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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for February 20, 2012: A 72-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

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• FIR #639 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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So, until Monday February 27…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

One online property that’s been getting huge attention over the past few weeks is Pinterest, the join-by-invitation content-sharing and social networking service.

Not only huge attention but also huge take-up by its users – TechCrunch reported earlier this month with data from comScore showing Pinterest reached 11.7 million unique monthly US visitors, crossing the 10 million mark “faster than any other standalone website in history.”

Like many other people, I’ve been experimenting with Pinterest although I’ve yet to really get going and ‘pin’ much content that I gather from my travels around the web that I’d want to share with a community at Pinterest. Clearly I’m not the right gender demographic anyway as 97 percent of Pinterest users are female, says PC Magazine.

Be that as it may! If you use Pinterest, I’m making it simple for you to share content you find on this blog as Twitter Facebook Google Plus One Social Share, the WordPress plugin I use that creates the social sharing buttons you see at the end of each post, now includes a Pinterest sharing button.

Any of my content you share from NevilleHobson.com – whether it’s text, an image, video or audio – is covered by a Creative Commons license. Whatever service you use to share it, you don’t need to ask my permission beforehand. As long as you abide by the terms of that license, or agree a change in those terms with me first, you’re ok from a copyright perspective.

That may not be true elsewhere on the web, though.

According to Business Insider, Pinterest might be enabling massive copyright theft through the way in which its service makes it easy for anyone to simply post anything they see on the web to their account on Pinterest. A couple of clicks (or taps on the mobile app), and you’re done.

What about copyright?

Pinterest themselves make it clear in their terms of use that you shouldn’t post anything on which you don’t have the rights or if you don’t have permission to do so, as the Business Insider report notes:

[...] In its terms of use, Pinterest actually specifies that users shouldn’t pin photos they don’t own the rights to, a request that is being ignored to an absurd degree. Even if you link and attribute, that does NOT absolve you of the fact that you took someone else’s work and re-appropriated it.

Those terms of use include this clause:

You agree not to do any of the following:

• Post, upload, publish, submit, provide access to or transmit any Content that: (i) infringes, misappropriates or violates a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy; [...]

Business Insider’s report also goes into a detailed discussion in an FAQ format that explores the many and complex issues related to copyright, fair use (fair dealing in the UK), transformative works, and more:

[...] But the big problem is that it grabs entire copyrighted works to re-post. This could be hard to overcome, especially as Pinterest starts growing and becomes more of a destination for a greater audience. The more time users spend on Pinterest, one assumes, the less likely they are to click out to other sites. And why click out when you can see the whole picture right there?

It’s an interesting situation, one that may well result in someone mounting some kind of legal challenge in one jurisdiction or another to test the copyright water, especially if Pinterest starts to make money from their service (which they say they aren’t yet). Once that happens, someone is sure to sue when they find their content on or linked to at Pinterest, the act of which infringes their rights to an extent that it just can’t be ignored.

I think it’s another example of digital technology and the internet enabling people to do things that copyright laws never imagined when they were drafted (and amended over time), and now looking woefully out-dated if not out of touch with contemporary society. The web moves faster than the law.

Unless or until any legal challenge happens, I’d be careful to acknowledge other people’s intellectual property rights first and foremost.

[Update Feb 21] Pinterest has taken a step to address the copyright issue with the release of code that website owners can place on their web pages that prevents anyone ‘pinning’ images from their site.

An additional text in their help section includes this:

What if I don’t want images from my site to be pinned?

We have a small piece of code you can add to the head of any page on your site:

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />

When a user tries to pin from your site, they will see this message:

“This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

It’s a good start but I wonder if it will be enough to satisfy critics as well as actually combat what some see as content theft and others as just linking. This only addresses images not text or other content. Still, Pinterest has also set a limit of 500 characters to text content which will address the people who scrape whole blog posts and other text content.

Yet I wonder if many websites will add the code at all. And would it not be best if the code was more about opting in rather than opting out? But that would be a wholly different scenario for Pinterest and its users as that would mean websites having to enable a code to permit pinning rather than it being the ‘default by inaction’ as now.

All part of the figuring-it-out process.

(Via LLSocial.com via Mashable)

In April, I’ll be in Amsterdam taking part in The 2012 International Social Media and PR Summit, a two-day professional development event that blends a rich mix of best practices, tips and know-how with real-world examples of how organizations are using social media.

It all adds up to a compelling collection of practical learning opportunities that you can act on.

