International social media
An EMEA and global perspective
Social media in Eastern Europe
May, 2012
Patrik Schober
The Worldcom PR Group
 The Worldcom Public Relations Group is the world's leading network of
independently owned public relations firms.
 Established in 1988, over 24 years in the market
 Professional independent public relations firms serve national, international and
multi-national clients while retaining the flexibility and client-service focus
 Worldcom clients have on-demand access to PR experts who understand the
local language, culture and customs
 The Worldcom Public Relations Group has 120 offices in 97 cities in 42 countries on
six continents with more than 2,000 employees and a revenue of more than US $300
million in 2011
 The Worldcom Group EMEA consists of 36 agencies with 594 staff members with US
$ 80 million of combined agency billings in 2011
The Worldcom PR Group
Areas of Expertise
Consumer
Goods
Consumer
Electronics
IT and
Communications
Financial and
Banking
Investor
Relations
Travel and
Tourism
Health Care
Environment
Sustainability
Public Affairs
Optimizing Resources and Organizations
Workflow flexibility optimized for your business
 Avoiding bureaucracy and process redundancies increases ROI and effectiveness
 Worldcom allows you to develop a one to one local relation or a lead agency model
relations
 Delivering your PR program in Europe must allow synergies, time optimization
without losing local flavour and communication opportunities
 Worldcom independent structure allows flexibility to adapt to your own structure
LOCAL
LEAD
LOCAL
LOCAL
LOCAL
LOCAL
LOCAL
References
More than 1,100 companies belonging to all types of industry are served by EMEA
offices. Some of our current clients are:
Cultural differences and Media Usage in
Eastern Europe
Cross Cultural Business behaviour
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
US
UK
Germany
France
Denmark
Russia
Turkey
Media usage in Eastern Europe

Printed dailies are very popular in most EE countries – almost 90% of adult population in these
countries read some daily and listen to radio

Looking at market trend data the percentage of E. Europeans reading newspapers is actually
down 3% since 2008 and has decreased 8% since 2004

News reading is moving online with 56% of E. European internet users visiting news websites

Great difference between circulation of national newspapers in different countries – differ on
size of market – Russia: Argumenty i Fakty – cisrculation 2,7mil. Latvia: Diena – circulation
31.000pc

54% of E. Europeans are online vs. 79,6% of Americans but 76% of Eastern European users have
broadband vs. 60% of Americans

Most of E-publishing houses are in ownership of international companies like Axel Springer, IDG,
Burda, Bauer, etc.

Hungary is nr. 3 in the World in watching TV – 260minutes/day/person, 80 TV channels in
Hungarian
Social media in Eastern Europe
The most popular networks in Croatia
Social
networks
Microblogs
Blog
Facebook
(1,000.000 users)
Twitter
Zrikka
Flickr
Iskrica
(350,000 users)
Blog.hr
Bloger.hr
Trosjed
(100,000 users)
Mojblog.hr
Qherc.hr
Tulumarka
(52,000 users)
B2
(24,000 users)
BigBlog.hr
Most popular social networks – Czech Republic

Social networks: Facebook.com, lide.cz, Spoluzaci.cz, Libimseti.cz

Blogs, microblogs: blog.cz

Multimedia shared networks: YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Rajce.cz, Stream.cz

Flagging: Linkuj, jagg, Digg, Delicious

... Wikipedia, Second Life, discussion ...
Most popular social networks - Hungary
Facebook
MyVip

3,96 million active users

Popular mainly among teenagers

Saturation in total population is 39,65%

2.700.000 (non-audited data)

Saturation in online population is 86,2%

message board: yes

52% women; 48% men

applications, games: yes (dating apps mostly)

