The key takeaway about SOS26? It’s all about the practical takeaways

You go to a certain marketing conference (naming no names). You listen, take some notes, and perhaps nod off towards the end of the day. Then, you go back to the office. What do you take with you?

A nagging sense that you haven’t learned anything? A dread of opening your inbox to the previous day’s urgent missives? The certainty that you don’t feel any better equipped to deal with those demands?

We’ve been there, we’ve done that, and we didn’t get the T-shirt (the merch was pretty poor, too) 😬

Welcome to State of Social and the world of useful, usable takeaways!

From day one, State of Social has been created and curated by digital and social marketers for digital and social marketers. To be more than just another marketing conference.

To give you practical, actionable takeaways you can apply straight away.

“Fantastic! Takeaways that I can actually action.”

To give you a broad range of deeper takeaways.

“I particularly enjoyed the balance of deep practical info sessions for work, thoughtful workshops on personal wellness, and broader trend/industry overviews.”

To give you specialist, niche takeaways.

“Gave me some useful info to take back to our project teams who are considering TikTok.”

To give you takeaways you wouldn’t expect.

“It’s so great to come and be able to be inspired and hear from different people with different perspectives.”

To give you technical takeaways.

“As a data nerd, I absolutely loved this systematic, data-driven approach to social.”

To give you strategic takeaways.

“I came away with a goal to really evaluate how our social presence is representing who we are and how to make strategic changes to solve some of our consumer issues.”

To give you creative takeaways:

“Usually, they (conferences) are boring. But you can tell that this one is appropriately geared to creative individuals.”

To give you takeaways that will make you fall in love with what you do all over again.

“Made me so inspired and amped up. And I felt so grateful to be in marketing once the event ended.”

To give you topical takeaways from fresh case studies.

“Great info and fantastic use of case studies.”

To give you confidence-inspiring takeaways.

“It’s encouraged me to colour outside the lines a little more and embrace being weirder loudly in the office.”

To give you takeaways all day long.

“Every speaker was engaging and informative and gave practical advice and knowledge, and I learnt something from each session.”

And to give you more takeaways than you can physically cram into two days.

“I really love that I can rewatch all the sessions and watch the ones I missed.”

So, here’s the main takeaway about State of Social ’26: Friction on 25 &26 August: you’ll go back to work on 27 August with more takeaways than an Uber Eats driver on Australia Day.