• Use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ to extend your brand, engage your customers and get media attention
• Monitor and measure the success of your social media – and prove the ROI of your efforts to top executives in your company
• Structure your business for social media success by putting social thinking at the heart of your communications plans
• Share content easily and instantly on many social media sites – without adding to your workload
• Grab the attention of reporters and editors by contacting and interacting with journalists on social media channels

The event features insights from organizations like Heineken, Dell, Cisco, Mayo Clinic, Huffington Post UK and ING Bank – successful leaders in enjoying the benefits of using social media.

I’m one of the speaker group, along with my podcasting partner Shel Holtz, and we’ll be leading a session entitled “How podcasting can build a community and strengthen your customer relationships.”

So mark your diaries for Amsterdam April 11-12, 2012, and sign up today. The cost for the full two days is €750.00 plus VAT (roughly, £625 or $990). You can also do just one day for €400.00 plus VAT.

Keep up with plans and developments on Twitter and Facebook, and follow the discussions via the hashtag #SMPR2012.

See you in Amsterdam!

(Note: In the interests of transparency, let me disclose that Ragan Communications, the event organizer, is a primary sponsor of my podcast, For Immediate Release. That relationship has nothing to do with my speaking at their event, nor am I required to talk about it in any fashion. I’m doing so because I think it’s a terrific event at a great value price. €750 for all this? It’s a bargain!)

It’s only a few days since events concluded so I’ve yet to see any in-depth analysis of how it all went on a global perspective: how many people participated, what the key topics and trends were in each city, etc. (I’ll update this post as I discover new content that others will post.)

The Twitter zeitgeist graphic you see above and others on the SMW global website give you an indication. And there’s plenty of commentary and opinion on each SMW location and individual events – just take a look at the global #smw12 hashtag, the city hashtags (London is #smwldn) as well as specific hashtags for individual events to get a good sense of what people were saying last week.

Many events in many cities were video-streamed live and you can see the recordings at Livestream. Not everything is there yet, though, if London is any indicator.

I’m looking forward to seeing reports, opinion pieces and other content as it get published. In the meantime, I’d like to share some concise thoughts of my experiences at two events in London in which I participated as a speaker, and one event in which I was there in the crowd.

Wednesday Feb 15: Social Business Immersive by Like Minds – #likeminds

[A panelist's view of the audience]

There were two connected events: presentations and Q&A in the morning (the link in the title above takes you to the details), plus a panel discussion in the afternoon on the broad topic of “The Future of Social Media in Business“; and a private dinner in the evening.

• Each session was well attended with the panel full to the brim (see pic above).
• Impressive listening to what my fellow presenters had to say: JP Rangaswami, Euan Semple, Joanne Jacobs, Jon Ingham, Delphine Remy-Boutang and Lee Provoost. Each presentation was blogged live as it happened – terrific work by Adam Tinworth – so you can read what each of us talked about in our presentations.
• One thing every speaker had in common – stressing the importance of listening rather than talking.
• Best Buy as an example of a company with excellent practice using social media to support business goals was mentioned in three separate presentations (including mine), and in the panel discussion.
• Nearly all questions for presenters and panelists from people in the audience – physically in the same room as all of us – were tweeted rather than asked. Interesting: anyone who saw a question-tweet could add their opinion to the conversation. At the least, it meant that anyone on Twitter could see who was asking what.
• The panel discussion was also blogged live, thanks to Adam Tinworth once again.
• There was no “Twitter wall”: it would distract from the discussions, said Like Mind’s Andrew Gerrard.
• The Like Minds Club in London – around the corner from Trafalgar Square and a minute’s walk from Embankment tube station – is a terrific venue for an intimate event like this: comfortable, spacious rooms and easy to get to. Coffee wasn’t bad either. Wifi reasonable although it tended to wheeze if anyone did anything a bit more than web, Twitter or email: live-streaming a video, for instance, wasn’t a good idea.
• Loved the evening dinner with plenty of stimulating (and at times, passionate) conversation. We all agreed to follow the Chatham House Rule hence no details here. I can share the dinner menu, though
• I take my hat off to Drew Ellis, Scott Gould and especially Andrew Gerrard of Like Minds – excellent organization of a very good day.

More links:

• Like Minds at Social Media Week 2012.
• #likeminds
• “Brand Communications in a Social World” – my presentation deck at Slideshare.