18-44-year-old age group is the biggest: 67% of total
users

groups for brands
Iwiw
Twitter

registered users in Hungary: 11.000

Popular mainly among 25-34 aged people but more and more
teenagers register

Registered users: 4.500.000

Popular mainly among middle-aged people

message board: yes

applications, games: yes
Tumblr

groups for brands: yes

Popular mainly among 25-34 aged people

pages/profiles for brands: yes (on a pay-basis)

allows to share content to non-registered users: yes
Most popular social networks - Latvia
Most popular social networks
 Draugiem.lv – 1 200 000 registered persons; active users - 672 811
 One.lv - 910 000 registered; active users – 330 000
 Facebook – 350 280 registered persons
Most popular blogs
 The leading news portal DELFI Blogs - 330 000 users ( portal users - 676 000)
 News agency LETA bussines portal Nozare.lv Blogs – 20 000 users
Most popular micro blogs
 Twitter – 100 000 registered persons; active users - 20 000
SOCIAL MEDIA IN POLAND
TOP FIVE of the most popular social media in Poland
No.
Service name
Real users
1
nasza-klasa.pl
12 057 100
2
facebook.com
8 074 148
3
gazeta.pl (community)
5 911 075
342 351 720
4
wp.pl (community)
4 719 710
44 864 469
5
onet.pl (community)
4 658 815
65 985 544
Nasza-Klasa.pl - Polish social networking service
(similar to classmates.com) has 12 million
registered users. The service has inspired a
lot of new users – middle aged and older,
people from small towns and rural areas –
previously indifferent to the possibilities
offered by the Internet.
Page views
Facebook is gaining more users very fast and is
having right now already more than 8 million
users in Poland. Its applications are already
integrated on all polish portals and many young
users merged already from nk because it is
more international.
Social Media in Russia
Social networks:

Vkontakte

Facebook

Odnoklassniki

Mail.ru

RuTube

YouTube
Social networks for
professional
communities:

Professionali.ru

Moi krug

Eshtab.ru

Habrahabr

Turbina

live HH
Blogs

Livejournal

Blogs.Mail.Ru

Blogs.Yandex.ru
Microblogs

Twitter

mblogi.qip.ru
Social news service

News2
The Most Popular Social Networks - Russia
The most popular Social
Networks in Runet
(Russian Internet):
•
Number of Runet users in
Social Network
80%
Odnoklassniki.ru
70%
68%
65%
60%
•
Vkontakte
54%
50%
40%
•
Moi Mir Mail.ru
30%
20%
10%
2% Runet users do not use
any social networks at all
0%
Odnoklassniki.ru
Vkontakte
Moi Mir Mail.ru
Case studies
Case study – Hungary – Media Union
Client

Media Union – this is a charity organization in Hungary, formed by the biggest media companies (it is similar to
the US Ad Council); every year it has a special topic and there is a wide scale public awareness media campaign
about that issue. Last year the topic was: social integration of disabled people – Worldcom Partner Probako PR
held the campaign
Solution

Probako had four real disabled participants. The basic idea was to open their everyday life to the public via SM

Probako launched a website and 4 FB profiles for our „heroes” – they answered questions, participated in
discussions etc. and the whole thing was integrated to campaign website. So their activities could be followed in
FB and in paralell at campaign website
Results

The campaign was very well accepted on SM platforms

All pages had thousands of likes (and very significant activity level)

The campaign was awarded in a local advertising festival and
Probako received a special award at European level in Brussels
Case study – Czech – D-Link
Project
-
To establish continuous communications between D-Link, customers, distributors and resellers
Solution
-
For B2B communications was launched portal called D-Best with loyalty program, blog, news, discussion
forum
Facebook profile with news and contests
DLinkTVcz YouTube channel with local, dubbed or subtitled videos
Professional blogger to follow blogs, forums, discussions
eTail reviews of products and discussions
Results
-
1400 registered resellers on D-Best, about 700 are active users
D-Best awarded as best IT PR project on Czech PR Award for 2010
1500 fans on Facebook site with average 3 posts a week, 30 active fans weekly
12 videos with average 500 views
50+ blogs and forums followed with average 20 posts a week
82 products reviewed on eTails and following discussions
Case study – Czech – D-Link
Geocashing – traveling Sid





Real-world outdoor treasure hunting game.
Players try to locate hidden containers – in our case Sid, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and
then share their experiences online.
Player should take a picture with Sid and send this picture to our e-mail and we publish it on Facebook page
and give to this player a present.
Created a map which shows where Sid hase been
Players could share their experiences also on our facebook page.
Conclusion
Social media in Eastern Europe

Facebook is nr. 1 in all EE countries except Hungary, Poland, Latvia and Russia

Only 1mil. users together of Twitter and Facebook in Russia

Blogging is not really popular except Russia, and so Twitter is usually used by few
professionals and journalists, for example in Hungary only 11.000 registered on
Twitter

