criticism and responsibility for their lack of ‘safe-surfing’ education and actions to moderate and control this.
Over the coming months media pressure with dictate heavy changes on how we use social media platforms such as Facebook and Bebo, and more importantly how we can help protect vulnerable users such as children.

The following checklist is a suggested process and the actions that Silver Pride Software are developing to increase the level of security in their SPARK Social application thus ensuring a safe and secure system for their clients.

•    Install and make visible across all areas of the website, an Industry recognised Panic & Instant Alert Button.
•    On clicking the button, it will immediately terminate the conversation and record all activity.
•    Instantly Informing conversation participants and complainant of actions and next steps.
•    Collates all details such as accused and complainant usernames, date and time recorded, actual conversations and emails this to a nominated administrator.
•    An email explaining this process is also emailed to the users warning against mis-use of this panic button and possibility of termination of account.
•    The administrator will then have the option, once all of this information has been reviewed, to either inform the local authorities of a violation, in-turn suspending the accused account and informing them via email of this action.
•    Or if the complaint is not deemed serious, a warning will be issued and this will be flagged against all users’ profile (not publically visible) in order to provide an auditable trail for future reference.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of actions, but a suggested way forward in which we are looking to protect all users, enabling them to continue with social networking knowing that SPARK Social is working to keep them safe & secure.

You can see SPARK Social and the SPARK Web Management suite exhibiting at the up and coming Social Media World Forum – 15/16 March – Olympia.

To be in for a chance to attend the “Must attend” Social Media event of the year FREE, simply take part in our Re-Tweet competition!

It’s Really Easy to Enter

All you need to do is put your Social Media skills to the test and re-tweet our competition tweet on your twitter. Just make sure your tweet contains our Twitter name (@SocialNetworkWF so we can track you as a contestant) and link to this blog post

Tweet – “I am tweeting to win a free pass to the Social Media World Forum #SMWF @socialnetworkWF, http://bit.ly/59jsf1”

Click here to enter on Twitter

The winner will be selected at random from everybody who sent a tweet following the above instructions.   The winner will be notified by DM, so make sure you follow us @SocialNetworkWF That’s all you have to do!

Winner Announcement

The winner will be selected by random on the 8^th February 2010 at 12.00 GMT. We will announce the winner via Twitter the same day (so we highly suggest you follow us and will contact the winner through DM. The winner will win a two day pass to the Social Media World Forum taking place on the 15^th & 16^th March at Olympia Conference Centre, London. Please Note: The winner will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Rules of Competition

In order to participate, you must have a Twitter account, and have accepted the Terms of Service of Twitter. Members from every part of the world can enter the competition. In order to participate, you must send a valid Twitter message. A valid Twitter message, or tweet, contains our Twitter name (@SocialNetworkWF so we can track you as a contestant), and a link to this contest page (of which http://bit.ly/59jsf1 is a short version)

For more information about our events please visit: www.socialmediaseries.net www.socialtvseries.com www.cloudcomputingseries.com

We are pleased to announce that we are offering a huge early bird saving of 25% on all conference passes for the Social Media World Forum event taking place on the 15th & 16th March, at Olympia Conference Centre, London.

Our Early Bird saving can save up you to £340* if you book before the 22nd December 2009!

Our gold conference pass includes access to all conference streams (Social Media, Social TV, Cloud Computing, Mobile Social Media & Enterprise 2.0) sessions taking place over the two days, expo hall, complimentary Wi-Fi access, hot food & refreshments and access to the official networking party taking place on the middle evening.

Conference passes for just the Social Media Streams are available too for either one or two days

For full pass opportunities please visit here

Remember the discount is only valid until the 22nd December so BOOK TODAY!

*applies to Gold Conference pass