Thursday Feb 16: Making Social Part Of Your DNA by Klaxon Marketing – #smwdna

[Cisco's Emma Roffey on stage]

This full-day event was held in the Arts Theatre, just off Leicester Square in London. I’d heard it would be “theatre style” – well, it was indeed, literally, making for an interesting experience as a presenter, being on stage just as with a live theatre production with the actor’s view of the audience in serried rows, and squinting to see anyone in the glare of the spotlights. Actually, it was fun!

• I was there for the morning sessions, so heard and saw presentations by JP Rangaswami, Emma Roffey, Fergus Boyd, and Eve Critchley.
• The theatre is a fascinating venue for an event like this: an old building (with seats that felt equally old) yet able to handle contemporary requirements in an event where it’s now common practice for everyone to have a laptop or mobile device and be connected to the net while experiencing the event itself.
• A theatre-style presentation in an actual theatre doesn’t lend itself well to intimacy (eg, unlike the Like Minds event I participated in the day before), so making your presentation more like a presentation, ie, a remote delivery of information.
• The huge screen on which presenters presented their PowerPoints was excellent viewed from out in the auditorium although front rows offered an overwhelming experience from being so close to the huge screen, just like being in the front rows in a cinema.
• There was good wifi although I found my Three cellular signal strong everywhere in the theatre building.
• Lots of people from Klaxon were involved to organize this event, many of whom I bumped into (literally) when moving through the rabbit-warren theatre stairways behind the scenes. Thanks to all of them and especially to Martin Thomas, Andy Bargery and event live blogger Teodora Beleaga.

More links:

• Making Social Part of Your DNA – Klaxon’s event website.
• #SMWDNA: Live Blog.
• #smwdna
• Making Social Part of your DNA photoset at Flickr.
• “Make Social Part of Your DNA” write-up by Simone Schuurer in the Microsoft Advertising community blog.
• “Social Media Trends: Best and next practices” – presentation deck used by Kerry Bridge and me in our joint presentation. (This will be posted to Dell’s Slideshare channel soon.)

Thursday Feb 16: Social Media, the Olympics & BBC – Preparing for London 2012 by the BBC – #smwbbc

[Olympic medallists, BBC journalists and a Twitter wall]

This panel discussion – which sold out within minutes of it being announced earlier in the week – looked at the role social media will play in the build-up, broadcasting and coverage of the 2012 Olympic Games in London in July, and how athletes use Twitter in their preparation.

The BBC’s Head of London 2012, Roger Mosey, hosted the session. The panel comprised reigning Olympic and world championship rowing gold medallists Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter alongside Gail Emms (badminton Olympic medallist and BBC broadcaster), the BBC’s Digital Olympics Editor, Lewis Wiltshire – who’s leaving the BBC to join Twitter UK next month – and James Pearce, one of the BBC’s top sports reporters.

• Access to the event room in the Design Council was tightly controlled: not surprising, I suppose, given how in-demand it was with all seats sold out. Quite a bit of push-and-shove to get in from the eager crowd.
• Twitter played a front-stage role in this event, as evidenced by its dominant presence as a Twitter wall (see the pic above).
• Roger Mosey was a good host, keeping things flowing along nicely. But I wish he hadn’t talked about Twitter in that juvenile and patronizing way that seems to be common with some mainstream media folk, with smiles and giggles when talking about people who tweet about their coffee, etc, with the “who on earth would be interested in that?” type of commenting. Surely we’re past all that now, especially from someone whose job title says ‘Head of London 2012.’ and where, as we learned, Twitter will play a huge role.
• Each of the athletes had common-sense things to say about how they use Twitter, sensibly addressing questions or comments related to the seeming triviality of the medium and on celebs behaving badly and how social media lets people amplify behaviours good or bad. Each was very clear that they don’t behave badly in their lives and so, nothing negative for social media to amplify about them.
• The 2012 Olympics will be the biggest event the BBC has ever done, said Roger Mosey. He said it will be the first sports event where social media is an integral part of the broadcast mix.
• The BBC has big plans for taking advantage of the latest digital technologies. Mosey spoke of 24 high-definition (HD) live broadcasts for 17 days of the games, with the opening and closing ceremonies also broadcast in 3D. TV channel BBC 3 will be “the Olympics channel.”
• Mosey posed an interesting question to the audience on what we thought of the notion of tweets being broadcast with the Olympics coverage on BBC 1. The majority didn’t think it was a good idea; I think it’s an interesting one especially if the viewer has control, ie, has a means to decide yes or no, maybe via the Red Button. You would opt in to see tweets if you want them.
• Like many other SMWLDN events, this one was video-streamed live. But this was the BBC doing it so high expectations on quality, presentation, etc. Well met!
• Congratulations to Sophie Brendel, the BBC’s Head of Digital Engagement, for organizing such an excellent event.

