Calgary Social Media consultants, West17Media hosted a sold out event last week in their hometown of Calgary. The goal of the event is to inform decision makers within the local business and marketing community on social media as a component of existing marketing practice and that in order to have a successful social media strategy, it must be included within the larger marketing strategy.

Those in attendance heard the latest statistics about how Canadians are currently using social media, how Public Relations has changed because of social media, how an organization can incorporate SEO and analytics to guide and drive changes to marketing strategies and how the Real-Time web is having an increasingly dramatic impact on the way that consumers live their lives and interact with companies.

Hear what some of those in attendance had to say about the Social Media Innovation Summit:

- Your presentation was very informative, learned a lot about the SM tools available for PR. Very valuable!
- Good learnings, good speakers. – Thanks to the team at west17media for such a great event
- Having a great time at the Social Media Innovation Summit

We are very happy with the success of the conference and have begun planning the next #SMIS in Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton for 2010. We are also looking at expanding into other Canadian cities too. We feel that with the status social media currently has amongst our population, it’s more important than ever that organizations become informed about how marketing with social media impacts the way they do business.