/v.levchenko-davos-2011

COMMUNICATION ON TOP FORUM Davos, Switzerland, February 2011

Benefits & Pitfalls Of Integrating Social Media Into Editorial & Publishing Workflows

Valery Levchenko, Deputy Editor in Chief, RIA Novosti

Mass Media Audience Has Changed, No Doubt • Users do not distinguish between professional media,influential bloggers and quasi-media corporate portals • Users are ready to be both recipients and creators of content • They want to be involved in news-making process • They want to influence editor choice • Technology lets everybody be a publisher

Main 2010 Trend: Integration Of Websites With The Social Media Main players in Russia and elsewhere: Twitter, Facebook Local SM in Russia: Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Moy Mir Tools that allow to increase a website's readership together with the size of the relevant group in the Social Media.

Russian Media In Social Media The most media popular in

*official Twitter stats as of 8 Feb 2011

Followers* Vesti

26 794

Forbes Russia

17 719

Vedomosti

14 453

RIA Novosti

13 763

Snob

12 322

Kommersant

10 013

Russia Today

9 785

Gazeta.ru

8 596

Delovoy Peterburg

6 445

Slon

5 072

lentaruofficial

3 134

1 kanal

2 110

Chaskor

1 515

Echo Moskvy

1 163

RIA Novosti In Twitter http://twitter.com/rianru Followers: 13 763 Average referrals per day: 3 600 Maximum referrals: 14 213 RIA Novosti Twitter: News channel plus interaction with the users

*as of 8 Feb 2011

Experimenting With Twitter Formerly

Currently

Automatic News Export: all headlines go to Twitter

Manual Moder

Outcome

Outcome • Huge flow of tweets, repelling the users • No difference from RSS • No diference from the website • No interaction

• • • •

Information carefully measured out Editor's choice news Flexibility to reword headlines and highlight multimedia content to increase conversion Opportunites for interaction: questions, requests for content and verification replies to users, polls etc.

Likeable & Discussable Topics Twitter - Laws and proposed changes to the legislation that directly affect the citizens' lives Presidential aide suggests to cancel stipends for students: 217 RTs

- International news relevant to Russians Russian tourists refuse to leave Egypt

- Twitter activity of the President and other officials and politicians Dmitry Medvedev retweets a request for help to a child: 56 RTs

- Weather, its anomalies, Acts of God - All about top stories - Tech news, gadgets - Science news - Celebrity news

Moscow, 15 December 2010. Live Coverage Of An Unsanctioned Street Gathering

The surge of public interest came at 6 pm, when according to bloggers, an attack reportedly staged by the «North Caucasians» was supposed to happen.

During that single day we received a lot of referrals directly from social networks::

9 278 referrals Vkontakte: 216 058 referrals Twitter: 38 120 referrrals Facebook:

Compare to News Yandex: 495К referrals

How Mass Media Use Social Media  to enter into new segments of the readership  to expand the circle of loyal users  to better understand the readers by analysing comments, rates, replies.  to virally distribute hyperlinks to stories

 to get user generated content to find eyewitnesses and additional material to develop news stories  to personalize news  to offer journalists creative haven

Mass Media now strive for the Reader to let them into her close circle of network friends.

A great challenge, good opportunities but also some big pitfalls

COMMUNICATION ON TOP FORUM Davos, Switzerland, February 2011

Thank you!

Valery Levchenko, Deputy Editor in Chief RIA Novosti Twitter: v_at_l Facebook: valerylev Skype: valery.levchenko