Social media, Italian style

After spending a couple months working in our Milan office, I thought it would be high time to provide some updates and social media usage trends on our friends from the Mediterranean Boot—Italy.

Italians are quite the social media butterflies with a recent study suggesting Italians send 200 tweets per minute, the number of Twitter users in Italy doubling over the past year to reach 2.4 million. On average, the country is very engaged in social media: Facebook has 93% penetration and 76% of Italians use social media platforms more than once a day.
 
Here are some other recent stats worth noting (in pretty slide form, courtesy of Global Web Index):

Taking it back to business, to measure just how much brands operating in Italy are adapting social media technologies and tactics, Cohn & Wolfe Milan conducted an original study in partnership with AstraRicerche (an Italian research firm) and the University of Udine in September of this year. As we reported in a blog post not too long ago, brands operating in Italy are understanding the importance of social media teams and programs, 2/3 of which are avidly managing a company Facebook and YouTube presence (38% are also active on Twitter).
 
So what are some interesting brand programs coming out of Italy worth noting?
 
Customer Service – TIM Italia
Mobile carrier TIM sets itself apart from its competition with personalized, real-time customer service for customers via Twitter. Similar to @comcastcares and @BofA_Help, @TIM_Official interacts one-to-one with customers in a friendly, authentic tone.
 

 
Cause Awareness – AVIS
AVIS (Associazione Volontari Italiani Sangue, Association of Italian Blood Volunteers) is in the business of raising awareness for donating blood and their social application does just that, albeit quite personally.
 
Salvagli La Vita (Save Their Life) plays like an interactive experience showing a patient on the verge of death in need of a blood transfusion, asking users whether or not they’d like to save the person’s life. From there, the user connects to Facebook recreating the experience with their own life now visible to their friends who must choose whether or not to save them. The program has been quite successful and has been mentioned in top Italian media such as VITA.
 

 
Crowd Sourcing – Mediaset
Ever post a status update asking friends what’s for dinner or try to suggest what they should eat? Mediaset, an Italian broadcasting company, asked fans of their popular cooking show “Cotto e Mangiato” (“Cooked and Eaten”) to submit their best recipes via the program’s Facebook page. Over 700 detailed recipes were submitted from the page’s 300K+ readership from which the 150 most commented and Liked were aggregated into a cookbook. Billed as the first cookbook sourced through social media, it hit bookshelves this past October and is available online here.
 

 
The Italian social media landscape is rapidly expanding and a driving force among its European peers. Be sure to check back here for more social media updates and commentary from Italy in the coming months as we continue to keep a close eye on the region.