SocialDay’s Social Media Fest 2025: Key Takeaways and Honest Review

Missed out on SocialDay’s SocialMedia Fest 2025 and want to know what happend or thinking about going to SocialMedia Fest 2026 and want to know more about it – either way you are in the right place. I spent Tuesday 20th May to Thursday 22nd May in London so I could attend SocialMedia Fest for the first time. Keep on reading to find out about my biggest takeaways and honest review of SocialMedia Fest 2025.

 

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SOCIALDAY’S SOCIALMEDIA FEST 2025: KEY TAKEAWAYS AND HONEST REVIEW

 

What is SocialDay’s SocialMedia Fest?

SocialDay’s SocialMedia Fest is a 3-day social media and influencer marketing festival. The event takes place in London (a different venue every year) and is filled with talks, panels and networking opportunities. The event is mainly aimed at social media managers those working in-house and agency side, and attracts both employees and freelancers.

As a generalist marketer I don’t usually prioritise going to a conference that focuses on just one type of marketing. However, in 2024 I attended brightonSEO and spent the day learning about all things SEO and this year I decided to attend SocialDay’s SocialMedia Fest and learn about all things social media and influencer marketing.

 

My Personal Experience

My main reason for going to SocialMedia Fest 2025 was to learn. Whilst I am a generalist marketer and I swear by the importance of having a multi-channel marketing approach I used social media to market my own business and 95% of my clients are also using social media marketing as a way of marketing their business. And social media marketing is forever changing. I thought it would be a great opportunity to find out people’s recent experiences across social media platforms and leave with some learning to help with my own marketing and helping my clients.

 

Over the 3 days I attended A LOT of talks:

Day 1 – Setting the Scene

• The Social Media Updates You Need to Know About with Luan Wise & Any Lambert
• Strategically Cutting Through the Noise on Social Media with Erifili Gounari
• AI is Social Media The Big Discussion – Hosted bvy Nicole Mezzasalma
• The Return of Joy: The Revolution in Social Commerce – Heather Bowen
• Social Media: it’s Not that Deep with Hannah Anderson (Pinterest)
• Channel 4: How we grew our YouTube and TikTok audiences – Janine Smith (Channel 4)
• The Power of Social Media – Anni Mueller (Innocent Drinks)
• Building the Future: Skills and Careers in Social Media – Hosted by Daniel Rae

Day 2 – Strategy, Impact and Results

• Social Media Marketing Needs a Reset – Beth Thomas (Frank.ly)
• When ‘Corporate’ Won’t Cut It – Lloyds Banking Groupo and Citypress
• Proof in the Post: Unlocking Social ROI Across Campaigns, Creators and Colleagues
• Unlocking Demand and Discovery with IN Social Thinking – Wes Hosie (Rise at Seven)
• The Myth of Ever-Changing Social – Ruth Lee (CityPress)
• How to Provide ROI in Influencer Marketing – Alex Frolov (HypeAuditor)
• Influencer Marketing Panel with Dayana C Ibaraa, Stef Lait and more
• YouTube in 2025: Shorts, Living Room, Podcasts & More – Charles Kerr (YouTube UKI)
• Analyse, Ideate, Make – Charlotte Scott (VaynerMedia) and Darragh McGinley (Indeed)
• The Future of Social Content Creation Panel Q&A

Day 3 – Purpose, People and Making Social Matter

• The Case for Being Brave – Zander Mills (South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue)
• Social-First Safety: Making People Aware – and Making Them Care – Fiona Denham (RNLI)
• Charity Social Media Marketing Panel: Adding Social Value to Social Media – Hosted by Tom Fishenden
• How to Avoid Influencers Who Don’t Give a Sh*t About Your Brand – Alex Payne (The Influence Room)
• Your Boss Tells You To Post on Their LinkedIn, wyd? – Keira Penney
• The Deaf Dollar: Engaging with British Sign Language Users on Social – Jen Dodds (LumoTV)
• Social Media Accessibility Panel – Tania Gerard, Alvin Gunputh and Georgina Twelftree
• My Social Media Career Fireside Chat – Claire Hoang interviewed by Mel Barfield
  
  

B2B Theatre Breakout – hosted by Luan Wise and Andy Lambert

• Leading with Personality in B2B Social Media Marketing – Kunal Gandhi, Sarah Breathnach and Magali Mas D’Amato
• Working with Thought LEaders and Influencers for Effective Social Media Content – Alison Battisby and Guy O’Brien
• If You Could Track Just One Social Media Metric, What Would It Be and Why? – Luan Wise and Andy Lambert

 

As you can tell I went to a lot of talks and panels, and in true Charelle fashion I had my notebook open and was scribbling away.

