It is perhaps a sign of the times that, within a few days of Social Media Week London being announced, the vast majority of sessions were already sold out. Such is the clamour for advice and insight around social media.

As you know, here at EML Wildfire, we take a fully integrated approach to social and digital media, featuring it as a core component of everything we do for our clients. So it will come as no surprise that several members of the team could be seen out and about this week soaking up all the social media goodness that London had to offer.

We’ll feature a couple of blog posts over the next week or so that recap some of the insights we gleened but, as a stop-gap, here’s a quick round-up of our highlights:

• Social Media Week Opening Reception – Sam kicked the week off at the official opening reception, held on the 9th floor of SNR Denton’s headquarters in the heart of London. After an opening speech, the FT demoed its new iPad app, which looks pretty slick!
• Socialympics 2  – Kat went along to this event – a follow-up to a similar session held before London 2012 started. Reviewing the use of social media during the London Olympics was always going to be a big task but, by bringing together key faces from the online and sporting world, this session really delivered. Spokespeople from Team GB – who had responsibility for making sure athletes didn’t embarrass themselves online – Twitter and the media were each given the chance to have their say before the audience got to grill them.
• Dell B2B Huddle – EML Wildfire client Present.me was a speaker at the 5th annual B2B Huddle.
• The rise of social media customer service – Joe popped along to hear companies like Sony, O2 and BT talk about how they are using social media to assist with customer service. One of the standout stats of the session was how, during the London riots, waiting times for 999 calls were reduced from 41 to 0 seconds due to information being shared on social media channels.
• Digital Sizzle 7 – Sam went along to the Whitechapel gallery to see how digital technology and art can combine with pretty awesome results.
• The future of search and SEO – Organised by the PRCA, Danny chaired this morning conference looking at the relationship between search and PR. Debby and Kat went along to support and soak up insights from the cutting edge of digital marketing thinking.
• Social media in B2B communication – Not an official Social Media Week event, but Sarah-Anne and Mona went to this event, organised by PR Moment, to explore some of the specific requirements that B2B brands have when carrying out social media campaigns.
• Social media in a laggard B2B sector – The B2B/social media topic was again a theme at an event that Alex attended yesterday. In a wide ranging discussion that covered a lot of bases, the panel shared tricks for trying to revitalise B2B communications and how companies in the B2B sector can discover new opportunities through social media.
• ‘Share This: Public Relations Now and In the Future’ – Sam went along to Facebook HQ for a CIPR event looking at how PR professionals and in-house communication managers can use emerging forms of communications to strengthen their brand and engage with consumers. Key takeaways from the session included tying SEO and social media together in digital PR and using tools such as Google Insight & Analytics to gather metrics on the success of a digital PR campaign.