Only 2% of Russian users of internet do not use any social network at all, the
biggest activity is on blogs

Wide usage of internet and social media in Adriatic countries (ex-Yugoslavia)

Czech is only country in EU where Google is not nr. 1 in search engines (Seznam.cz
is the leader)

YouTube is widely used in whole EE, only in Russia is used RuTube.ru

Eastern European public is not used to work with Picasa or MySpace and Flicker,
but usage is growing rapidly
Contacts
Patrik Schober
Worldcom Business Development Chair EMEA
Phone: +420 224 913 001
patrik.schober@pram.cz
Social Media in Southern Europe
The online landscape in Italy
Diegi Biasi – Business Press
May 29th, 2012
In Italy today
Social Networks reach
million
users
of the Italian
online population
26
Growth of social networks
Facebook sets apart from competition
27
Facebook Mission
“Giving people the power to
share and make the world
more open and
connected”
28
Penetration in the first 10 markets
29
Four major change agents
30
Social tools win in business
31
All industries are social savvy
32
Questions?
Diego Biasi
diegob@bpress.it
+39 02 72585.1
+39 335 6341290
33
Going Social
The strategic choices for international organisations
So what is social media?
These conversations will shape
your success
• We live in the
recommendation
generation
• Trusted content is
at the heart of
purchase decisions
• Social media has a
role in shaping
what people say
about a brand –
online and offline
The challenges of online
conversations
• Social media enables people with shared interests to have
conversations online that would otherwise happen offline
• These can be related to a wide range of topics from purchase
decisions to the quality of a service experience. This raises a
number of challenges for global organisations
• Each challenge raises a strategic choice
Strategic choices for social media
The challenges for a global
company
– Deciding who is authorized to participate in online
conversations
– Deciding what content is authorized to be shared in online
conversations
– Contributing in a conversational style rather than just
force-feeding company content
– Conversing in the language of choice at a local level
– Co-ordinating thought leadership with demand generation
and service delivery
1. Driven by business imperatives or
by tactical initiatives?
• Vendors have evolved their approach as social media has
evolved
• Best practice points to the need for an over-arching strategy
that ties social media activity to the achievement of
organisational goals
– Clear KPIs at an organisational level can be translated into
measurement at an activity level
– Identifies clear roles for thought-leadership, demand generation and
service delivery and how these should be integrated
– Enables the delivery of compelling interaction on a global, regional and
local level
2. ‘Benevolence’ or commercialism?
•
•
•
At the heart of social networking
is Benevolence – the unselfish
and kind-hearted behaviour that
engenders and promotes
recognition and reciprocity, and in
doing so, earns the goodwill of
those around them.
This is the hub of social
networking with a purpose,
mission, and a genuine intent to
grow communities based on
trust, vision, and collaboration
Lessons from other vendors
shows that audiences are tiring of
a ‘sales only’ content diet and
respond positively to an approach
which appears to add value
without a sales message attached
(Kerry@Dell)
3. Monologue or dialogue?
‘Many companies approach social media as a list of technologies to be deployed as
needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal’ Forrester
• Best practice points to the need to see social media/networks
as the opportunity for direct engagement with customers,
prospects and influencers
• This requires active conversations where company
representatives are free to add value to a conversation rather
than just deliver a marketing-led monologue
• It also requires conversations to be had at a local level to be
meaningful to the audience
• There are clearly cost implications of doing this right
4. A social enterprise or the
responsibility of the few?
• Best practice demonstrates that to become a ‘social
enterprise’ organisations empower their employees to
contribute in social networks
– Activity by the masses rather than the few increases the opportunity
for enhanced share of voice
– Good training and easy to follow social media guidelines minimises the
risks
– More freedom within clear parameters reduces the need for
headcount dedicated to the social media task
– Enables appropriate activity at global, regional and local level
5. Controlled or empowered?
• Linked to the social enterprise question is whether there are
tight approval processes for what is said online
• Best practice points to the need for freedom to engage within
clearly defined parameters and well understood personal
responsibilities
• Easier to ‘monitor’ at a regional level
6. Bring people to the brand or go
where they already interact?
• In the early days of social media experimentation, vendors
