Successful Inspiring entrepreneurs event

10/02/11

The latest event in our ‘Inspiring entrepreneurs’ series, held last night, focused on social media and how it can be used to promote and develop your business. Our panel of top entrepreneurs and experts gave the audience the benefit of their experience and their tips on how to get the most from social media.

Speakers:

Ian Hogarth, CEO and co-founder of Songkick.com
Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet
Fraser Doherty, Superjam
Rory Cellan-Jones, Business and technology guru

Each speaker had useful tips for the audience; Justine Roberts used an example of Gordon Brown’s webchat on Mumsnet.com to illustrate the point that you need to listen and engage with your users, not just promote your agenda. More controversially, Ian Hogarth described the UK as playing catch-up to Silicon Valley in the US in terms of social media and suggested that anyone serious about the medium should spend some time over there.

In keeping with the ‘web’ theme, the event was viewed by 120 people via live webcast, thanks to Unique Media TV. New York Public Library joined in and hosted a viewing of the webcast, as did Southampton University. Those viewing virtually were able to put their questions to the panel via Twitter, creating a global debate amongst the audience. Approximately 500 people interacted with the event through the various avenues, including 250 people in the sold-out audience, those viewing via webcast and tweets using our hashtag.

Others participated by reading the live blog, written by Dan Martin of BusinessZone.co.uk, and linked to Twitter to encourage comments and discussion.

View Dan’s blog

See videos of the event on our YouTube channel