blogging

After last week's successful Social Media Week London brainstorm - we're delighted to announce a SMWLDN Brainstorm Round 2 in preparation for next February's SMWLDN on Wed 7th Dec from 6pm - 8pm in Shoreditch or TechCity, if you're startup-minded (RSVP).

This time, the aim is to focus on how social media is affecting and impacting our day-to-day lives from the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the music we listen to, the games we play, the sport (some of us, ehem) do and our families.

Plans for Social Media Week 2012 have well and truly started and some very exciting ideas have been flying around. Some events are already live in London and across the other 13 cities involved. Check out whats already planned for the week here:

http://socialmediaweek.org/schedule

Planning an event for Social Media Week can be slightly daunting. Where do you start? Do you have a panel session or a workshop? How do you invite people? Is there a hashtag for every event? Do you need to supply catering?

So many questions, so to help you plan and execute your event, along with hopefully answering all the questions you have, we've pulled together some guidelines to 'Hosting an event for SMW 2012'.

Our love-in with infographics continues with this doozy from mindflash with a step-by-step Linkedin Bootcamp giving some steps to get the most out of the B2B social network.

Handy and practical whether you're on the hunt for a new gig, working a business development angle or just buiding your professional profile, it's a handy check-list. Check the full list below and click-through for the big version.

You love Google.

It's one of those universal tools everyone has a soft spot for. I secretly imagine people who work at Yahoo use it when their boss isn't watching. Who couldn't adore a company who has an unofficial slogan "Don't be evil."

In April 2010 the search giant purchased "PlinkArt." PlinkArt was originally designed to identify works of art once you took a photo of it. The app was one of three winners of the Education/Reference category of the Google ADC2 (Android Developer Challenge 2). Google then purchased them and added the functionality to what we now know as "Google Goggles" - a visual search engine.

Square is a company that caught my eye just over a year ago. If you’re not familiar with it, you should be. It’s an iPhone / iPad app that lets you receive credit card payments. The start-up (if you can call a company which transfers more than $3 million per day a "start-up") has recently received investment from Richard Branson and is "looking into international expansion in 2012", this excites me greatly, here’s why...

This morning I woke up to several emails: new girls in my area wanting to talk on Match.com, TopMan.com are having another sale & Groupon offers me 40% off a weekend spa break. All 3 went straight into the Trash.

I know from past experience the “girls in my area” are either people I know or live too far away. Anything in the TopMan sale is there for a reason - usually because even the cast of Skins wouldn’t be seen dead in it. And Groupon clearly doesn’t know me from Adam.

They say in life you get one love. The “one” that you share your thoughts and feelings, your ups and downs and everything in between. For me, this is Twitter. Don’t sigh at me just yet, I’ve got a girlfriend – although she doesn’t Follow me.

People who know me even a tiny bit know I love Twitter much more than Facebook, I actually stopped using my personal Facebook completely 9 days ago.

Twitter is a beautifully simple platform (at the moment) that does one thing well – communications. I hope it stays that way while it tries to increase it's profits.

Last week saw the first ever Chinwag Insight: Facebook Marketing conference take place in central London. With over 80 attendees, 30+ speakers and 10 great panels it was an event not to be missed.

If you missed any of the presentations, you can check them out on Chinwag's SlideShare account. 

The conference took place last Thursday, 6th October at the Swiss Church in Covent Garden, a less obvious place for a conference location, but we wanted to add a little inspiration and diversify from the average.

Last week saw the return of Chinwag Live, and with the help of our event sponsors, Conversocial we brought you Chinwag Live: When Customer Service Goes Social.

The event looked into the profound impact social media is having on how corporates interact with their existing and prospective customers. We discussed challenges and solutions as well as the future of customer service on Facebook and other social tools.

If you missed the event, or just want to take a look at the action again, you can check out the video here.

You don’t make viral videos. Sorry, the truth hurts.

As a conciliation prize I’ll tell you that you were half right. You do make videos. But it’s the public that makes a viral, so you shouldn’t be selling it to a client under that label.