created blog platforms as an extension of their website and
worked hard to attract people to interact there
• Increasingly best practice shows that brands are moving to
where people already interact – whether it is Facebook,
LinkedIn or some other platform
• UnileverVIP is a best practice example
7. Structured by the needs of the
audience or by the silos in the business?
• Best practice shows that
social media strategies
should match the way
people participate in social
media
• Doing so creates a model
for selecting the most
appropriate platforms and
how to behave
• Focuses organisation on
the quality of the
interaction rather than the
frequency of activity
• Accentuates the need for
appropriate local content
8. Match to local culture and language
or adopt a single global flavour?
• Vendors have often started
with central platform to
engage audiences
• Best practice shows that
this needs to be able to
match the needs of local
audiences with local
content and in local
language
Why should you care?
Use social media to…
Listen
Maintain a dialogue
Build relationships
Promote
Manage reputation
Solve problems
Enhance service delivery
Enhance marketing
and PR
• Give leadership status
• Generate leads
• Build trust
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Social media behaviour
Lessons from Successes and Failures
Remember the 90:9:1 Rule
90% just consume content
90
9% will rate or comment on content
9
1% will create content
1
Get the motivational mix right
Use the 4 Fs
1. Fame
2. Fortune
3. Fun
4. Fulfilment
Harness other people’s ideas
People are happy to
give their ideas and
content away for
nothing
KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid
• Simplicity is key for the success
of online platforms
• The goal should be to make it
really quick and easy for
participants to participate
• The goal should be 1-click
participation, and it should be
crystal clear what participation
requires through easy to read
instructions
UnileverVIP
Social engagement and innovation in
one on Facebook
• Social engagement
and innovation pilot
• Over 70,000 people
• Proves the power of
true involvement
• Demonstrates the
commercial value of
social media
Highlights
Unilever VIP has demonstrated that it can deliver:
• Significant improvement in propensity to buy
• Product trial across brands
• Content shared by advocates across the social
web
• Helpful insight for brand teams to aid decisionmaking, campaign creation and product
development
• Significant improvements in brand advocacy
Propensity to buy grows with time involved
Double
digit
point rise in ‘definitely
will buy’ Unilever
brands & products*
*average across all participating Unilever VIP brands
Motivated to try new brands and
products
“I always like to try
something new but
when you listen to my
view and opinions and
promotions gets me
motivated to buy
some”
“All the brands I have
tried...but several
products I wouldn’t of
tried I have tried from
hearing about it on
here”
“Because Unilever is such
a friendly brand and open
to hear our side of the
story its definitely
encouraged me to buy
more Unilever products
than previously”
Changing behaviour, stimulating
purchase and driving advocacy
I will be buying it from
now on I can't praise it
enough. Thank you
Unilever for another
amazing product.
(Cif Multi-Purpose
Actifizz)
Totally brilliant cleaning
agent. I'll definitely be
buying this again and
recommending it to
friends and family
(Cif Multi-Purpose
Actifizz)
I would certainly buy this
product in the
supermarket and
recommend it to my
friends 10 out of 10 for
this one.
(Comfort Vanilla & Gold)
Have already
recommended to friends
and family and it has
made it onto my weekly
shopping list.
(Flora Buttery)
Wow! My hair felt like I had
had an expensive salon
treatment. This is amazing! It
will certainly be top of my
hair care list from now on.
(Dove Hair)
Advocacy/loyalty grows with time
involved
High
double
digit
point rise in likelihood to
recommend Unilever brands
& products*
A 10 point
increase in
‘likelihood to
recommend’ is
considered to
be world class
*average across all participating Unilever VIP brands
Manage the Process
• Social media needs
managing and resourcing
• Success doesn’t happen by
accident
Standing on the shoulders of giants
•
•
•
Breakthrough companies
give customers what they
want – not what they
expect the market to
provide
In the social media world
people want access to
people/brands they trust to
provide
information/experiences
that entertain, reward and
fulfil
Those that embrace social
engagement will see
benefits in revenue and
profit
Round up
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Start with a strategy that links to KPIs 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 these to different needs – sales, service, awareness,
education….
Turn conversations into relationships – make your presence
sticky
Mobile - it’s just social engagement on the move
Think recommendations – you can monetise social
engagement
Questions?
For more information contact Crispin Manners
crispin.manners@kaizo.co.uk