Lozova For the past two days I have attended the Social Media Conference in Moscow. 15 presenters talked about Russian companies early experimentation with using social media for business, with one American presenter talking about the US experience with social media in politics and government affairs.
It was interesting to see that the concepts are applicable in Russia as they are elsewhere, even though Internet penetration is lower and online business is still evolving. Early adopters understand that social networks provide a way to micro-segment their audience, and provide a variety of new channels to communicate with their customers. About half of the presenters represented Russian social networking sites : http://vkontakte.ru/ (similar to facebook), and http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/ (similar to classmates). One PR manager talked about how her company is using twitter for customer support, while many others use twitter only for PR. We have seen social networks used for advertising – attract people to a site – and for outbound PR-style communication for branding purposes. Not yet: social network business apps, two-way communication, social CRM.
Overall, good content, too bad that the audience was really small – communication manager, IT managers, customer service managers would have really benefited from listening to what is being done today and possible tomorrow in social media. Hopefully next time…