Social Media Week London

Social Media Week LondonSocial Media Week returns to London 23-27 September 2013, joining a host of other cities across the world in a hectic week of panel discussions, presentations, meetups and loads more. 

Event submissions are now open, get involved as a speaker, smwatchinwag [dot] com (volunteer) or find out about smwatchinwag [dot] com (sponsorshop opportunities).

Check out last September's full schedule. Keep up-to-date with Social Media Week London on Twitter & Facebook and of course the blog. 

Social Media Week London Events

Using Social to go Global supported by Open to Export
Mon, 24 Sep
Want to take your business global? Find out how how to use social media, online communities and collaborative tools can help build your company’s international business. Hear from international experts, case studies & quiz UKTI, Nokia, Hailo, the FT and more. Plus a free networking lunch and time for one-to-one Q&A.
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Global Keynote: Alex Balfour, Head of Digital, LOCOG (London 2012 Olympics)
Mon, 24 Sep
Join us for the SMWLDN Global Keynote, a fireside chat with Alex Balfour, the at the centre of the digital delivery of the massively successful London Olympics and Paralympics Games. Opening this Sep’s Social Media Week and hear about the trials, tribulations and successes behind the digital success of the games.
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The £800m Elephant in the Room: Social Inside the Enterprise hosted McKinsey & Co
Mon, 24 Sep
McKinsey Global Institute principal Michael Chui discusses the potential value in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises. He'll be joined by an expert panel who'll reflect and discuss the dramatic changes 'social' is making inside the enterprise.
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Heroes of Social Innovation, supported by Nokia
Mon, 24 Sep
The rise of social media and social technology has demonstrated its power to revolutionise industries. In a very literal sense, the power to connect and collaborate is quite literally changing the world. Mobile technology and social networks enable groups to self-organise campaigns to gain worldwide momentum.
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SMW '12: Behavioural Economics for the Web
Tue, 25 Sep
Join us for a very exclusive breakfast and brunch to discuss the latest experiments and techniques from the masters of behavrioural economics – and how as digital natives, we can leverage these to take over the world.
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Making Social Work for your Business, hosted by Oracle
Tue, 25 Sep
The explosion of social has been tremendous, as Facebook closes in on one billion consumers and Twitter approaches 200 million, not to mention emerging platforms like Google+, Instagram and Pinterest. Join experts from Oracle, Maersk, MediaCom, We Are Social, Starcom, IPC and Luxury Hotels of the World and find out more...
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The Decision Makers: The Truth Behind the Family Purchase Dynamic
Tue, 25 Sep
#SMWLDN Families in the UK spend around £187B a year yet not much is known about the complicated decision making dynamic that goes into how that money is spent. This session will look at who in the family makes what decisions, how the members of the family influence each other and what role social media plays in inter-family communications.
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Facebook 1 Billion: End of the Beginning or Beginning of the End? hosted by Betapond
Tue, 25 Sep
Facebook approaches its 1 Billionth user while under the spotlight as never before. A few years ago Facebook was one of many social networks. Now it’s the world’s most important social media platform. On Tuesday at 9am in Unruly, our panel will discuss Facebook’s future.
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Nosh: The Social Business of Food
Tue, 25 Sep
The food business is in a constant state of flux whether it’s the rush for Michelin stars or shiny food trucks or the latest pop up restaurant. Its marketing is no exception...
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How Small Businesses Win in the Socially Connected World
Tue, 25 Sep
Did you know that on average you need to connect with prospective customers seven times before they actually buy from you? That’s an expensive way for you to grow your business. What if we told you that there was another way?
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How Small Businesses Win in a Socially Connected World hosted by Constant Contact
Tue, 25 Sep
Did you know that on average you need to connect with prospective customers 7 times before they actually buy? That’s an expensive way to grow business. What if we told you that there was another way? Sound interesting? Then join us and we’ll take you through how to create your own Engagement Marketing plan and turn your customers into your fans.
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One-to-One Social Health Check Sessions hosted by Oracle
Tue, 25 Sep
The Oracle one-to-one Social Surgery sessions will run from 12pm-1pm. They will give organisations the opportunity for one-to-one social media health checks with leading Oracle's team of social strategy experts.
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Facebook Marketing ROI: A master class with Nokia, The Social Partners and The Humane Society
Wed, 26 Sep
After selling-out tickets for this event on Tuesday, we're happy to announce that we will hold it again at Facebook Headquarters on Wednesday 26th September. However, this time, we have some new speakers to give additional insights and strategies for proving the success of social marketing within your organisation.
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Through the Eyes of a Child: The Social Media World of 6-11 Year Olds
Wed, 26 Sep
#SMWLDN Kids are inherently social and are very active on many social media platforms; therefore they are a hugely important part of the social media landscape. This discussion will focus on what kids are doing on networking sites, how and why they are so engaged with each other and the platforms, and look at the psychology behind these behaviours.
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Developing a Digital Strategy in a Social World hosted by Chinwag
Wed, 26 Sep
Digital media has gone through more revolutions in the last decade than other forms of media have experienced across their lifetimes. From web 2.0 to commoditisation of display advertising to sweeping changes of social media. How do the world's leading digital strategists handle the brand challenges? Join our expert panel for this discussion.
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Sustainable Brands Doing Good by Doing Well in Social hosted by Betapond
Wed, 26 Sep
How has social media changed the way brands approach CSR and sustainability initiatives and what will the future hold? What challenges and opportunities to brands face as they use new methods? Our panel will include brand marketers and experts who have seen the potential, join the discussion...
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Content Creation Collective: Secets behind social media
Wed, 26 Sep
If you’re a writer, editor, blogger, videographer, designer, producer or otherwise involved in the creation of cool stuff online then you need to come along to Content Creation Collective: Secrets behind social content on 26th September aboard the HMS President (1918), in association with Social Media Week.
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Oversharing or misUnderstood: Automatic Sharing in Social hosted by Betapond
Thu, 27 Sep
When Facebook unveiled Open Graph and made it possible for apps to automatically share what you’re listening to, watching or reading, it divided opinion. “Frictionless sharing” is a great way to discover new stuff from friends but some think it’s Too Much Information. Come along and join the debate...
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Multi-Channel Social Media – Small Biz Friend or Foe?
Thu, 27 Sep
Are you unsure which combination of Pins, Tweets and Likes will give your small business a bang for its buck? It’s a conundrum that’s facing many owners as they fight to juggle the time spent between marketing their business and actually running it.
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Multi-Channel Social Media - Small Biz Friend or Foe? hosted by Constant Contact
Thu, 27 Sep
Are you unsure which combination of Pins, Tweets and Likes will give your small business a bang for its buck? Register today, come along and don’t forget to come along with your questions, thoughts and challenges. Our panel is waiting to help you navigate the right mix of social ingredients.
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Chinwag's Careers Day at Social Media Week London 2012
Fri, 28 Sep
Hundreds of graduates, jobs seekers and experienced workers looking for that next challenge will be flocking to the Careers Day to meet the likes of Nokia, Financial Times, Imagination, Tempero, News International and more, so don't miss out. REGISTER NOW - it's free!
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Latest Blog Posts

