Last week I had the pleasure to spend an entire week in London – I generally go in-and-out from London after no more than three days after my arrival, but this time I had a golden excuse to indulge in one of my favorite European capitals for an entire week: I had to speak (and moderate) at two conferences, the International Search and Social Media Summit and SMX London 2009.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t really enjoy the first conference in full, the International Search and Social Media Summit, as I arrived at the very last minute, just before my presentation, at the end of the full day of works and networking – such a shame!

The conference, organized by my good friends at WebCertain, has been a gathering of the best search and social media marketers form all over Europe, from Andy Aktins-Kruger to Krjstian Mar Hauksson, Dixon Jones and more – with guest speakers from the USA such as Anne Kennedy and Nicole Vanderbilt. I shared a panel with Martin Belam, The Guardian’s Information Architect, who gave a great presentation all focused on Star Trek (that gave me an input to work on a LOST presentation!), and said on a post for his blog that he was extremely jealous of my set of slides!

My presentation for the International Search and Social Media Summit (ISS) was pretty much the same as I did at the Search Congress Barcelona – only in english, and with a few new slides. During the weekend between ISS and SMX I even had the time to add a few more slide, making the presentation a little more complete. The final result I showed at SMX London for the “What’s New with Social Media Marketing” panel? Here below for your pleasure!

Basically, my message is to all online marketers, not just search marketers. In a 2.0 era, where brands are user-powered and social media attitude, including sharing, are key, marketers must leave behind their stereotypes and start adopting a new mindset – meaning listening, sharing, not pushing, engaging into conversations, etcetera.

To achieve it I ask the audience to breathe, think, and adopt a new breed of marketing intelligence tools and a new “social” mindset, that can allow to be more effective in online (and offline) brand communication.

A new mindset can even get to redefine the classic 4 Ps of Marketing, creating the new “4 Ps of Social Media Marketing“: Passion, Patience, Perseverance, and Proactivity. As all things Tao, these new 4 Ps get their balance with the new “4 Don’t P of Social Media Marketing“: Don’t Presume, Don’t Panic, Don’t Push, and Don’t Procrastinate! Also the classic ROI (Return On Investment) can be reinterpreted as “Relevant Optimized Traffic” and easily turn into RIOT, “Relevant Interactive Optimized Traffic“!

SMX London 2009, to which I participated also in previous years and at other SMX conferences around the world, has been an interesting and new experience. This time not only I was a speaker, but I also moderated some of the panels, and got enrolled by the Search Cowboys to write an article about…. the Google Gap! What is it? This is another story and will make another post – in the meanwhile watch the guest posts at SearchCowboys.com! And London? I will come back soon again… =)

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