In a move that illustrates the growing interest of international brands in the Russian Internet, social media analytics company Socialbakers announced that it will extend its coverage to Vkontake.ru (VK.com), Russia’s largest social network with over 50 million daily active users.
Based in the Czech Republic, Socialbakers works with brands from 99 countries to help them measure, compare and maximize the effectiveness of their presence on social networks.
The consultancy provides user-friendly visual reporting, industry benchmarking and competitive analysis on Facebook, Twitter, Goggle +, YouTube, LinkedIn and now Vkontakte. Instagram and Pinterest will be added to the list in 2014.
The minimum charge for one month of analytics on Vkontakte is $1,500. Socialbakers expects to gain about 50 new clients due to its coverage of Vkontakte.
VK Vice-President Ilya Perekopsky believes that this partnership will “help Vkontakte to attract the attention of many foreign advertisers and seriously increase the social networks’ income by increasing the budget brands allocate for their promotion in Russia.”
“From my observation, when a brand starts to dig deep within their community with the help of Socialbakers and analyze user behavior, after about six months or a year, the brand begins to spend much more money on the community’s progress on social networks,” added Mr. Perekopsky.
Socialbakers is not the first Western social media analytics and marketing service to cover Vkontakte.
This spring, HootSuite launched a Russian version of its social media management service and a Vkontake app to help marketers manage multiple networks, schedule messages, track brand mentions and analyze social media traffic.
Salesforce has announced that its Radian6 technology will cover Russia’s Vkontakte and China’s Weibo starting from Q2 2014, allowing global brands to listen to conversations and interact with millions of potential consumers from these social networks.
Sources: Socialbakers, ICT Online
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