Did you visit the main event of the year for media owners, leaders and managers of information sites in October? Since you were among our 150 participants of the XII Congress of Informational Sites, this information is a summary reminder for you! And if you missed it, use it for your health. Journalist Iryna Ryaboshtan (Media Detector) has prepared for you a series of articles with useful information for your media.
Отже, як просувати контент у гуглі, фейсбуці, ютубі та тіктоці – перший матеріал до вашої уваги.
He is convinced: if the mass media makes good content, users will independently distribute it in social networks. Instead, Senior is against investing in the development of pages in social networks to gather an audience.
“You don’t make money, you lose control over information, you don’t own it, you become an ordinary employee of Facebook,” says the president of the Innovation Media consulting company. “Get out of there and focus on your own platforms.”
UMH Group SMM team leader Mykhailo Fidchenko, in turn, says that Facebook is used somewhat differently in Europe than in Ukraine. According to him, earlier it was possible to get organic traffic from social networks for free, but now you have to invest money there to get something. In his opinion, this may be the reason for the hatred of the big media towards Facebook.
Ukrainian mass media still go to social networks. “Media Detector” collected the advice of experts from the XII Congress of Information Sites and City Portals. How to “make friends” with Google, increase traffic on Facebook, monetize YouTube and “enter” Tiktok, were advised by Artem Kolomiets, head of the SEO Webpromo department, Mykhailo Fidchenko, SMM team leader of UMH Group, Daria Iglova, content manager of Tochka, Bigmir and Fabiosa. Director of the Internet Projects Department of “SLM News” Olga Tyshchuk, Editor-in-Chief of the publication “Sport na Raioni” Halyna Maksymchuk.
How to “make friends” with Google. Recommendations from Webpromo
Head of SEO Webpromo Artem Kolomiets explained how Google sees media sites and what can be done to get the support of the search giant to promote your content. Despite the technical points, the most important thing for Google is unique content, but it also “loves” lists, headlines and media files.
“Where is our traffic hiding? Content is our bread and butter. This is all that brings us people. The livelier and better our content will be compared to our competitors, the more we will win,” he says. In addition to quality content, SEO promotion includes the technical part (quality of the resource) and links (mentions on external resources). “Google takes into account a huge number of factors and elements. What does Google pay more attention to? First of all, it is content. He doesn’t see a site the way we see it – with images, beautiful markups, moving elements. He opens the code and takes the pieces of the code – letters, numbers, signs that he can read. Only based on these signs will he form a general picture of you,” Kolomiets said.
For sites that can potentially affect the lives of users, including the media, the company has developed the concept of YMYL (“Your money is your life”), the core of which is the E-A-T page quality assessment criteria (expertise, authority and trust). According to the E-A-T factors, as Kolomiets said, the design of the text is important for Google: links to primary sources – they must be verified, truthful and of high quality; presence of pages in social networks; possibility of interaction: comments, chats, etc.; it is no less important to link materials together. Artem Kolomiets paid special attention to authors, in the case of mass media, to journalists.According to him, the value of the material of an ordinary author for Google will be lower than that of an expert. Therefore, it is important to sign materials and give links to individual pages of journalists, which should contain links to their pages in social networks and blogs, their short biographies and information about education, participation in conferences and trainings, as well as the author’s portfolio (publications).
In order to gain Google’s trust, the head of the Webpromo SEO department advises to interact with readers, because the search engine evaluates explicit (clicks, votes, comments) and implicit factors (interaction of the user with the content: did the material scroll to the end, what is the percentage of reading the text, which element of the site is visited more often press). Cooperation with leading resources, diversification of content and the right selection of social networks for its distribution can also help.
In addition, Kolomiets advises to develop a button that will return readers to the beginning of the text and to implement a news reading line so that users see the volume of the material – if it is large, readers can add it to bookmarks or send it to themselves in messengers, which Google will consider as interaction with the text . What needs to be worked on:
- elimination of technical errors;
- mobile: speed and optimization of the site for the mobile version are important;
- site loading speed – Google records how much the site, images, banners or videos are loaded. Low speed can be critical for the further promotion of the site;
- behavioral factors (interaction with readers and viewers);
- relinking Problems can happen with tags, so it is worth cleaning up unnecessary ones and developing new ones “for all occasions”. You should have a responsible person for this, instead, you should limit the ability of others to create tags. Some tags can be subscribed to so that readers receive selections.
Artem Kolomiets summarized that in 2022, sites that steal content, publish unconfirmed and unverified information, do not increase the level of trust in themselves, have a low download speed and an unoptimized mobile version may not survive.
Facebook traffic — pictures, headlines, sub-lines. Recommendations of the UMH Group
Mykhailo Fidchenko, SMM team leader of UMH Group, said that in 2022, Facebook will be a necessary media, as it is a large traffic aggregator. Especially if the media site is not yet known to anyone, social networks are a good channel to start. At the same time, he clarified that it is more difficult for mass media to promote their content than for bloggers, because posts with links have less engagement.
Despite the fact that Facebook and Instagram are the most stable platforms, Fidchenko noted, it is worth considering that users primarily use social networks for entertainment and communication.
