London’s favourite annual social media event has hit the streets this week. As part of Social Media Week 2013, digital agency Bloom sponsored an event on social business development at Bloomberg.

The event featured speakers from high-profile organisations including Adobe, the Museum of London and Toyota-insurer Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance who discussed the progress of their company in becoming an integrated social business. Each speaker was at a different stage of progress in doing so.

Andrew Marcus, from the Museum of London says, “We wanted to take the good things we were doing and make them great. You can’t look at social media in a silo, it’s just part of the comms mix now. It all has to be integrated.”

The speakers examined the use of content, social platforms and internal buy in. All seemed to agree that social needed to become more integrated into each and every employee’s daily work.

This is easier in theory than in practice for most companies. The Museum of London, for one has to manage its social media around strict intellectual property policies that prohibit the sharing of photos of the collections. Aioi Nissay Dowa works in an admittedly uninteresting area to consumers. Phil Norris, the GM of the company says, “The thing about insurance is it’s a bit dull. The conversation in insurance is largely around price. We’re focusing on talking about things that aren’t about product or price. We’re tryint to make insurance not a commodity.”

Jay Cooper, COO of Bloom, which developed a social business framework, says the way companies can develop their social media capabilities and presence is by integrating it into the business. “You can’t just do social, you must be social,” he says.