Is there PR-life outside Moscow? – Yes, Newton PR&Communications says

The PR-agency «Newton PR & Communications» took the sixth position in the national ranking of communications companies by the turnover level ‘2012. The results of the "RIA Rating" survey were presented on Wednesday, July 3^rd. «Newton PR & Communications» with its headquarter in Yekaterinburg and branch offices in Moscow (Russia) and Warsaw (Poland) became the only agency outside Moscow included in the TOP-10.

100 Russian PR-agencies were invited to participate in the ranking process. The final rating includes 22 of them. The survey took in attention the company’s turnover got for  PR-activities, the number of employees working on the PR-projects, and  share of the revenue per employee. As the results showed, the Russian companies included in the National rating, earned 3.8 billion rubles (over 88 million euro), which is 12% more in comparison with the previous year.

The "Rating of the communications companies by the level of earnings in 2012" will be part of an integrated national rating, which will include the financial aspect, the information activity, and the professional level of the staff.

"Despite the mixed methodology and incomplete reflection of market activity, many members of the PR-industry, the rating is a good basis for further development”, the chairman of the board of directors of the" Newton" group of companies Alex Glazyrin says. - "Newton" is one of Russia's leading communications companies, and continually improves its performance. We will participate in the further surveys of the National Rating of communication companies and plan to keep our leading position".

"Top-ten position of the “Newton PR & Communications” means that we keep moving in the right direction”, Natalia Gurova, the executive director of the agency says. “We develop actively our international cooperation, integrating new technologies and rules of the global PR-market. Our standards of work and the system of managers training are based on the modern international practice. Newton’s portfolio shows the growth of the quantity of foreign projects promoting goods in Russia and the CIS".

About

The “Newton PR & Communications” creates and implements PR-projects in Russia and CIS since 1998. In 2009 it became the  Russian representative of the global network Vivactis-Newton21, in 2010 – the “Waggener Edstrom Worldwide” network, in 2012 –  the “Partners of Promotion” network.

Brave enough to be funny?

Mistakes are the easiest way to destroy the communication from the first step.
Russia &CIS is one of the most attractive region for many large and medium business. Entering WTO, striking the crisis, unique customer’s behavior make this market a delicious apple pie. From the other hand, Russian tourists are easy meat abroad. And of course, first positive marketing ideas with signboards and menu in Russian worked very good . Small and rude texts mistakes seemed charming to naïve tourist eye.  But those blessed times passed over.  Now literacy is one of the marks of quality.

Passion for stories

It's common knowledge that journalists like stories. The funniest thing in all these modern means of communications is that [let's say] some journalists don't like to create their own stories and prefer to get something 'ready-to-print'. I don't know why it happens. When I used to be the journalist myself, I had a passion for story-seeking, matching and comparing facts, building the context which made my articles bright. Today it looks like storytelling becomes a task for PR-specialists. I consider it to be a good way to build a good PR. But you can judge for yourselves.
Once one of my clients decided to make a charity action. So he bought the violin made by famous master. Honestly, that was a really old instrument, and surely it was very expensive.

Goals, objectives and principles of social networking

Typically, is social media goal setting and objectives planning are similar to the general principles of PR-planning: reputation KPIs, audience coverage, the wording of key points of communication. Further objectives tree is constructed, the audience is segmented by quality groups, messages for each of them are written. So you start working and developing effective projects and actions on the best channels of communication. I prefer to create a prototype of the communication model and test on a focus group, adjust it if necessary, get a budget and start an implementation. Coverage of the tasks of social networks commensurate with their abilities - from selling apples to crisis communications. You can even conduct case studies, test product and choose the chief for your transportation department. And the principles of communications will meet these challenges. But it’s very important to conform to generally accepted norms of behaviour. Don’t be rude, don’t continue senseless debates, don’t even try to start censorship on your blog. Also don’t lie. Please.  It’s rather better to be positive, non-intrusive, interesting, original  erudite. Remember that you are a storyteller. A good story told in time to the right person, can enter the company name in the history of the market.

On-line ecology

On-line environmental friendliness is very important. It is very sad to see the projects’ profiles, rapidly and successfully carried out, and then abandoned at the mercy of spammers and bots. It is clear that qualitatively promoted site with the high attendance and popularity is very nice meal for commercial posters. Project ends, the participants get their prizes, the company decided to stop the SMM-promotion, and after month or two of old beauty and fascinating history we have only painted graffiti wall spamming. It is rather strange as it’s very easy to close the public access to the SMM-group. This is what I call "clean up". Actually, again, nothing is original here - in real world the maintenance of cleaning office, home or city is not even a case to discuss.

Quantity and quality

The lack of quantitative/qualitative focus the audience will certainly play a cruel joke on those for whom the figures in the reports overshadow the strategic objectives of the project. For instance – one manager desperately need to show a convincing figure in the statistics of visitors to the page by the end of the month. So he begins to wreak news, comments, videos and pictures of all available profiles. Even, perhaps, fall to such a mechanism of "black PR" as bots and the "ghosts". Perhaps, at the end of the month the statistics will shine with a four-five-digit numbers. But in reality, the reputation of the company / product / project will not acquire anything new, but in very advanced cases even lose. We remember the shocking statistics from “Vkontakte”: there were 76% of noodles in a "Rollton" group, 73% in "Svyaznoy Bank,"  59% in Adidas and  37 % in Coca-Cola. Conclusions are evident.

Main mistakes of social-media managers

As the social-media is still too new trend in corporate communications, let's not talk about the "mistakes", but "failed experiments". At least, PR-effect is very long story, who knows where those missteps will lead their authors.

However, as Paul Holmes said on his lecture this April, there hasn’t appeared any fundamentally new thing during last 80 years in public relations. Generally speaking, the basis of all failures of web-PR-experiments are the same mistakes as in off-line. In my opinion, the main factors of bad luck are reluctant to listen to the audience, not understanding the difference between advertising and PR, the lack of originality and creativity, as well as unwarranted activity. As you can see, nothing new and it is typical for the Internet. Specific things - such as too long texts are too big/ small pictures, unattractive prizes for sweepstakes and confusing conditions – all this can be corrected by own or somebody’s practice. In addition, the information field on the Internet is changing rapidly, and today no one remember what exactly was so terrible on the company’s page a month ago. This is great advantage of online, but this is the main risk for you – you should always be faster, remembering that the competitors warm your back by their breath. And everybody is copying everything – or, ok we can say that the ideas are just flying on the air. So you burn three days and caught a brilliant idea, admired your "fans" and "likers", and next day after your neighbor added a couple features, and sowed in his audience. A week later, no one will remember who was the first, and the audience will become hungry for more fresh ideas. Lose the rhythm is another great risk for the PR-specialist.