Social Media Week 2014 took place last week from September 22-26 in 11 cities worldwide, and the numbers are in.
According to research by Bell Pottinger Wired, a leading international digital consultancy, India accounted for almost 40% of online conversations during the week, ahead of the US at 18.9% and the UK at 10.4%. This aligns with recent research by EY, which suggests Indian organisations use social media more than the global average.
Social Media Week is a worldwide event exploring the social, cultural and economic impact of social media. Its mission is to help people and organizations connect through collaboration, learning and the sharing of ideas and information.
This year’s event had 12 participant cities including Berlin, Chicago, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Mumbai, Rome, Rotterdam. The theme was “Social Media for Social Change,” which was the focus for panel presentations, classes, workshops, and Google Hangouts. Other areas of focus included technology and trends, social media in specific verticals, and startups powered from and on social media.
The analysis by Bell Pottinger Wired found that Social Media Week generated over 705 million impressions on Twitter. In addition, the week inspired a total of 120,217 online conversations from Twitter, forums, blogs and news— 119,490 of these conversations took place on Twitter alone.
The cities using hashtags the most include Mumbai, London and Rome, who tweeted the official hashtags #SMWMUMBAI (over 44,000 times), #SMWLDN (over 13,000 times) and #SMWRME (nearly 10,000 times).
The hashtag #SMWMUMBAI drove the most tweeted about event with its ‘Speed Blogging & Tweetathon’ session that was mentioned 574 times – ahead of #SMWLA ‘Let's Get Larry King Trending On Vine!’ and #SMWLDN ‘Social Recruiting Is Already Here’.