[Guest Blog] Measuring Twitter Influence at Social Media Week London

This is a Guest Blog by Ally Manock of Brass Agency, who are hosting “Down on the Farm with Brass Agency and Ribena” on Fri 11th, 10am – 11.15am.

‘Influence’ in social media terms was discussed a great deal in 2010 and seems set to be debated further in 2011. The fact that Social Media Week’s Influence Panel Debate was the first to sell out shows what a popular topic it still is!

How we calculated ‘influence’ for Social Media Week

With all of the above still in mind, we thought that the upcoming Social Media Week in London gave us an ideal opportunity to have a little bit of fun and see if we could have a go at tracking the influence of people tweeting with the hashtag #SMWLDN.

We developed a ‘Social Media Week Twitter Influence Leaderboard’ which tracks, in real time, the most talked about subjects, people and events of the week.

We’re very open about our thought process and how we have calculated influence; we don’t claim to have answered the influence ‘question’ and this isn’t another Klout or Peer Index.

We’d like this to be a bit of fun for everyone. We know there are some competitive social media peeps out there who will try and tweet their way to the top and we’d like the Social Media Week Twitter Influence Leaderboard to add to the discussion around influence.

Find out how we calculated influence for Social Media Week, or go straight to the Social Media Week Twitter Influence Leaderboard

What do you think is the true measure of influence on Twitter?

We’re looking forward to the panel debate around influence at Social Media Week on Thursday 10th February.

Azeem Azhar, CEO and Founder of Peer Index is on the panel and we’re expecting some lively discussion! It will be interesting to see if the tweets coming out of that session affect our leaderboard significantly.

As we said, we’d like this leaderboard to add to the debate about influence.  What do you think defines ‘influence’? Does our leaderboard show some useful data, or are we missing something significant?

[Guest Blog] The Power of Social Media: Live Webcast

This is a guest blog by the British Library, who are hosting The Power of Social Media, Weds 9th, 6.15 – 9pm.

As part of Social Media Week, the British Library Business & IP Centre is hosting a sell-out event called ‘The Power of Social Media’ tonight (Wednesday 9 February) with guest speakers including the founders of Mumsnet, Songkick and Superjam, as well as BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones. The event is being made available as a live webcast; you can watch the event online and submit your questions to the panel. The Library has partnered on the event with its equivalent in the US, the New York Public Library.  NYPL is broadcasting the event live, and delegates will be submitting their questions via the webcast and twitter using the hashtag #bipcsocial.

BusinessZone.co.uk will also be running a live blog during the event.

Find out more at http://www.bl.uk/bipc/workevents/powersoc11.html

Questions with Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel

Market Sentinel are kindly sponsoring Social Media Week London.

Mark Rogers spared us a few moments of his time to answer some questions about Market Sentinel, Social Media and the future.

Tell us about your background and how it translates into your business’s major goals for 2011.

Back in the nineties I was the commissioner of the BBC’s online communities project. I was amazed by the kinds of strange phenomena we saw in that project. The EastEnders forum was overrun by 11 year old girls, to the exclusion of everyone else! Soccer fans were less tribal online than offline. It was a feast of uncollected sociological information.

Since I began Market Sentinel, collecting online conversations on behalf of big brands and turning them into insights, I have become more and more fascinated by what can be done with social media as a resource for generating insights into human behaviour, particularly around brands. This is the area we will be exploring more in 2011.

Why did you get involved in Social Media Week?

We are doing a lot of innovative work which we want to share with the world! Social Media Week is a great opportunity to do that and to hear from clients, friends and competitors about their ideas and enthuasiasms.

What do you see as the big trend for 2011?

Knocking Facebook and running down the social media fad! Seriously, as the LinkedIn IPO approaches and the Facebook one comes hard on its heels, we are going to see a lot of hard questions being asked about the return on investment of social media for advertisers.

The value of paid search has been demonstrated. If someone is searching Google it’s pretty clear from research that they are looking for something and that there may well be an opportunity to sell them goods or services. If I go onto Facebook or Twitter, I am looking to connect with my friends – that’s pretty different! The big question that Facebook will need to answer to justify a valuation of well north of $50bn – since that was the value of the last funding round – is: is social networking an activity that can result in transactions for advertisers? If the answer to that is, not necessarily, or if the answer is that it is more about building the emotional contexts of brands, then it is going to be hard for Facebook, based on their existing ad model, to justify those fancy valuations.

Facebook are going to need to be more much directed in demonstrating the value of their real estate to advertisers. And analytics companies like Market Sentinel will reap the benefit because we measure the thing that Facebook offers advertisers: networks linked by shared interests and passions.

What platforms are you really excited about?

Facebook, really. Facebook is the eBay of communities in the sense that it has the lion’s share of attention and membership, which makes it most attractive to new members. Like any broad platform it doesn’t cater for everybody and start ups like Quora show that you can build highly useful niche communities elsewhere.

What are you looking forward to seeing most at Social Media Week?

I am really excited to hear the case studies from the big brands in this area – the P&Gs, the Unilevers and the Pepsis. Where are they experimenting today they will be spending big tomorrow.

Where do you see the future of social media?

For social media to deliver the real commercial potential it has to be integrated with search – where is the best plumber? Who is the potential buyer for my services at Company X? If any of us can start delivering the answers to those questions we are going to build companies that will one day compete with Google.

Market Sentinel are sponsoring Measuring Social Media 2011 on Friday 11th Feb, 10.45am – 4pm.

Measuring Social Media 2011 combines an Ask the Experts Clinic – a panel session with case study and global insight will explore the current metrics landscape with valuable insight what’s around the corner, plus lunch and a spot of networking. Market Sentinel will also be offering, in-depth one-on-one sessions with their social media measurement experts.