On Tuesday 8^th March, International Women’s Day (http://www.internationalwomensday.com) was celebrated around the world.  Flowers or other presents were given by family, friends co-workers and by companies, National Holidays were observed, big and small events took place and women were the focus of attention (which we all like!).  There is no standard way of celebrating it and its importance varies from country to country.  In Eastern Europe and parts of Asia particularly, it is considered as a major annual event and numerous initiatives are carried out, serving as a source of inspiration for many people.  In many of the countries that form part of the Action Global network it is a Public Holiday, such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.  But, did you know that the first International Women’s Day took place on 19^th March 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland?  Over a million men and women took to the streets to campaign for women’s rights.

In fact, its origins lie slightly earlier than that, in 1908 when 15,000 women marched in New York to demand fairer treatment at work.  The following year, the first National Woman’s Day took place in the United States.  Then, in 1910 at an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, the leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany suggested the idea of an annual International Women’s Day.  This was approved and, to this day, it is still celebrated.  This year, it has taken on increased significance as it is the hundredth anniversary and countries that normally don’t do much, such as the UK, are getting in on the action.

So, what do people do?  In Bulgaria, men give flowers, or chocolates, or other presents to women, both at home and in the workplace.  Children may give their mothers flowers and usually after work people celebrate with their family and friends.  In Ukraine, it is a big Bank Holiday and at Action’s offices in Kyiv, they came up with a creative way to wish their clients and suppliers a happy Women’s Day.  Tiramisu is a very popular desert there, but the original Italian ingredients are hard to find.  Most of Action Ukraine’s client contacts are female and we sent our female clients and suppliers a box, which had a note sending them best wishes for International Women’s Day and added, “… as beautiful women, you are being sent one of the finest desserts, but to enjoy its pleasure, you have to carry out some Action….”  Underneath was the recipe for Tiramisu and all the ingredients.   Action Ukraine received many calls telling them how it had made their day!

Action Ukraine celebrates International Women's Day with clients and suppliers

In Russia, according to Action’s office in Russia, “It was perfect, the men in the office gave us beautiful flowers the day before, there were flowers everywhere and it was a sunny day.  It was like spring was beginning!”  The office sent flowers to its female clients and the day itself was a Bank Holiday.  People generally like to spend time with their families and friends but there are also a lot of big events and concerts.  At the same time, it is seen as a celebration of the past and of women today.

Slovenia, also celebrated and one of Action’s clients gave out around 20,000 chocolate bars to female customers at filling stations, with the chance to win spa weekends and other giveaways.  In Kazakhstan, just a couple of days before International Women’s Day, the first Women’s Congress of Kazakhstan took place, with prominent women from across Kazakhstan.

So what did you do for International Women’s Day?

August 31^st has (unofficially) been set as International Blog Day, an initiative of blogday.org since 2005. BlogDay is an opportunity for each blogger to recommend 5 blogs that he or she finds interesting, along with a short description and a link for each blog.

As blogs and bloggers are an integral part of how we all receive, process and use information, we wanted to pay homage to local blogs that stand out from the crowd in some our markets, and share them with you. Here are 5 blogs, by country, that our local offices reckon are worth reading (most blogs have a focus either on PR and communications, our clients’ industries, or are just plain interesting):

BAHRAIN Blogs

1. Mahmood’s Den (Political / General Interest)

2. Bint Battuta in Bahrain (Social)

3. Babbling Bahrania (General Interest)

4. Birding Bahrain (Wildlife)

5. Lost in Bahrain (Personal / Humorous)

BULGARIAN Blogs

1. Izbrano (Technology/ Gadgets)

2. Salted Lemons (Cooking)

3. Kreativen (Online Marketing & Social Media)

4. Auto Equipment (Automotive)

5. Lets Gym (Health & Sports)

CYPRUS Blogs

1. I Pellara en POLLON Logion (Financial / Politics)

2. Chrysanthos Tsouroullis (Politics / General Interest)

3. Sometimes YES Sometimes NO (Public Relations)

4. Sports Gazette (Sports)

5. Charalambos Theopemptou – Epitropos Perivallontos (Ecology / Environment)

GREECE Blogs

1. Athensville (City Life)

2. Fashion Architect (Fashion)

3. Enteka (General Interest)

4. A,mpa? (Lifestyle)

5. Iparhoume…Siniparhoume (Journalism / Society)

KUWAIT Blogs

1. 248AM (Social)

