Study: Social Media in the Meetings Industry

Blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn have the most users / Social media will continue to become more important

Berlin, Blogs and Facebook are the most popular forms of social media used in the meetings industry. This was the result of a survey* conducted on behalf of visitBerlin Berlin Convention Office. Approximately 230 event planners and representatives of national and international associations, corporations and event agencies participated.

The survey shows that blogs, online forums and Facebook are especially important in their day-to-day business. 63 per cent of all respondents indicated that they access these sites at least once a day. LinkedIn is used by 59 per cent, followed by YouTube (53%) and Twitter (46%). Photo-sharing sites such as Pinterest (12%), Flickr (10%) or Instagram (7%) are significantly less relevant.
Importance of social media continues to grow for the industry

When asked if social media channels are important in their organisation’s decision-making processes, 58 per cent of respondents said no. Nonetheless, 71 per cent did agree with the statement that their importance for the meetings industry will increase in the coming years.
About half (49%) of the participants also stated that social media is already a part of their company’s marketing mix and 52 per cent said that the channels help increase brand awareness and visibility.

Other results from the study can be found in the pdf-document below:
http://press.visitberlin.de/sites/default/files/study_social_media_in_the_meetings_industry_0.pdf

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* The social media study was conducted by Marius Kahlert, a graduate of Saxion University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands in the first half of 2013. Participants for the survey were selected from the global contact network of visitBerlin Berlin Convention Office. 228 representatives of the meetings industry took part.