As a team of the blog BigPicture.ru sells Longrida for 1 000 000 views and opens an advertising agency

We asked our partners BigPicture.ru how they improve their work.
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The founder of the blog, Sergey Baryshnikov, and the Director of Development, Alexander Kuksa, described how they created their system instead of Google Analytics, learned how to sell Longrida for 160,000 characters, and founded the advertising agency SALO.

What did they talk about with Sergey Baryshnikov and Alexander Kuksa:

• BigPicture.ru has created its analytics system. Google Analytics does not provide all the answers you need.
• How do users behave from desktop and mobile? What is read on weekdays and weekends?
• Native advertising. BigPicture.ru created an ad for KIA of 160,000 characters, which scored 700,000 views.
• What to do if there is no sales from advertising. A story about pain, customers and a registration form for 20 fields.
• Advertising agency. Build 10–20 partner businesses around BigPicture.ru and have a share in them. Abandon "muddy" customers.
• Dismiss the editors. They worked in "Lenta.ru," and "Ria", but the depresnyak does not go out of my head.
• Sell ​​longrid - the achievement of the year.

Tell us how the editorial work is built?

Sergey Baryshnikov: We are sitting in a co-working workstation in Neskuchny Garden. There we have 7 people. Several guys are engaged in sales, marketing and public relations. Here is Nikita's photo editor. Two more girls who are engaged in content: write, translate, interview and go to the scene. Masha Plotnikova, our full-time photographer, is the best street photographer in the country and, perhaps, one of the best sports photographers. In total, in 2015 we have worked with hundreds of photographers, both Russian and foreign.



How do you plan publishing, who comes up with the topics?

S. B.: We do not have a plan of publications with certain topics. There is a number plan - 15 publications should go on weekdays, 10. Weekend we tried to do 10 publications on weekdays, but realized that the audience is ready to read more, but 20 already not. Therefore, 15.

Released post about Instagram-profiles of golden youth , and he rushing. We do not include anything, let them collect traffic. And if one post did not go, the second post did not go - I can publish at least every half hour. We have a reserve for 300-400 posts, I can include as many as you like.



How do you analyze posts?

Alexander Kuksa: We tried different tools. Google Analytics is good, but does not give a complete picture in all sections. We have created our own tool "Monitor". The post in the first hour scored a certain number of views, how does he then live for 24 hours? Looking up to the minute in the section, what were his peaks, rises, when he began to climb.

S. B.: If the post went in the first hour and collects a certain amount of traffic, we begin to push it.







How much do you put on Facebook?

S. B.: For three months, we don’t invest at all, zero. Enough of this story. In the summer and fall, they invested between $ 500 and $ 1000, but I did not find a clear relationship. We have the same amount of traffic. What with the money that without.







You have a lot of traffic from Facebook, judging by Similarweb, but there are few likes and reposts in groups. How so?

. .: Groups are not the main channel of entry in modern media. Brooks a lot. It used to be: I hung it up on the main post, everyone snapped it up, left each other in ICQ - everyone is happy. Now channels an incredible amount. Starting from direct messages in WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype, Facebook personal chat, mail, social networks. In social networks, some kind of public can be picked up, and someone can repost to the wall directly from the site and from there go and go along the chain. We are analyzing this analytics in order to understand how all these streams converge and how to work with them correctly.

It so happens that publications fly first in the top queries of Google and Yandex. News theme. DiCaprio was with a post about "Survivor" - right there in the tops of Google and Yandex. Apparently, the right title picked up (we can). I went to traffic search and then it picked up social networks. From the very beginning, this is difficult to predict, so we look, went, did not go, and adjust actions.







Tell us more about the sources of traffic. What data look and how to detail them?

. .: We measure the total amount of traffic per post. Further we look at each channel, and in dynamics. We see a picture: this is how Facebook’s situation began to develop, so on Vkontakte, so on Twitter. We look at all referral transitions that someone picked up somewhere, we track.

We are actively studying Telegram, - now it is not very clear to us. On the one hand, it is very effective: how many I sent, I received so much. But it's hard to drag people there. Telegram-bot - a specific thing. It grows, confidently gaining subscribers. But there is no explosive growth.

We do not fully understand that with search traffic. Google's personalized edition distorts the picture of the world. One person is given an article in the top, and the other is not. We are closely following the personalized issue. Sometimes Serega asks for a request to be scored by the entire editors and looks at what is being issued at whom.

We want to understand how users of desktops and mobile devices behave. This is very important, these are completely different types of behavior. On the wide screen, you read slowly, on the mobile quickly scroll through. We want to understand how traffic is collected from the phone and from the desktop, how it behaves and where it is further forwarded. Such a big task that is practically implemented.







What are the results about the behavior of visitors from the desktop and mobile?

AK: By mobile, the most understandable thing is that people are browsing one or a bit more pages. They come to the site on the subway, looked, looked, and then ran. At the same time, recurrence is much higher.

We launched the application under Android, it will still be under iOS and Windows, just in case. Let's see how they will be correlated.

Desktop users have a viewing depth of 2.3-2.5 pages.







How do you use this data?

AK: We think. We have no analytics department. For example, we changed the posting time. With Sergei figured out how to read our articles depending on the time of day. Saw. That on weekdays one is a picture of consumption, on weekends another. Although the same people.

S. B.: After 20:00 - women. Day and weekdays - social: prisons, stalls, in the morning - children and food. In the morning, on weekends, it is necessary to feed with absolutely specific content that definitely won't work on weekdays. If you post breakfasts or something childish like “mimimi” - it will, but animals do nothing at all.

On weekends, in no case should you include social. Is that only on Sunday evening, but it is, where a lot of text, so that people can read before bedtime. Saturday - in general, you can plump and do nothing.