“What people do on social networks: spend time with their friends, acquaintances – this is not the territory of the media. <…> In social networks, the most important thing to remember is that we have entered the territory of feelings. If your content does not evoke any feeling, it is not content for the social network, Fidchenko said. “You can run each post through the table and think: how emotional it is, what emotion it evokes, and decide when and where to post it, whether it should be published at all.” He sees in Facebook a perspective of development based on the preferences of the older generation. “Facebook is about the adult generation — about letters. As long as we live, Facebook will live. And platforms like tiktok will intercept the initiative, because the young generation is more about audio and visual than about letters,” explained Mykhailo Fidchenko.
Daria Iglova, content manager and social media manager of Tochka, Bigmir, Fabiosa, says that due to the increasing speed of life, the speed of surfing social networks is increasing, so users will not pay attention to “uninteresting, boring or poorly packaged content”. She noted that everything is interconnected in social networks: if the picture managed to draw attention to the post (this is a 60% success rate), users will read the headline, if it is also of interest, then they will go to the feed and, perhaps, click on the link to the material.
If you did not understand the picture in a fraction of a second, you lost. The attention of users scrolling through the feed will not be attracted by “plastic photos” from the drains or photos on a white background; images with many small details and no accents; an image of a person of a different phenotype (it is better to use photos of people similar to the target audience); popular pictures that everyone has already seen; crookedly cropped image – you need to make sure that the image is fully uploaded to Facebook, so that there is something informative and interesting inside.
In order for the post to be noticed in the Facebook feed, it is necessary to use “live photos” of a person with an obvious and understandable emotion – you can use screenshots from the video; close-up images of people or objects; hide the most interesting part of the content; if you need a photo of a celebrity, first imagine what the star looks like, and then look for such a photo; reception “before and after” (however, it is prohibited in targeted advertising); images created in Photoshop (correctly set brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity); black and white photos; a collage that “tells” a story.
In the title, Iglova recommends using numbers, quotation marks (preferably “”), long dash (—), signs (plus, colon, parentheses) – they give structure to the text, so they catch the eye better; quotes work as small spoilers; chopped phrases – short sentences or appeals; favorable comparisons; dynamics created by verbs; emotional color – more expressive adverbs and adjectives; lists and lists — create a feeling that the text contains comprehensive information in a convenient form; promises that everything will be simple and fast.
In the summary, according to Iglova, it is better to present a part of the story that can encourage the user to read the material, in particular, it can be a spoiler for intrigue, or one of the most interesting or controversial points. You can intrigue on Facebook, but be careful, because the network can punish you for it. The summary should be written in simple phrases without clericalism. In order to increase the degree of trust, it is necessary to tell as if to a friend, here you can use the pronouns “you / you / your / your”. In addition, users can always be asked to give their opinion, which will encourage them to comment and interact with the post more.
How to monetize YouTube. Recommendations of StarLightMedia
Recently, “Detector Media” published material about StarLightMedia’s YouTube channels and the ways in which this holding monetizes its content on YouTube. Director of the Internet Projects Department of “SLM News” Olga Tyschuk says that the entire commercial audience is on YouTube, so it should be developed. The main thing is to determine who is the target audience of the YouTube channel and work with engagement. Despite the popular opinion, Tyshchuk emphasizes that the number of subscribers is not the main goal, because the channel earns from views.
“I recommend looking at what else your users are watching and pushing them similar content. The less engagement you have, the less YouTube recommends you. Views often drop. Why? Engagement has fallen: people don’t comment, don’t like, don’t shout. And YouTube stops recommending it to other audiences,” she said.
Olga Tyschuk also emphasized that before publishing a video, it is necessary to truthfully answer the YouTube survey. If you enter the age qualification and other points incorrectly, you may get shadow banned after verification. “When content takes off from monetization, there’s no reason for YouTube to offer it for viewing: it won’t make money from it,” she explained. – Task #1 is not to post trash content and work with headlines. And people will already organically start signing up. First, you need to collect 10 thousand subscribers to enable monetization. It is important to focus on a certain audience. For example, “Facts” has a male audience, while “Windows” has a female audience. We clearly segment content on these platforms. You can segment by topic, and then you can monetize and sell to customers.”
Five YouTube trends to increase income
- Online broadcasts increase the reach of the YouTube channel. If a YouTube channel has the ability to broadcast 24/7, the platform will recommend them to the maximum number of users. Accordingly, these channels will almost always be in YouTube’s recommendations. The StarLightMedia media group does not have an information channel that speaks 24 hours a day, so for broadcasts they use news releases, imitation of streams — premieres of projects on channels, streams from the Parliament and the Cabinet, briefings, parades, etc. “The goal is not to have thousands of active users watching the stream, but maybe to have that stream push the rest of the video. People are commenting on the broadcast, views on the channel are growing,” Olha Tyschuk clarified.
- Shorts is an analogue of tiktok from YouTube, which can also be used to promote your content. According to Olga Tyschuk, these videos can be monetized: the more engagement in Shorts, the more full videos will be watched. StarLightMedia puts exclusive stories in Shorts and links to full videos, thus looping the content.
