Coca-Cola’s project Bloggers Network Adria has been implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia since 2013 and aims to assist bloggers in their professionalization. Through support to bloggers in the form of promotion of posts and education about different ways to increase the quality of their content, as well as an attractive monthly remuneration, Coca-Cola enables them to turn their hobby into a profession and continue to build a successful career in blogging.
“One of the key determinants of Coca-Cola’s socially responsible business is investment in young people and support in their personal and professional development, so we are glad that we can help young people through this project in the affirmation of the growing and increasingly important blog scene. This project also seeks to raise awareness in the business community of the many possibilities of creative collaboration with bloggers, which can bring great mutual benefit. We are extremely pleased that this year we received two and a half times more applications than last year, which is a significant indicator of the success of this project and its importance to the blogger community in the region,” said Ana Kljaić, director of communications and public relations of The Coca-Cola Company for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Bulgaria.
The winners of this year’s competition in the project Bloggers Network Adria were chosen by a panel of Coca-Cola representatives and bloggers who took part in the project over the past year. The selection criteria were the quality of the content in the blog posts, and the characteristics of the author that were evaluated in relation to their previous engagement on blog and social networks. Based on these criteria, this year’s participants in the project are Jovana Miljanović, Angelina Radulović, Aleksandra Birta Ilić and Nada Piliškić from Serbia, Ingrid Divković and Matko Matt Marenić from Croatia, Brankica Raković from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mitko Cabevski from Macedonia and Jelena Kaluđerović from Montenegro. They will continue on the path of their predecessors, some of whom have managed to professionalize themselves over the course of the project and gain additional funds from their blogs by entering into cooperation with other companies. Some bloggers have also achieved international success, such as blogger Marija Petrović from Serbia whose text was published by The Guardian.
This year the project gathers participants whose blogs are focused on active living, youth support programs, environmental protection and messages about a particular brand. In addition, in this year’s competition Coca-Cola emphasized the importance of creating video content, which encouraged the participation of bloggers who are also active on YouTube. During this year the nine selected bloggers are responsible for covering a previously agreed subject once a month, establishing good cooperation with the other project participants, responding to the various events organized by Coca-Cola, and clearly stating their participation in the project on their blogs by putting a special banner and additional sentences at the end of every sponsored text. In addition, participation in the project will also bring multiple benefits to the bloggers, such as higher visibility of their blogs through the promotion of their texts by Coca-Cola, improving the quality of content thanks to cooperation with the other bloggers in the project and monitoring the effects of their blogs, gaining experience for possible cooperation with other companies and a monthly cash compensation based on the average wage of the country the blogger comes from.
