In a packed hotel conference room in London’s West End, we sat and listened to over 20 speakers share their experience in social media. The event featured case studies, talks and new business models and turned into a four hour whirlwind of information. A few weeks later, the storm has calmed and what remains are enticing ideas and view points on social media.

Robin Wight (President of Engine) opened the show with an insightful talk on cognitive dissonance. He explained the difficulty of bringing behaviour change in customers and demonstrated how this can be more easily achieved through social media. For instance, a simple mouse click can open the mind to attitude change. Engaging your target audience is key.

Next to speak was Katy Lindemann, senior strategist at Naked Communications. She put forward the idea that there is actually no such thing as “Social Media” as all media is social to a certain extent and that one cannot be social outside if one is not social inside. Indeed, one of the main trends of 2010 is the issue of restructuring companies to make them “social”.  Just as e-mail revolutionised business life, social media will find its way into the corporate world. More companies are employing and building up social media departments. Consequently, more budget will be spent on social media than in other media channels over the next year.

One of the best practice examples of the day came from First Direct. During their ongoing Social Media Campaign 2009, they’ve invited users to leave comments on their website, which features them together with live sentiments and streamed words relating to their brand from throughout the internet in real time. A bold step for any bank and a good example of a step in the right direction for the finance sector.

My personal favourite was the very optimistic talk of Chris Thorpe (co-founder of Jaggeree). He focused on sentiment analysis in the most idealistic sense, in which every citizen becomes a data monitoring device through the use of a smart-phone. Sharing information in real time has revolutionized the way we make and receive news and will continue to change our personal and professional lives.

Diagram: The Twitter Wall – Who was the most influential “twitterer”?

What’s to come?

As well as depicting what role Social Media currently plays in the business world, Mashup’s SM 09 also discussed trends and predictions for 2010. More businesses are realizing the SEO benefits of using social media as well as using them to regain control over the conversations that are taking place online. This trend will continue and more people will accept social media as invaluable communication platforms for both internal and external communications.

The level of transparency remains the biggest challenge for businesses. How they tackle this and the returns they’ll make with it will be one of the interesting issues of the next year.

The correlation between mobile and social remains intriguing and will continue to push the parameters of social networking and communications. We are sure to see further development in the technology throughout 2010. The real time nature of Twitter and social media to anticipate and manage breaking news, even on the mainstream media, is telling and paves a clear path for our future.