More links:

• Social Media, the Olympics & BBC – Preparing for London 2012.
• #smwbbc
• Gabrielle Laine-Peters‘ Storify page: Social Media, the Olympics & BBC – Preparing for London 2012 #smwbbc #smwldn
• The BBC’s London 2012 home page.

And a couple of final thoughts.

Three things especially struck me about what I saw and experienced at Social Media Week London where Twitter is concerned:

1. Twitter is an integral element of a public event, or series of events, such as took place this past week. It offers huge advantages to event organizers and participants alike in content sharing, buzz building and other social activity, amplifying reach and coverage of the event and the people involved in and with it.
2. Twitter is your instant feedback channel, giving your audience the power and ability to comment on your presentation as it happens, and very publicly. A brilliant source for praise and support if you’re good. It’s a double-edged sword, though, as your Twitter critics will be brutal if you don’t live up to their expectations.
3. At two of the events, there was no Twitter wall. As I mentioned in my comments above about the Like Minds event, the view there was that it would distract people from listening to and interacting with the presenters and participants. For the Klaxon event, I’m guessing that the theatre-stage setting wouldn’t have worked well with a Twitter wall as it may have needed a screen of similar size to the main one. Maybe logistics prevented it. In contrast, a Twitter wall played an integral role in the BBC event. My point is that featuring a Twitter wall (or not) is now a key part of your planning process rather than a casual matter or simply an after-thought as has been largely the case so far. Another aspect of the maturing of Twitter into the mainstream.

How was Social Media Week for you?

“101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits features 101 actionable tactics that nonprofits can start using today, and most of the featured resources are free. Broken down into five key areas, this unique guide explains the steps and tools needed to implement each tactic, and provides many real-life examples of how nonprofits are using the tactics.

With this book as your guide, you’ll learn how leading nonprofit professionals around the world are leveraging social media to engage constituents, communicate their cause, and deliver on their mission.”

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (4.19Mb, 10:23)
• Get the show on iTunes
• Subscribe to the FIR Reviews RSS feed
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone and for your Android device (visit the Android Market from your device)

101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits: A Field Guide by Melanie Mathos and Chad Norman

Publisher: Wiley
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published January 2012
ISBN-10: 1118106245
ISBN-13: 978-1118106242

Purchase at Amazon US (Kindle edition), Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK (Kindle edition).

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Review is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

A half hour just wasn’t enough, so we’re switching from BlogTalk Radio to TalkShoe in order give FIR Book Review Editor Bob LeDrew adequate time to interview guest author Katie Paine and take all your questions and comments.

Order Katie’s book, Measure What Matters, so you can read it before the call! And give a listen to Bob’s FIR review of the book from last August.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of the recently released Measure What Matters, Online Tools for Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships (Wiley, March 2011). She is also the publisher of the first blog and the first newsletter for marketing and communications professionals dedicated entirely to measurement and accountability.

Join Katie for a lively chat with FIR Book Review Editor Bob LeDrew and participate in the conversation on Friday February 24! Details are on the TalkShoe Book Club site.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Related post:

• FIR Book Club starts in January 2012

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (29.7Mb, 74:11)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone and for your Android device (visit the Android Market from your device)

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; and TemboSocial (formerly Pollstream): helping you transform your communications goals into exciting strategies that will enable you to engage, educate and inform your customers and employees online, pollstream.com/fir/.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for February 13, 2012: A 74-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #638 bookmarks on Delicious

Names of blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Notes pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute time stamps – see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #638 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday February 20…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Just over a month ago, I started a relationship with a new web hosting service, WebHostingBuzz. The words you’re reading now are served up to your screen from a database in the cloud (well, from a dedicated Dell server physically located in a data center somewhere in the US).

As I noted in my first post about WebHostingBuzz, you now get content served to you a lot quicker and more reliably. If you look at the footer of this page (on the site itself), you’ll see a counter showing how quickly the page was served. Typically, it’s less than half a second. Page load speed is important to Google ranking.

I’m very pleased with the uptime record since I moved this site – 100%.

According to Hyperspin – a service that monitors this site and emails me daily reports – 100% uptime has been the state of things since I made the move to WebHostingBuzz. They promise 99.99% so I’m quite pleased with 100% over 30+ days!

