#SMWDNA: Live Blog

8.43am Good morning everyone! We’ve set up in the Arts Theatre at Leicester Square where we’ve got a fantastic production balcony and even a green room where we’ll be preping speakers with video interviews.

Conference chairman Martin Thomas and keynote speaker JP Rangaswami are here getting their presentations ready. As it’s the case with social media some are happy to be putting faces to handles, if you know what we’re talking about.

9.15am and we’re off!

9.20am Ice is being broken in the theatre as Martin Thomas asks audience: “What are the key topics and questions you’re looking at discussing today.” Tell us yours on twitter using #smwdna.

9.25am Audience is shouting out what they are here for. Items on their agenda include ROI and social media, how do you scale social, how do you keep on top of everything, KPIs how do you manage the local within the global,how long before marketing let go of this stuff, how do you manage multi-language feeds, how to combine big data and social, social for B2B versus social for B2C. Any of these on your agenda?

9.30am Facebook is deemed to be “too powerful at amplifying the volume of moaning” and Twitter is given as an exmaple for businesses to solve real-time problems by Martin Thomas who asks:”How do you deal with overestimated expectations?”

9.35am JP Rangaswami  our key speaker today is up now. He starts by saying that it’s hard to imagine a time when companies treated their customers like children. JP says that thinking of Making Social Media Part of Your DNA conference title made him wonder “when did it start becoming part of my DNA and why?”

9.40am JP makes a parallel between the evolution of medicine and the evolution of social – from keeping people healthy to focusing on solving the diseases. “There’s a child in me that doesn’t compute that I’ll be healthier if we design a better thermometer [...] We stopped dealing with customers because dealing with products was so much easier. Nobody complained. Life was so nice,” he says.

9.45am He reveals that the first time he heard about smart-phones was in the 90s and goes on to explain the economic perspective of social. The business model that will succeed, he says, is one that acknowledges the abundances and scarcities nowadays and does something about it. “It is up to you to identify the particular scarcities and abundances of your era.”

9.46am JP just shared the one thing he is certain to have learned over his 55 years of experience: “The music of the next generation is always appaling. I will understand everything about next generations, but noise is noise.”

9.50am “Now the customer has the infrastructure to record and share what he or she is doing and we’ve learned about activity streams,” explains JP.

9.55am He is planning to finish by sharing his thoughts of how to embedd social media in the DNA of start-ups. First one: “There is no pint talking about putting social in your DNA if you don’t have an understanding of your customer in a social context.” Second thought? As conversations about brands are already taking place, companies need to engage with their customers to meet the expectations set up by these conversations.

9.59am Once you’ve engaged with your customer, allow him or her to talk to each other “because I’ll tell you a secret: they are anyway,” says JP insisting companies need to take risks in what social is concerned for they will pay off later.

10.05am Audience member asks JP how does he cope with customers having different Ids and twitter handles (or associated hashtags). He replies that the knowledge of being able to connect users with their multiple online identities is useful but insists it’s not essential, as customers that have the right to share any identity they have created with the companies of their choice. He gives himself as an example saying he is know is different circles by different names, which to his mind is only natural.

10.08am Our next speaker up is Emma Roffey, Marketing Director at Cisco. She is going to speak about the power of social collaboration.

10.13am Fantastic facts being shared here. It seems over 70% of the entire information in the world is online. Emma says the future is: mobile, social, visual and virtual.

10.16am “Video is the new voice,” explains Emma. As she moves into discussing business culture nowadays, she quotes statistics saying tablets and mobile devices are being sold much faster than desktop sales.

10.19am Emma cites the Harvard Business Review on the power of the people being at the core of the social revolution. “We have time-shifted,” she says.

10.23am Emma concludes by asking: “how is it that we still rely on email in such an era?” She then goes on to explain Cisco’s transformation which includes a cultural shift in leadership and a focus on people rather than products.

10.24am She gives an example of Cisco staff using a discussion forum to complain of a change in package for mobile services provided by Cisco for their staff.

10.26am Another intriguing fact? Although the US is leading social media movement Emma says they are the most reluctant of countries to have video conversations and “put their cameras up.”

10.29am Cisco has its own directory of staff built up as a social platform which integrates communities and even allow video sharing according to Emma.

10.32am She concludes her presentation by explaining that business socio-collaboration is a competitive diferentiator that will separate companies in the future.

10.39am Next up is Fergus Boyd of eSharing at Virgin Atlantic who claims that if social media didn’t exist “we’d probably had to invent it.” One of his first slides reads: “We are a naturally open and chatty brand.”

10.45am Fergus points to Altimer’s social maturity self-assessment available on altimergroup.com for measurement purposes. Showing a graph comparing social audience versus flown passengers Fergus comments it is one of the only graphs were we can see “Virgin up with the big brands.”

