Social Media Week is in full force! There was a great response from the JWT Canada’s Retail Slam event last night that our very own VMG CEO participated in. I thought I would give a quick review of the event entirely composed of tweets made while the presentations were happening…how’s that for putting social media to work.

Day 3 of Social Media Week in Toronto and every attendees’ head is exploding w/information & ideas for clients. JWT Canada’s Retail Slam event went from Balckberry converting top faqs from call ctr to how to YouTube videos. There were incredibly interesting presentations from speakers, the audience was convinced that the future of social media in retail is taking over! The insightful and powerful presentation by Mark Campbell about the future of online videos brought light to the powerful Info-tainement on YouTube : Case studies, How-to videos, Live video, Video Hauls and eye-opening statistics such as YouYube : More than 35 hours are uploaded every hour. I asked Mark what he wanted to get across to listeners in one tweet, but someone beat me to it: Mark Campbell – Make videos about what people are actually looking for, do customer support on YouTube. As presentations went on and updates were made by the second, it was apparent that everyone involved were also feeling smarter by the second.

Here is a little montage of the event filmed, assembled and ready for viewing by the time the last question was answered.

Social Media Week is approaching! 9 major cities around the world will simultaneously be taking part in this global platform from February 7th – 11th. As a host, Toronto will be buzzing and tweeting to the tune of everything and anything social media. 5 days of conferences, panel discussions and presentations are being held on every topic on this communication revolution that has become one of the most important marketing tools for you and your business. This year, a new initiative will be launched to connect and share experiences by having real-time conversations with other attendees around the world as well as new location check in capabilities.

Whether you are just learning the ins and outs of social media, or if you consider yourself an expert on the topic, lets face it, in this type of industry even if you think you have caught up with the latest advancements and news, think again, as quick as a tweet there is something new and exciting announced or launched without even being spotted on your social media radar. For this reason and more, SMW has grown and doubled just as quickly, needing two separate events throughout the year so we can keep ourselves up-to-date as much as possible. As SMW is here to help inform, educate and develop social media as a whole, all events are free, however you do have to register. There are still a few more events that are open, and for those of you that couldn’t quite decide and missed registration, there will be rush lines to fill seats after the first 15 minutes of each event.

VMG will be taking part in the JWT Canada’s Retail Slam event, sharing some of our own knowledge and experiences. So don’t get overwhelmed by the abundance of events packed into 5 days of sharing, networking and running from one event to another, but appreciate the integration of socializing online and offline (for a change) as we merge internet with real world in our very own city.

So grab your iphone, smartphone, ipad, laptop, whatever is your preferred communication device and start tweeting, posting, and checking in!

Check out the schedule of events here: http://socialmediaweek.org/toronto/schedule/