2. Frankom (General Interest)

3. Q8 Black Market (Entertainment/ Events)

4. 4th Ring Road (General Interest)

5. Some Contrast (General Interest)

KYRGYZSTAN Blogs

1. Mirsulzhan Namazaliev (Social Media, General Interest)

2. Discovering of Environment of Central Asia (Environment, Science)

3. Kloop Media (General Interest, PR)

4. Bugulab (Design, Art)

5. Bektour Iskender (General Interest, Political)

LATVIA Blogs

1. Slava Se (Personal)

2. Telecommunication and IT, Juris Kaža (IT and Telecommunications)

3. Stuff-n-Style (Fashion)

4. Public Relations, Marketing, Ingars Rudzitis (PR, Marketing)

5. Ansis Egle (Tourism, Personal)

LITHUANIA Blogs

1. Dansu Dansu (Marketing & Communications)

2. Marketer.lt (Internet Marketing)

3. Uagadugu (TV News)

4. Mediana.lt (Sociology, market research)

5. Komunikacija Facebook’e (Social media news)

OMAN Blogs

1. Muscat Confidential (Current Affairs)

ROMANIA Blogs

1. Comanescu (Media)

2. Cristian Manafu (Social Media)

3. Puterea Comunicarii (Media, Communications & CSR)

4. Return to the com(m)unity (Media & Advertising)

5. PR Wave Blog (PR & Communications)

RUSSIA Blogs

1. Drugoi in Russia (Social & Political Photo/Video Blog)

2. Sergey Dolya’s Blog (Travel and Tourism)

3. IT Blog (Information Technology)

4. Medvedev in Russia (Political)

5. Mikhail Prokhorov Blog (General Interest)

SERBIA Blogs

1. Dragan Varagic (e-Business, e-Marketing, Online PR)

2. Basta Balkana (Lifestyle/ General Interest)

3. Svet Nauke (Science)

4. Veza Blog (Online Marketing)

5. Trzisno Resenje (Economy)

UAE Blogs

1. Informed Comment (Middle Eastern and Islamic Affairs)

2. Life in Dubai (Dubai Economy/ General)

3. Hellwa Fashion (Fashion & Lifestyle)

4. Something To Chew (Advertising / Design)

5. Arabian Money (Finance & Economy)

A big thank you to the contributors of this blog post: Rohan Shanker (Bahrain), Toni Stankova (Bulgaria), Dimitris Ioannides (Cyprus), Panayiotis Othonos (Cyprus), Angeliki Kiofiri (Greece), Amina Al Jarery (Kuwait), Elira Turdubaeva (Kyrgyzstan), Marija Makarevicha (Latvia), Jolita Jukneviciute (Lithuania), Camelia Cristache (Romania), Ruxandra Scortea (Romania), Grigory Lugovoy (Russia), Anna Vavilova (Russia), Srdjan Crnogorac (Serbia), David Baker (Oman and UAE), Meredith Carson (UAE).

Any blogs you’d like to recommend? Add them to the comments section along with their country of origin. Happy Blog Day!

The casual and topical Russian word for rain, дождь, became a top mystery for Twitter users worldwide yesterday.

The growingly hot weather in Eastern Europe was interrupted by a rainfall in region on Tuesday, July 20th. This event lead to the Cyrillic word “дождь”, which means rain, to instantly become one of the top Twitter trending topics. Every minute, 10+ tweets containing the word would appear. This is the first time when a Cyrillic word has been featured in Twitter’s trending topics.

