Summary from meshed#1, Social Media Conference in Linz

Oliver T. Hellriegel @ meshed#1

A couple of weeks ago I held a keynote at meshed#1, Social Media & Online-Marketing Conference in Linz, Austria.

According to computerwelt.at this was the first conference on Social Media in Austria (which came as a surprise, to be honest). Attendees were mostly Marketing Professionals from companies, some of them already familiar with Social Media.

So what did the attendants learn?

1. They got an explanation on risks as well as chances on using social media in the communication mix from Rolf Luehrs of TuTech Innovation in Hamburg. He gave an overview of types of users of social media: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives. Looking at users aged 18 – 24, 22% are Creators and 26% are Critics. The largest group however is the Spectators with 55%.
2. Thomas Schwabl, MarketAgent.com, gave an overview of the usage of Social Media in Austria. Based on a study, exclusively prepared for the conference, he explained the following key findings:
   – More than 55% of the respondents are using Social Networks more than once per week or even daily.
   – Main Usage is watching videos/ pictures (64%) or communicating with friends (59%).
   

   Oliver T. Hellriegel @ meshed#1

3. My keynote represented an overview of social media as driver of an online brand building. Giving insights in strategies as well as various examples on how to benefit from the sustainable changes in communication. I presented also a couple of examples on how companies have used social media marketing so far and what the key findings are.
4. Ralph Kammelberger of Omnimedia presented actual results in online media planning, whereas most findings are not relevant for social media, as they are planned differently than usual media. Still some interesting facts: growth rate of online media in 2009 is expected to hit 30% whereas the total ratio is only 3% of the media spendings in Austria. But there is also a change in media usage esp. in the age group 14 – 29: asked what they would do with 15 min. available, most of them answered “using social networks” and “using my mobile phone” (five years ago “watching TV” came in first).
5. Last but not least Joachim Graf, Future Evangelist, gave an outlook on changes in media usage and social behavior of the net generation. Very interesting thoughts on the development of social media.

I left Linz with a very positive feeling and some very good feedback on the event. I’m sure we will be back next year to attend meshed#2.

Twitter feeds can be found using the hashtags #meshed, #meshed1 and #meshed01. You can also get my presentation on slideshare.net (all presentations in German, though ;-)

Other Links on meshed#1:
meshed#1 on bohuco
Social Marketing for Beginners on datenschmutz.net
meshed#1 on werbeplanung.at
Summary of my presentation on meshed#1’s Blog