Social Media Week London Recap

Social Media Week London has been a whirlwind so far! Thanks to global sponsor Nokia #SMWLDN has been flooring attendees and companies from all over the world. The fourth consecutive Social Media week in London, hosted by Chinwag, has had over 250 events lined-up. Even though I want to recap all 250 events, this blog post would be way too long think of all the #hashtags I would need. JT knows what I'm talking about...

1. Future Trends in Social Media for Brand Communications

Although this Social Media Week event picked a painstakingly early time slot for their event, it was an extremely interesting topic. As the first event of Social Media Week, forecasting the future of social media was a fitting topic choice. Battenhall, a social media agency and the host of this event, began the event with details on their latest research of Twitter and the FTSE 100. This included the use of social media for investor relations and corporate communications by FTSE companies. 90% of media is on a screen - Drew Benvie, founder of Battenhall There were some interesting facts that came to light including that 88 out of 100 FTSE companies tweet and that 28 of those FTSE companies have over 10,000 followers. In general, these companies use social media for five essential tasks:

1. Community management
2. Customer service
3. Innovation
4. Corporate communications
5. Investor relations.

It is not surprising that the top FTSE companies are using social to enhance their corporate communications, and this trend will continue. As for the future trends in social media, Battenhall listed five things to watch out for:

1. Twitter — Definitely not a surprise that Twitter is number one, but it is a surprise that Twitter has knocked Facebook out of the Top 20 cool brands. Hard to believe, but this is because 80% of Millennials, or Generation C, are creating content online.
2. A Life Logged — In 24 years there will be 24 billion smart devices to feed our social addiction. Twitter will definitely play a big part in these devices.
3. Social data is driving smarter businesses — Consumers will continue to connect to businesses through mobile and will use their phones to make social purchases. This will be done by taking a photo of a product they like, virtually adding it to their basket, and buying it through a social network. Not to mention, talking about their purchases via social as well. This type of futuristic shopping is already been used in South Korea.
4. Hacker culture — Trollers have dominated negative hacker culture, but they will eventually be used for good. Look out for more events similar to this year’s O2 Hackathon.
5. Single-purpose apps — As it sounds, this points to apps that only do one task, but they ROCK at it. Here are some of the apps that were featured to watch, due to their popularity with Millennials.

Ask.fm, Vine, WhatsApp, Instagram, Keek, Twitter, Tumblr. Overall, Battenhall did an awesome job surveying the future of social.

2. How to Inspire the Next Generation to Change the World Through Technology- Twitter Party

Yes, this may seem like a shameless plug, but our #SMWLDN event really did prove to be exciting. Some really awesome ideas and topics were thrown around from people all around the world. Including some interesting facts from our co-hosts at Lady Geek: Check out this MintTwist blog post for more details. The overall consensus is that in order to inspire the next generation, we must shine a positive light on the tech industry, as well as engage children at a young age into the tech world. If young students understand how the tech industry affects their lives, they will be inspired to be involved in it. There was also some talk about the not for profit organisation Raspberry Pi, which is working to bring affordable programmable computers everywhere, including the educational community. Raspberry Pi hopes to inspire young children to enjoy and learn programming.

3. "Democratising Storytelling"

This was an intimate yet inspiring #SMWLDN event hosted by Fieldcraft. Four panelists from different companies shared their insight and great tips on storytelling campaigns. The four panelists were:

• Liz Scarff from Fieldcraft Studios
• Nic Seton from Greenpeace
• Rosie Shelley from Google
• Alice Klein from On our Radar

Each shared a unique example of storytelling campaigns in detail. Two examples stuck out to me in particular: Greenpeace UK launched the #IceClimb campaign to raise awareness about their Save the Arctic campaign. The campaign consisted of a live-streamed event with six women climbing The Shard building in London. The women not only climbed the building, but engaged the audience with a live discussion show, as well as allowing the listeners to request songs during the climb. At the peak of the event, there were a quarter of a million viewers. The final panelist from Google, Rosie Shelley, shared a few organisations and people who are using Google+ Hangouts for campaign methods. The most moving example was of New York City-based Ghetto Film School’s use of the platform and storytelling method. Ghetto Film School used Google+ Hangout to bring together aspiring filmmakers together to learn about filmmaking and make dreams come true. The audience of the SMW event discussed Google’s use of storytelling as well. In general, one point was that technology is a tool, but is only as good as the people who use it. We must also always remember that when dealing with global storytelling there is a large digital gap. #SMWLDN was a smashing success this year and MintTwist was so glad to have taken part of it as hosts as well as audience members. Chinwag did a great job planning the entire conference and we seriously cannot wait to see what the next Social Media Week has in store for us.