Twitter Trending Topics Worldwide - 20 July 2010

As a result, Twitter’s English-speaking audience had an overwhelming interest for the unknown word, which resulted in rumors and funny guesses by more than 70 million users, with some tweets saying:

What is дождь?

#дождь is a time when the vodka falls from the sky and polar bears begin to walk on the red square with AK47

дождь is Putin’s new pet name

I know what is Дождь! Follow me!)

Rumors that “дождь” is a new Russian nuclear bomb or a new phone which is better than iPhone 4 had also started circulating.

By the end of the day, the word дождь had a viral flashmob-like effect in Twitter.

Even the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, posted a tweet containing the word дождь:

Translation: Just landed in Finland. Was it raining in Moscow?

Evening news on one of the central TV channels in Russia even reported on this funny case.

So why was a plain subject as the rain such a popular topic among Russian-speaking twitterers? Well with so many people being as exhausted by the unusually hot weather, they were so ecstatic to see some rain coming to cool things down and so started to instantly tweet about it as soon as the first rain drops hit the ground. And with more than 200,000 Russian-speaking Twitter users tweeting about it at the same time, it made the other 69 million and 700,000 Twitter users take notice.

Small and medium Russian companies are paying more and more attention to opportunities delivered by Web 2.0 technologies, as shown by research on Russian executives’ interaction with customers through social media.

According to this online research conducted by Rostexpo among 99 Russian executives in October ‘09, online networking is attracting the attention of more and more executives and owners of small and medium companies in Russia.

86% of participants implement Web 2.0 tools for the promotion of their products and services.  Only 4% say that they do not use them and are not going to in the future. The majority of the participants were female 20-29 years old, most of whom (61%) spend less than 3 hours a week on digital PR.

63% of respondents believe that digital PR is an effective way of promoting their products, but only 30% stated that they have signed agreements with partners found from social media.

What are the most popular social media among Russian executives? The leading position (78%) was taken by Vkontakte, followed by Twitter (61%), Blogi (59%), YouTube (58%), Livejournal (55%), Facebook (52%), various forums (47%), Odnoklassniki (45%), LinkedIn (35%) and Flikr (26%). The full report (in Russian) can be found at the blog Social Media Marketing 2009.

The report also contains the following discussions on the findings. If Russian social network Vkontakte is the recognized leader, with more than 50 million registered users, then Twitter is not as popular as in Western countries. According to Yandex, a Russian search-engine, the amount of Russian Twitter accounts does not exceed 40,000.

It important to mention here that the research was conducted online among social media participants, including Twitter users, so its findings are not conclusive, as they are based on the answers of executives already present in social media. Do you agree with the findings of this research? Add your comment to let us know.

Nations differ. So, obviously, bloggers will differ between nations as well. Let’s see, then who is the “Russian blogger”?

According to “Russian Blogosphere” research conducted by the leading Russian Internet company Yandex, the average Russian blogger is an inhabitant of a big city. A typical Russian blogger is a 22-year-old woman from Moscow or Saint-Petersburg, with 13 mutual online-friends, who participates in 10 online communities at liveinternet.ru or blogs.mail.ru.

Though Liveinternet.ru and Blogs.mail.ru are the most popular blog sites, they are not the most influential. Companies aiming to launch their online PR campaigns usually focus on livejournal.com, which is popular among politicians, businessmen, professionals, managers, journalists, etc. Posts from this blog site are often quoted by print media. Livejournal.com’s average user is a 26-year-old female, interested in sports, internal and international politics, and business.

Every day, Russian bloggers leave some 1 000 000 messages, among them 300 000 posts and 700 000 comments. 26% of Russian bloggers publish only posts, 21% only comments, 56% both posts and comments. The average blog post of a Russian blogger consists of 101 words.

