** Social Email Marketing – SAN FRANCISCO (17th Sept) **
Join Brian Solis and friends for insights into how to integrate social media and email. Including Constant Contact and Strongmail.
Book tickets here: http://socialmediamarketing.co.uk/socialemail/

** Social Media Advertising – LONDON (20th Sept) **
Includes Facebook ads, mobile ads, social gaming, promoted tweets and b2b social ads. With speakers from Mindshare, Unruly Media, RockYou and Techlightenment, it’s the ultimate social media advertising conference.
Book tickets here: http://socialmediamarketing.co.uk/socialadvertisinglondon/

** Social Media Marketing & Advertising – MIAMI (30th Sept) **
Includes location marketing (Gowalla/Foursquare) and social graph optimisation, plus blogger outreach and networking.
Book tickets here: http://socialmediamarketing.co.uk/socialmarketing&advertisingmiami/

** Monitoring Social Media – BOSTON (5th Oct) **
Includes Radian6, Brandwatch and how to gauge the ROI of social media, with speakers from Forrester and Compete.com
Book here: http://www.monitoringsocialmedia.co.uk/boston/

** Monitoring Social Media – SAN FRANCISCO (21st Oct) **
Marcel LeBrun (CEO, Radian6) and friends discuss social media monitoring, including sentiment analysis and ROI.
Book here: http://www.monitoringsocialmedia.co.uk/sanfrancisco/

** Monitoring Bootcamp – SAN FRANCISCO (22nd Oct) **
Social media monitoring training with some of the world’s leading experts
Book via Monitoring Social Media San Francisco

** Monitoring Social Media – NEW YORK (4th Nov) **
Seth Grimes, Marshall Sponder and friends explore social media monitoring, with a great pharma industry case study and more.
Book tickets here: http://www.monitoringsocialmedia.co.uk/newyork

** Monitoring Bootcamp – NEW YORK (5th Nov) **
Social media monitoring training with some of the world’s leading experts
Book via Monitoring Social Media New York

** Monitoring Social Media – LONDON (22nd Nov) **
Join me, Giles Palmer (Brandwatch), Philip Sheldrake, Synthesio and friends to explore the latest monitoring techniques.
Book tickets here: http://www.monitoringsocialmedia.co.uk/london/

** Monitoring Social Media – PARIS (7th Dec) **
The day before Le Web, we are inviting French and European monitoring experts to join us for a day of case studies and discussion. Email info@influencepeople.com if you’re interested in taking part.
Website: to be launched.

Content Marketing

While agencies and brands have been embracing the power of content for several years, SME’s are just realising the value of sharing high quality content via social networks. The playing field has genuinely been levelled between the David’s and Goliaths of business, so expect to see the long tail of viral marketing extending during 2010/11 with some great hand-held videos, slide ware and doctored images designed to please the average Facebooker or Twitterer.

Being Everywhere

While businesses were quick to pick up on the million-niches offered by search marketing (SEO and SEM), they haven’t been as quick to adopt multiple channels in the sense of blogs, videos, bookmarks, articles, presentations, podcasts etc. As I said to a lawyer in a seminar on Friday, “How many people do you think blog about UK charity law?” I might equally have asked, how many UK charity lawyers post videos on YouTube each month? Or add presentations to Slideshare? All that’s going to change in the next couple of years.

Geo-location Viral Marketing

Unlike normal social networks, the real-world dimension of services like Foursquare and Gowalla greatly enhances the potential for sales, especially for shops, restaurants and event-based businesses. They won’t appeal to everyone, but even small numbers, when concentrated (flash-mob style), can be a great marketing stunt. There’s still lots of room for creativity here, so expect regular press coverage of these services – including some privacy scare stories.

Integrated Marketing Campaigns

This is already happening, but it’s going to happen more. The “be everywhere” mantra of my earlier point applies to offline media too. As companies embrace user engagement, viral marketing and recommendations over traditional advertising, we can expect to see campaigns coming at us from all directions – including our friends.

Social Media Listening

I think it’s safe to say the web analytics gold rush of ten years ago is now happening in social media. There are over 200 suppliers vying to provide the best quality data, accurate sentiment detection, influencer analysis and (crucially) an easy-to-use interface. For marketing agencies and brands it’s a confusing market – but the potential benefits are terrific. With real-time customer feedback, you can hone campaigns on the fly. It’s a marketing dream.

Well, there are 5 suggestions… but perhaps these are rather general and obvious trends? I’d be interested to hear your feedback, especially any specific changes you see on the near horizon. The next Twitter? A privacy backlash for Facebook? The arrival of the long-promised mobile social media revolution? You tell me.

Lutz Finger and his team from Fisheye Analytics have just published an interesting social media monitoring report on the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. They looked at the coverage each athlete received in online news and social media combined, then calculated a “marketing value” for each one. For example, Lindsey Vonn of the US is the most valuable brand online, generating nearly $65 million of online coverage during Vancouver 2010.

To do this Fisheye haven’t just focused on “mentions”. As Lutz says, “Unlike traditional Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE), Fisheye has included a number of new factors such as sentiment, editorial credibility of the source, overlap of media audiences and repeated mentions in a single source on the same day.” That sounds like quite a thorough approach, and having met Lutz at Monitoring Social Media 09, back in Nov. I know he’s serious about his analytics.

There have been other social media reviews on the Winter Olympics, but (as far as I’m aware) none have tried to calculate the market value of the athletes. In our celebrity-driven culture, this information is probably far more valuable to the athletes’ agents than anything they’ve produced on the ski slopes.