Photo by Emily Dews Photography

 

Key Takeaways

Takeaway 1 – Short-form video continues to grow

This didn’t come as a surprise, but I hadn’t seen any recent data so it was good to have confirmation. Short-form content has been a big focus on social media in recent years and there are no signs to suggest that is going to change. There has been a slight change in relation to the duration of videos. The days of being limited to a minute for short-form videos has changed and now multiple social media platforms are now encourage longer short-form videos with some platforms encourage 3+ minute videos.

 

Takeaway 2 – Social search is on the rise

For a long time social media and search lived in very different worlds but TikTok changed that. Now all brands on social media should be thinking about their social search strategy. This is important not only for improving discoverability within a platform, but also in Google too.

 

Takeaway 3 – Don’t let AI do everything

It will come as no surprise that AI was mentioned in lots of talks. However, what was repeated over and over again is that AI has changed the game for content creation, but the real power is found when combining humans and AI. Someone spoke about the idea of content creation should start with humans, then use AI, and then have a human check before posting. This HUMAN – AI – HUMAN approach makes a lot of sense.

 

Takeaway 4 – Shift from followers to interests 

For years the aim for brands was to get as many followers as possible. More followers meant more people seeing your content. But that isn’t necessarily true anymore. Many of the social media platforms are now shifting to be more interest focused. This means the amount of followers you have is playing a smaller role in the total number of people who will see a piece of content. Instead a piece of content will be shared based on the interests and if it performs well it will be pushed out further and further (regardless of your follower count). I personally know this to be true as in 2024 I had a TiKTok video that went viral and got over 2.5M views even though I have less than 300 followers.

 

Takeaway 5 – People are engaging more privately

There is a rise in people engaging privately. The days where the number of likes and comments proved how popular a piece of content was is long gone. Now people might like a piece of content so they save it to refer back to or share it with someone else, but won’t like or comment on it. For content to perform well you want to be thinking about creating content that is saveable and shareabale.

 

The Vibe: What It’s Really Like

SocialDay’s SocialMedia Fest 2025 was held at Phatom Peak in Canada Water, London. This was a very unusual venue for a conference and set the tone for an unconventional conference. There was an indoor maze, the opportunity to ‘hook a platypus’ and there was a trial where you could collect stars for visiting specific things (and then be entered into a prize draw).

I’m not sure how many people attended (maybe around 300) but I found the vibe to be quite chilled compared to other events I’ve been to it

 

Tips for First-Time Attendees

 

Hotel Advice – London is well known for being expensive for hotels so book as early as possible.

Travel Advice – London is a city that is easy to travel around on public transport. Depending on where the venue is next year don’t be afraid to have to travel a little bit to attend every day.

Evening Activities – There was a social happening the day before the conference started, but notihng happened on the Tuesday or Wednesday evening. This shocked me as I am used to multi-day conferences having some time of ‘unofficial’ evening activity. One of the things that really shocked me was there

Food – Brunch was provided on the first day, and lunch was provided on the second and third day. The queues for food were very long.

Working Out Your Schedule – The days are very long and the talks are all recorded. Think about whether it is best for you to attend everything or it makes sense to give yourself a lie in one day, leave early one day, or give yourself a longer lunch break.

 

Thinking of Going Next Year?

Tickets for SocialMedia Fest 2026 are not on sale yet, but you can join the waitlist here. 

 

That’s it. You now know my key takeaways and honest review of SocialMedia Fest 2025. 

Going to events are an investment – both of money and time. As an extrovert I love going to events, but I have to be selective because you know I have to do work too. I learnt a lot from SocialMedia Fest 2025 as you’ve seen and am excited to use that new knowledge.

I hope reading this blog post has been valuable whether you just wanted to find out what I had learnt at the event or you wanted to find out more about the event before signing up to go in the future.

If you decide to go to SocialMedia Fest 2026 let me know. You can message me on LinkedIn or Instagram.

 

WANT TO TAKE YOUR BUSINESS’ MARKETING TO THE NEXT LEVEL?  I’m a Business and Marketing Strategist that specialises in helping online, service-based business owners to market, and run, thriving online businesses. If you want to work with amazing clients, make great money and have a business that supports living your best life – I can help you! To find out more about how we can work together check out my services here.