- Preview CTR is a key metric along with YouTube video engagement. CTR (click-through-rate) is the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions. Preview is a picture that should interest the user to open the video.
Olga Tyschuk recommends working with previews and making them as clickable as possible to increase engagement. Metadata — title, description, and keywords — aren’t as relevant as CTR previews, she says. However, you should not forget about them either, you should check trends, write titles, descriptions and keywords according to key queries.
- Commenting increases engagement with the broadcast and its distribution. Admins can encourage users to comment: ask questions, make polls, leave comments. To facilitate search and improve interaction, you can leave a release timeline in the comments.
- Timing: video duration affects monetization. According to Olga Tyschuk, twenty-minute videos bring in the most revenue. If it is not possible to record such long videos, let it be 5-8 minutes. Instead, 8–10 minutes monetize worse.
How to “enter” tiktok. Recommendations from the “Sports in the District” project
Halyna Maksymchuk, the editor-in-chief of the publication “Sport na Raioni”, the creator of the tiktok channel of the same name, talked about the rules of tiktok and explained how not to fall under the restrictions of the social network.
Tiktok allows you to create two types of profiles — an author account (suitable for bloggers, stars, athletes) and a business profile (suitable for companies and brands). Media can choose both options. A link to the site can be added to the business account, even if there are no subscribers; set up an autoresponder for private messages; launch targeted advertising; it also has advanced analytics (you can see a slice of where users come from; their gender; estimate how often users come in, what hours they most actively interact with the profile). Instead, you will receive regular network notifications about trends in the author’s account; you can add a link to the site only after 1000 subscribers; you can enable the “question / answer” function (it does not carry an additional semantic load and does not contribute to attracting an additional audience); analytics is there, but narrowed.
Halyna Maksymchuk says: although the average age of tiktok users in Ukraine is 25-35 years old, it is an entertaining social network, and this should be taken into account when creating content.
At the same time, Tik Tok has a large list of rules, for violation of which users can be blocked or their content deleted. They should be studied before creating your own account. Among other things, the network prohibits incitement to violence, aggressive statements and harassment, popularization of diets and weight loss methods, images of naked bodies, spam, publication of personal data, violation of intellectual property rights, misinformation, etc. At the same time, three complaints from users are enough to completely block the video.
When publishing news and materials, the media should consider that tiktok will limit the account for:
copyright infringement: publishing other people’s videos, broadcasts of concerts, films, football matches and competitions, including live broadcasts (after 1000 subscribers) from copyrighted events;
videos containing threatening content: images of wounds, blood, including dummies and “fake” demonstration of weapons. If it will be criminal news or social videos, in some cases they may be blocked even for realistic reproduction of children’s toys;
content that could cause injury: dangerous stunts, using a mobile phone while driving, etc. In most cases, such videos are not deleted, but are marked with a die “Actions performed by professionals, and repetition may lead to a threat to health”;
“duets” with videos that have violations.
Halyna Maksymchuk drew special attention to the fact that Tiktok “does not like” the topic of the Russian-Ukrainian war — it often blocks and deletes videos about events in Donbas. In particular, the tag “veteran”, which the media can prescribe in news about the war, is most often used in Tiktok about the Second World War, usually by Russian users.
In addition, for some videos or their design, the account can get into a shadow ban, although the developers deny the existence of this restriction. You can guess about the shadow ban by the drop in the coverage of the videos. Halyna advises to review the account analytics: if there is a “for you/recommendations” item in the traffic sources with a high percentage of impressions, everything is fine; if impressions from “following” and “your profile” sources predominate, there is a high probability that the account has been restricted.
“Secrets” of tiktok:
optimal video timing is 8–12 seconds. Maximum — 15–20 seconds. The audience is no longer watching. Although in Ukraine you can add videos up to three minutes, and in some other countries – up to 10 minutes;
text change speed and font size. If you choose a quick text change or a small font when editing a video, it will make users watch the video several times. The video will get a lot of views and recommendations – but this is not fair;
re-uploading your own videos can be beneficial – the video can go viral again and bring views. Tiktok does not respond to repeated uploads of videos. However, if the video is downloaded from the account and there is a network watermark on it, tiktok may consider it a copyright violation and send it to a shadow ban;
in the web version of tiktok, you can “snooze” the video and adjust the publication time, this function is not available in the mobile application.
Google Analytics captures transitions to the site from Tiktok, so the mass media will be able to monitor the success of their account. Halyna Maksymchuk does not advise uploading a lot of videos to a new account at once, because this can be considered spam. Instead, according to her, it is worth paying a lot of attention to hashtags.
“Hashtags are the original sieve through which the audience comes to you. If the video doesn’t have any hashtags, Tiktok’s algorithm breaks down and it doesn’t know who to show the video to. Tiktok forms a feed of recommendations based on user preferences. Sending hashtags can also be taken as spam, it’s better to enter 2-5 or create your own,” explained the editor-in-chief of the “Sport na Raioni” publication.
Photo: Getty Images, Association of Independent Regional Publishers of Ukraine, screenshots
The article was prepared by Iryna Ryaboshtan, Media Detector
