On Tuesday morning Kaizo and two of its European partners from the Worldcom Public Relations Group ran a breakfast seminar on international social media. The aim was to provide attendees with insights into social media trends across different countries in Eastern and Southern Europe and offer advice on how to begin developing an international social media strategy.

First to present was Patrick Schober from PRAM in Prague, delivering an interesting overview of the key social media platforms across Eastern Europe. Key takeaways included:

• Facebook dominates in most countries except Russia where local platforms rule the roost
• Twitter hasn’t really taken off with the public but the media use it for story ideas
• TV dominates in Hungary so build this into communication plans
• There are marked differences in cultural behaviour – such as levels of masculinity or the desire to avoid uncertainty – which needs to be taken into account when creating content
• Blogging is less popular than in the West –except in Russia

Our second speaker was Diego Biasi from Business Press in Milan, providing an insightful view on social media in Italy and in particular, how his client Facebook, has built such a dominant position:

• Social networks reach 94% of the Italian population with Facebook the most popular
• Facebook has become so successful because it has aligned itself around openess and transparency which resonates with the Italian way of life
• Age 45-54 is the fastest growing Italian demographic on Facebook (currently 17% of users)
• There has been massive media hype in Italy about Pinterest but the user numbers do not stack up yet – just 0.7% are using it
• 8% of people use the internet to watch TV and 7.1% use the internet for radio – seen as a changing trend in Italy for ‘digital omnivores’
• 78% visit social networks every day in Italy. Mobile use is a big driver for this

Crispin Manners from Kaizo then went on to present the strategic choices available to international/global organisations when approaching social media:

• Start with a strategy that links to KPIs that the business values – ‘likes’ usually don’t rate with shareholders
• Think local with global consistency – not the other way round
• Pick the right platforms for the territory – it’s not a Facebook world – yet?
• Think conversations – then resource so you can be active in the conversations
• Tailor social media programmes to different needs – sales, service, awareness, education….
• Turn conversations into relationships – make your presence sticky by adding value and connecting to a topic of interest to your audiences
• Mobile – it’s just social engagement on the move
• Think recommendations – you can monetise social engagement
• Best practice demonstrates the most successful organisations are those that embrace the social enterprise and empower employees to use social media
• Unilever VIP embraced best practices to combine social engagement and innovation on Facebook to develop a community of over 70,000 loyal brand advocates and deliver stellar increasing in advocacy and the propensity to buy

A summary of the three presentations can be found here: