Benefits & Pitfalls Of Integrating Social Media Into Editorial &

Publishing Workflows

Valery Levchenko,Deputy Editor in Chief,

RIA Novosti

COMMUNICATION ON TOP FORUMDavos, Switzerland, February 2011

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 WebsitesWith 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

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

The most media popular in

*official Twitter stats as of 8 Feb 2011

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

FormerlyAutomatic News Export: all headlines go to Twitter

Outcome• Huge flow of tweets, repelling the users

• No difference from RSS

• No diference from the website

• No interaction

CurrentlyManual Moder

Outcome• 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 RussiansRussian tourists refuse to leave Egypt

- Twitter activity of the President and other officials and politiciansDmitry 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 cameat 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::

Facebook: 9 278 referrals

Vkontakte: 216 058 referrals

Twitter:  38 120 referrrals 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 contentto 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 opportunitiesbut also some big pitfalls

COMMUNICATION ON TOP FORUMDavos, Switzerland, February 2011

Thank you!

Valery Levchenko,

Deputy Editor in ChiefRIA Novosti

v.levchenko@rian.ruTwitter: v_at_l

Skype: valery.levchenko +7 968 766 1777