In October’08 Publishing house Kommersant in co-operation with Edelman digital Russia launched mutual social media project “Print your Money”. The print media “Kommersant Money” decided to develop content on internet for the first issue of the magazine in new 2009 year – “Money 2.0” with the help of its readers and bloggers.

The project consists of three stages:

1. Research

Before the official launch the online survey at www.kommersant.ru was conducted among readers, where they answered about their readiness to participate in “Print your Money” project. More than 80% appeared to be highly interested in “Money 2.0”.

2. Cooperation with readers

Readers vote for the media via their interest to its content, so it’s very important to know what they prefer to see in this experimental issue of the magazine. On the second stage readers sent to kommersant.ru/money2 the topics they want to read about, voted for or against appeared themes and discussed the possibility of its realization. In the middle of November the hottest of them (14 the most popular topics according to results of readers voting) were chosen for the new issue.

3. Cooperation with bloggers

The third stage is content development, where bloggers, who are the experts in specific subjects, and journalists of Kommersant will together develop the articles of chosen topics. The best materials will be published in the first in the year issue in January.

It’s not a secret that Western social media are older and much more developed. There are plenty of examples of using social media tools by companies and media for building transparent, trustworthy and mutually beneficial relations with the customers.

Russian business has also started to realize relevance of the main social media principles – listen, respond, build dialogue instead of one-way messages and engage customers in the companies’ activities.

By starting this project with Kommersant-Dengi and internet users we want to find out how SMM principles, successful overseas, correspond to our Russian realties.