10.50am Proudly putting up statistics, he says: “we must be doing something right.” Now talking about scaling the brand’s community engagement Fergus explains the Icelandic volcano ash that disturbed their business last year very much contributed to Virgin’s social engagement.

10.57am Fergus is giving examples from across the world of both Virgin staff and customers using various platforms to share their thoughts and comments. He sums up: ”If there are any lessons I’ve learned: Don’t try to be too clever.”

11.22am As attendees are enjoying their coffee break, chatting their mouths and fingers off check out our first Social Media Innovation magazine of the day, your tweet might be in here: http://flyingbinary.flockler.com/magazine/social-media-innovation/21

 11.28am Break is now over and Mind’s Eve Critchley takes the stage. She kindly starts by thanking everyone present here as profits from the day go to her charity. Minor technicalities aside she starts discussing about Mind and what they do.

11.33am “Don’t underestimate the people who are on social media today,” says Eve. For people suffering of mental heath issue, around 1 in 4 in the UK, social media may be the only means they use to engage in conversations with real people.

11.37am Eve is giving #smwdna audience fantastic exmaples of using social media to both raise awareness about mental heath issues and to help those in need. “So how do we demonstrate what social does for us?” asks Eve and then goes on to show that online donations, currently at £30, is double the offline average donation amount, currently at £15.

11.43am While social media does many fantastic things for a charity like Mind there are also plenty of risks to take, according to Eve. These include setting up boundaries and safeguarding staff’s mental health.

11.50am “We think it’s really important to be courageous but also to remember that these are real peoples’ lives,” concludes Eve.

11.57am A member from the audience asks about Mind’s content strategy, which sees Eve explaining no one can replace the voice of someone with a mental health problem which is why they recruit their digital ambassadors from a pool of people suffering from such issues as they can share their experiences best.

12.00pm Next up Dell’s Social Media Manager, Kerry Bridge, and Neville Hobson of For Immediate Release are about to share Dell’s social media strategy for the next couple of years.

12.05pm The social media map they put up shows Facebook clearly dominating the online social networking scene with a follow up map on Google plus alone claiming Google’s social networking platform has over 90 million users.

12.08pm The two speakers go on to discuss about what they call Next Practice, which they claim is not about the best practice of social media as we understand it now but as it will develop in the future.

12.11pm A reference to Brian Solis author of The end of business as usual is made with a focus on the significance of connectivity. Neville asks: “How can you start talking without listening?”

12.17pm Tips for matching your interests as a business and the customers’ interests shown online include specific, advanced google searches and  carefully listening to the customers. “It’s about the people and not the technology,” says Neville.

12.22pm Social business is agreed by both speakers to be very much personal and that everyone in the organisation should adhere to it. “Being relevant in search is key,” they say.

12.24pm A final word of advice: be clear to your team and integrate the teams within your company. Also identify those people that are pioneering and promoting the products and conversations you wish to be associated to.

12.28pm “Give people the freedom to go online and engage,” concludes Neville. Give them the chance to chat informally and thus take the conversation forward.

12.31pm Finally, Dell announces launch of new tool that should help businesses getting up and running with social.

12.34pm Audience member challenges the two speakers about their featuring people like Brian Solis in their presentation, “who are earning £20,000″ and asks for support for start-ups.

12.36pm Another question from the audience asks the two speakers if social media is the end of corporate culture. They agree.

12.40pm First panel of the day has just been set up with the audience firrying questions at the @freeagent representative, David Gauld.

12.45am Audience member asks about bringing the company’s staff into the social conversation to which independent expert Jeremy Waite explains the importance of getting your employees to engage with the brand and promote it. Mind’s Eve Critchley also says this is an aspect they put some considerable focus on.

12.52pm Jeremy Waite claims Marketing is unable to measure any campaign results without social nowadays.

1.02pm “Let’s give them some great stuff to share,” quotes Jeremy a Redbull social media strategy and thus sums up what social is all about.

Lunch break

 2.05pm and we’re back! Martin has just welcomed everyone in and Andy is now talking about the two charities we are supporting: Mind and CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young).

2.09pm First speaker up after lunch is Jacqui Taylor, founder of Flying Binary and she’ll be talking about ROI. She promises to still deliver some secrets to the audience without revealing and sensitive company data.

2.10pm Social Measurement Optimisation or SMO is according to Jacqui the future of monitoring social networking. It’s approach starts with dealing with were a company is and then considering where it can go.

2.14pm “People within businesses know what the issues are,” says Jacqui and if you put data tools and insights in their hands they are free to grow.

2.17pm What ROI can do for you? An ability to track even 30 million profile activities at once, as in case of a company Jacqui’s Flying Binary is providing insights for.

 2.19pm Jacqui introduces the semantic layer to the crowd which gives companies a sort of filtering and searching tool.

2.23pm Listening is emphasised yet again today as according to Jacqui  taking the time to set profiles and engage with users ultimately improves your ROI.

