marketing

Nick Bennett is a man with a number of digital achievements under his belt. Managing partner of STEEL London; NMA top 100 digital agency, a client list boasting a string of high profile brands and blogger for SocialMediaToday; Nick has extensive experience in creative social media strategy.

“It's not as difficult as it seems,” Nick says about this strategy, “...it's about being human.”  He elaborates on this point; “social media is about people; it's not the channels, it's not the next fad.. it's about people and how people behave.”

For a man that lists “making the world a little bit better” among his interests, Will McInnes isn't doing too badly. He's co-founder and MD of social media agency NixonMcInnes, he's a non-exec at Wired Sussex and he's spoken at TEDx Brighton about radicalising business. Only a “little”?

For the least three years, over 150 companies have taken part in Digital Missions to the tech centres of the US. The week before last, we met with a group of companies interested in heading East, to South East Asia and China.

Gathering at the offices of our hosts, Pinsent Masons, we talked through the outline plans that have been brewing at Chinwag Towers and had an in-depth discussion about the priorities for a potential Digital Mission™ to Singapore and Hong Kong including the primary objectives, timings and possible companies to meet on the trip.

Here's a quick summary of the discussion and an outline of the plans for what happens next and how to get involved:

Facebook: from the bedroom of an Ivy League colleague to a Silicon Valley powerhouse. It's an all-American startup dream, but one that the Brits have taken to heart and then some.

This new infographic from BLiNQ Media, who have recently opened an office in London, shows Facebook penetration in the UK (49%) leads the US (48%). OK, so obsessed might be going a bit far, but safe to say, we're fans despite any privacy concerns.

Whilst luxury brand tops the chart in the UK, it's Starbucks in the US, the other 4 top brands are all confectioners: Skittles, Cadbury Creme Egg, Cadbury Wispa and Maltesers.

Internationally renowned speaker and CEO of PeopleBrowsr UK, Andrew Grill describes himself as “passionate about marketing.”

He tells me he's been an advocate for using technology to connect people for around thirty years – through the current form of social media, amateur radio and even the original online bulletin board. “We've started to call it social media in the last few years,” he says, “it's really about communication.”

Nokia is a brand that has never been afraid to hold it's own in the social space. No doubt as a result of this, they have a global audience of over seven million.

Tejal Patel leads social commerce at Nokia. She's passionate about the accountability and ROI of digital, and during her time with the brand she's been working to prove the value of their social efforts.

Today is the last chance to grab an early-bird ticket to this week's Facebook Marketing Conference on Thu 6th Oct. We know everyone works late, so the early-bird lasts until midnight.

Early-bird tickets start at just £199+VAT+booking fee with the chinwag discount code, saving £100 off the regular price. And for those interested in the Facebook Marketing Bootcamp workshop on Wednesday, there's just one ticket left.

The full programme is up on the website with a few last-minute additions helping us to take an in-depth look of the impact of the f8 announcements. It's going to be a busy day with 30 speakers from leading brands and agencies, discussing the strategies of getting ROI fro Facebook Marketing.