Participating in open global webinar «All Social media is local: a guide to Global Stakeholder Engagement», that Edelman provided on 7th of October, as a panelist from Russia I represented Social media trends of Runet. Here I just like to resume the key trends of social media market in Russia.

Potential growth rate of online market in Runet is extremely high – particularly in boom of new media and social networks – for example the audience of the most popular Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru welcomed more than 20 mln people just for two years! Vkontakte.ru – 17 mln people, My.Mail.ru – 15 mln people.

But most popular Russian social networks used for personal communication or instant messaging. They are effective for contacts not for engaging campaigns.

At the same time average Russian blogger and opinion leader (internet-savvy, highly educated middle class consumer) is generally more critical and suspicious of any information, than its average western user, as well as able to obtain information by himself. Expert opinions usually placed on Internet forums, discussion boards and blogs (over 6 mln). Most preferable blog hosting platform for this blogger – is LiveJournal.Com.

Internet campaigns in general are more effective in Russia as a part of offline complex marketing campaigns.

More popular and long live communities in Runet are those which have continuation in real life (offline regular meetings on Auto.ru etc.)

Microblogging in Runet is not as popular as in global Internet due to poor ability in expression – 140 characters are available for Latin symbols and only 70 – for Cyrillics. Russians need more space to express their thoughts!)

The more localization of internet-campaigning – the better. Global Google looses to its competitor Yandex due to localization – services that appeal to particular Russian consumers interest (for instance Yandex-guru consumer advisory feature or Moscow traffic online navigation feature etc.).

So, if you are going to come to Russian online market, or are already present here – try to use at least several independent information source and communication tools, to know more how you could be more local and effective here providing your global company’s strategy.