2.26pm Jacqui advises companies to be clear about what they are measuring and define their measurement profile. However, she advises against changing this too often, and while every month could be a perfect balance, every week or every day is  perhaps too much.

2.28pm For Jacqui monitoring is at the heart of the social media beat and responding quickly to what people are talking about “it delights people.” From an ROI point of view, “of you can prove that it’s changing, you’re gonna get a cheque signed,” explains Jacqui.

 2.31pm In terms of engagement, profiling your customer to ensure you’re responding to their life cycle need.

 2.35pm Jacqui predicts 80 per cent of our world will be online in the next 5 years and suggests creating an eco system as well as share insight data. She concludes by asking What if 80 per cent of the population will be online, what would your business tool.

2.43pm Andrew Walker of Tweetminister is up next.

2.45pm ”If you want to get the good stuff you have to follow experts in the fields,” says Andrew who is @killdozer on Twitter.  He explains he is neither the killdozer that has a thing for the police, nor the band. He insists he is just himself and by the laughs he gets from the audience, Andrew is having some good fun

2.49pm “You need to work out what your audience consumes and how your audience consumes,” says Andrew. He then goes on to mention ROE or Return on Engagement which he thinks is more revealing than ROI.

2.51pm Andrew is now explaining why monitoring twitter is important, mentioning research that shows Twitter is 94% accurate thus beating YouGov.

2.56pm Andrew is giving the examples of Coldplay, Lady Gaga and Spooks to illustrate how monitoring twitter engagement can give businesses useful insights into how to create their strategy to respond to the results of twitter involvement.

2.58pm “There’s just too much stuff online,” says Andrew, which is why they started to monitor the network rather than the key words. “We love the stuff taht has been hand-picked by experts.”

3.02pm “Coming second to the party,” doesn’t provide for a lot of impact according to Andrew.

3.04pm Blogging right could get you as many hits as the Guardian and Twitter is now recording events instead of reporters according to Andrew, but, he says, “We still need journalists to explain it.”

3.08pm “We’re used to big segmentation in our consumption,” explains Andrew.

3.11pm What is the future in Andrew’s view? Data and measurement. He finished with the example of the Open Cookie.

3.14pm Breaking news is still dominated by large news corporations replies Andrew to an audience question because while citizen journalists don’t afford to send someone anywhere at any time, news organisations do.

3.19pm On the stage now are Jake Steadman, the Head of Social Media Insight at the Business Intelligence Department of O2 and Francesco D’Orazio, the Research Director and Head of Social Media at Face.

3.23pm If we look at how we analyse social media media nowadays, we’re basically like butchers, because we only look at keywords and channels – explains Francesco.

3.26pm He also argues that “every business needs different strings of data and different algorithms.” 

3.28pm An O2 research saw Francesco’s team tracking the social graph of all twitter followers of the brand plus the followers of the followers and the followers of the followers of the followers – got it?

3.32pm The team went on to complete a semantic analysis of user bios, which Jake explains now.

3.43pm The team then looked at when they tweet to identify most active times of day, klout score and audience profiles, as well as linked domains.  What’s the future in their view? Audience API.

[coffee break and Barclays session]

4.40pm Last session tonight that we’ll be live-blogging is the The Big Debate: Who owns Social – Marketing, PR or Advertising? The panel includes Gianni Catalfamo, European Director in Digital & Social at KetchumPleon; Neil Kleiner, Head of Social Media at Havas Media; Robin Grant, Global Managing Director at We Are Social and Nadya Powell, Director of Social & Emerging Behaviour at Dare.

 4.44pm Chair Martin Thomas opens the debate to the public.

4.47pm First audience member asks what the bottom-line benefits to a business would any of them bring through use of social. “We’ve got to think aout pushing back to the client for monitoring,” says Nadya, adding that if the client doesn’t have a clear strategy and aim in mind their job becomes very difficult.

4.49pm Next question up: What mistakes have you made? So far neither is giving exmaples, but discussing the market, context, etc.

4.50pm Already onto next question: What skills are you looking for in graduates? “A love of the people that you’re dealing with,” immediately replies Nadya. In addition a love of technology is mentioned. Neil says he’s looking for people good with numbers of words. Gianni is after curiosity on top of all this.

4.53pm “Social media needs to be conducted by a native language speaker in real time,” says Robin in relation to Martin’s question regarding multi-language social.

4.54pm Another question from the audience: How are the insights of social affect the creative process? Integration and merging across the platforms seems to be the general answer across the panel.

4.49pm Martin asks which platform is the most exciting at the moment. For Neil it’s still Twitter, but Martin insists “Anything else?”  Giovanni says its still very much Twitter and Facebook although things are moving around particularly with the emergent of Pinterest, so he says “I think there is  a lot of interests of getting deep.” That being said Robin is keeping an eye on Tumblr as not only a blogging platform but  asharing platform as well.

That’s it from us. Thank you for following today and we’re looking forward to meet you in our webinar. #smwdna