So far, I’ve had nothing but a stellar experience with WHB. I’ve not had reason to connect with tech support yet (which is actually a good thing), but I’m pretty confident that when I do – and it’s inevitable that I’ll have to at some time – I’ll encounter the professionalism and great service that I did when the tech team helped me migrate things to their service.

In that first post I wrote last month, I mentioned what the deal is with WHB:

[...] in essence, they’ll host my web presence at no financial cost to me and I’ll talk about them from time to time, here and elsewhere, and give them a platform to occasionally tell their own story. We’re addressing our arrangement openly and transparently: there’s a little badge on this site that declares ‘hosted by WebHostingBuzz,’ for instance, as well as a similar phrase in the footer of each page.

Even if we didn’t have a sponsorship deal, I’d talk about them anyway. But rather than just talk about WHB, I asked them to give me something to offer readers of this blog.

They didn’t hesitate, and here’s the deal and how to get it:

• On budget, reseller, business or VPS plans
• On either the US or the UK WebHostingBuzz domain
• Get 50% off your first purchase, for any purchase period
• Your coupon code is: hostingdream
• Enter that code in the coupons box when you get to the checkout

That’s a good deal – 50% off. (I get no commission, by the way, nor any other type of benefit if you take up WHB’s special offer. Just to be clear on that point.)

If you decide to join up with WebHostingBuzz, let me know how you get on.

A week-long feast of knowledge opportunity awaits you next week in over 20 cities around the world when Social Media Week kicks off on February 13.

This bi-annual professional development event offers you a series of interconnected activities and conversations around the world on emerging trends in social and mobile media across all major industries. The organizers say it attracts more than 60,000 attendees across thousands of individually organized events, with half a million connecting to the conference online and through mobile.

One of the cities involved is London where over 150 events are taking place during the week, most of them free to attend (thanks to sponsors).

I’m participating as a speaker and presenter in three of those 150+ events, all of which look as though they’ll be fully booked any minute now – if you’d like to be there, this is the moment to check availability and sign up:

Wednesday February 15

1. 08:30 to 12:30: Social Business Immersive by Like Minds
   One of seven presenting; my topic: “Brand communications in a social world: the rise of open and transparent dialogue to manage your reputation and drive opportunities publicly to do business.”
2. 15:00 to 17:00: “The Future of Social Business” panel discussion with JP Rangaswami, Euan Semple, Jon Ingham, Neville Hobson and Delphine Remy-Boutang. This will be a moderated open discussion and debate on social business current trends, best practices and how social media is driving change in the way organisations will do business in the future.

• Location: Like Minds Club, 8 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5BY.
• Details and Register: http://socialmediaweek.org/event/?event_id=1135 (morning); http://socialmediaweek.org/event/?event_id=1130 (afternoon) (Both events free to attend.)

Thursday February 16

1. 08:30 to 17:00: Making Social Part Of Your DNA by Klaxon Marketing
   Presentation (at 11:50) jointly with Kerry Bridge of Dell UK titled “The long haul; top tips learnt over the years on how to really make social work for your business.” Especially useful if you’re a small or medium-size business.

• Location: 6-7 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7JB.
• Details and Register: http://www.socialmediadna.co.uk/agenda/ (This is a not-for-profit event so your full ticket price goes directly to the event’s charity partners CRY and Mind.)

These are but three of the London events you can experience. Among the many others available, these five – one from each day – look like standout sessions:

• Monday Feb 13: Mind the Gap: Avoiding a Social Media Skills Crisis (13:00-15:00)
• Tuesday Feb 14: Ogilvy Keynote: The Insidious Plot to Socialise The Enterprise (11:00-13:00)
• Wednesday Feb 15: Me! Me! Me! The Battle for Attention: Brands, Publishers and Social Networks (13:00-15:00)
• Thursday Feb 16: Social Media, the Olympics & BBC – Preparing for London 2012 (17:30-19:30)
• Friday Feb 17: Google / Google+ What’s going on and how it impacts your business! (09:00-12:00)

And if you can’t physically get to any event, you can enjoy many of them via live video streams by Livestream (who will be streaming events from other SMW cities as well).

There are also hashtags for each city – London’s is #smwldn – so you can join the conversations on Twitter.

Enjoy your week of perspectives!

• 62% of customers are looking for more support through social media
• 23% of companies actually provide it that way on Facebook

Simple action: pay attention to what your customers want and deliver on that.

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The future of customer service and social media: infographic
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• Procter and Gamble embraces Facebook