According to the official website of the Ministry of Education now all 56,000 schools in Russia are connected to the Internet, meaning every region of Russia has access to any blog and any social media. The Russian government encourages its citizens to apply technology on a day-to-day basis. The news feed unveils the state’s initiative to develop a platform that a Home Office suite can be used, to enable submitting the necessary documents for issuing an international passport online. In fact, by 2011 all of us will have to be Internet literate.

Since much earlier than 2011 – i.e. now - we have been moving to the cyber space. A significant proof of this, is the phenomenon of social media getting extremely popular in Russia. For example, VKontakte is said to mirror Facebook. However, at the moment Facebook has introduced its Russian version, which even promotes VKontakte as a community partner. According to the research conducted by comScore, Russian Internet users are leading worldwide by the time spent on social network websites.

As individuals, we can all view things differently from each other. This notion applies just as well to clients as to their PR agencies and PR managers.  Differences of perspective, if not managed effectively, can lead to differences in understanding and, worse, difficulties in a client relationship.

However, you can learn to excel in your client relationships by ensuring you follow these eight simple rules.

1) Clearly agree scope and terms of work

That’s the start. You both should know what you are going to commit to. Get to know your client’s expectations and be sure you understand them correctly and comprehensively.

2) Meet and talk

You should know who your client is: company, your contact person/people, main spokespeople, heads of different departments, etc.  Let them know you are there for them, that you are committed to delivering great work for them.  Introduce yourself and get to know their preferences in communications and how they conduct themselves as professionals.

3) Be thorough when reviewing plans and tasks

Whether weekly or daily, be sure to talk to your client and be available to him or her when they need you.  When you engage, be thorough and pay attention to detail – the who, what, how, where, why, when of an action point. Details are also a good basis to contribute to creativity and mutual brainstorming as well as, of course, understanding.

4) Follow through quickly and with care

Don’t make your client wait for you. Be prepared always to answer any questions. If you can’t answer them straightaway, at least assure the client that you will return with the answers as soon as you can, but don’t say you don’t know even on your return call – after all, you’re their adviser!

5) Meet deadlines

In Russia we say “Seven people never wait for one” and that’s true. Try to announce real deadlines and never be late. Be punctual and always hit the deadline but, even better, exceed the client expectations by delivering ahead of the deadline.

6) Meet demands

Your client has all the rights to be demanding on the basis of the contractual agreement for the work plans and tasks. So you should always be ready to answer the question “So what are you working on now?”  Even better, your regular reports/updates to them should pre-empt any need for the client to have to ask you this in the first place.

7) Write good client reports

This is clearly a skill that can be learned, though perhaps you already have a talent to write good client reports.  What is clear is that you must recognise that report writing is an essential skill and once you must master.  Make reports comprehensive and clear.  It should be understandable for both sides and transparent for those who ultimately oversee your cooperation with the client (e.g., client CEO, board director or the head of a business unit). Make your gains visible, but don’t hide any problems – just be sure to explain them and what you have done to address them.

Be polite!

That should be easy, shouldn’t it?

Of course, there are many other tips and ways in which you as a PR manager can engage and contribute to great client relationships, but without these eight, you’re going to find it impossible to do so.

Proactivity is arguably the most necessary skill of a PR manager. Sometimes, however, it seems that working with publications in an area like education differs immensely from any other kind of media relations. In Russia, almost all chief editors of educational issues are educators themselves, most of them having a PhD or other post-graduate degree. That is the reason a press release merits only a brisk observation from them and is considered as nothing more than an advertisement containing little information. I reckon it’s a safe bet to draw a conclusion from this, that regular PR does not work in this instance.

But as a PR manager I never want – or should – sit still and give up, or take things passively. I know as a PR manager that tenacity and communication go hand-in-hand to achieve results.  So you find another address and jot another message, or take another approach, another angle.  With the right proactive approach – and determination – there’s always a much better chance of a chief editor in the education media sending a positive reply – and even with a request for more information and material, leading hopefully to a published story of interest to the publication’s readers.  I learnt early on with PR that it’s important to be proactive … and never give up.