Tell us about native advertising and advertising in general. How do you work with clients and authors?

AK: I have little faith in modern media advertising. I believe, in principle, in RTB, targeted pieces, programmatic buying, because you need to get the right people, no matter what resource. Strong players remained: large publishing houses. There are advertisers for whom the brand of the magazine in which they will stand is important. And everything else falls in a heap with RTB Yandex, Google Adsense, etc. - I do not really believe in them in terms of content monetization. I really believe, just in the native formats. They do not necessarily look like the main content of the site. We are trying to pull an interesting story, first of all, to benefit the reader so that he can carry out something for himself. From this is the benefit of the advertiser. This is what we call the native format.



How do you do native advertising on Bigpicch?

AK: Depending on the money and what we want to achieve in the end. Every time we sit down with the advertiser and think how to make it more interesting. There was a story with adidas. Talk about what their classroom products are not interesting, everyone already knows. Adidas has the option of exclusive access to the Russian national football team. We offered to go and take off one day in the life of the national team. In this story, we’ll tell you that adidas launches new shoes. We are not trying to disguise that this is an advertisement. And we say: "If it were not for adidas, we just did not do it."







S. B.: I communicate with football journalists and they still ask: “How did you get there !? I have been working in the sport press for 20 years, the maximum I could get to is a regular press. And you are some kind of Bigpikcha and all day long with the Russian national team! ” For them, this is exclusive.

. .: Another story with KIA. We have long discussed with them that we need to do something global. Were not tied to the terms. The idea originated on level ground. We learned that a husband from America comes to one of our former employees to get acquainted with the mother-in-law. They offered him to drive a KIA car. For a whole month he traveled on this car in Moscow and talked about impressions. He wrote the coolest text and mentioned KIA literally 2-3 times. Big Longrid: how I walked, how I got to Auchan, how I was in the bath, about going to the country, how I drank with the Russians.

And there everything is so cool, it’s pretty cool, and just mentioned a couple of times that the KIA is a cool car. The effect was - more than 150-160 thousand readings only here. This content was taken away by everyone who could, with and without links: Yaplakal, Pikabu, Ekabu. Even Goblin gave a link. In total, it was 600–700 thousand people who looked together.







S. B.: 160 thousand characters - the reading time is more than 10 minutes. All when they see: Longrid, 10 minutes - yes, you fucked 160 thousand! In reality, people read to the end, because the story is bombing.

AK: In Longrid we do not show any other advertising. People really read. And, if you casually mention any brand, it is vividly remembered.



How do you report to advertisers, what do you think the results? There are a lot of controversies about this: whether there are sales or not.

AK: We recently sat with a friend and coolly lined up a sales funnel. He showed on his fingers that 1,000 people were coming and only 20 bought something. If you count in the moment, then I would be upset, why so little? And then I looked at the funnel. So they signed up, found something, looked for it, bought it. He looks at the statistics and sees that 3 times the overlap comes from the money invested in advertising. Just not everyone can count on. Everyone wants: “I will give 50 thousand. 1000 transitions, 5 purchases - everything is bad. " And let's see how many people have registered, new leads came or did not come, did you “catch up” with their retargeting? Plus, the story is connected with the fact that about the product, in principle, have learned Everybody has to have a long explanatory work.

It does not always work out to sell something in the moment. Although in 2016 we are launching classifiers that help in such situations. If you do not have a lot of money, but a very big desire to sell something - we came up with a scheme that we are launching tomorrow or the day after. Get up with a lot, a good offer. Just for impulse purchases. You can check whether your product is ready to buy or not.

S. B.: There are practically no advertisers from the top 20 who would not work with us yet. We let through a huge stream of brands.



How do you work with a customer when there is no sales?

. .: 70% of the time is spent explaining to the client what he should wait for and what he should not.

For example, PR history. A large brand has come, it is clear that no sales will be measured at the moment. There are stories, ship them a cloud of leads, contacts. And they: “Yes, we have transferred somewhere something, someone, can process”. We are uploading to Google Analytics: the post has read 50 thousand people, the average reading time is 3.5 minutes, the transitions are 10 thousand. "Oh, everything triples, thanks, everything is super." This is such a light story about PR.

In marketing and sales, you have to explain that the traffic that comes to you goes nowhere due to the fact that the form does not work on the site. Or registration form of 20 fields! Or there is no mobile version, and this is 40% of the traffic - a person enters and immediately closes. They: "We never thought about it." The whole 2015 passed under the flag of this pain, when the market is simply not ready to work in digital, not ready to work with traffic. Therefore, we regularly study this story with those with whom we have been cooperating for a long time.

And they already come to us with their problems "show, tell." We sat down, thought and decided to wrap up this story even deeper.







S. B .: We organized the SALO agency. We started to come to existing companies with the task of not just advertising something, but introducing processes. To organize work with clients, correct PR, correct marketing.



So you are trying to put them on subscription?

AK: In this case, we subscribe to the result. Let's work, but only if we can change your internal processes so that it works. If so, we agree, but in return we want a portion of the income.







How does it work in practice?

S. B.: There is coworking "Workstation". There is one in Neskuchny Garden, the other on Artplay. Occupancy 100%. Dudes open the largest coworking in Russia on the Dmitrovskaya metro, in just two weeks. 1800 meters, this is no longer in Russia. There all the guys are busy with the processes. They know how to put tables, what kind of internet to hold, etc. Marketing and PR are not their strongest trait. We have started, we are committed to attract people into coworking. Dudes are responsible for the technical part, and we are for the whole driving. Up until residents have eaten Lays chips, used our courier service and got a discount in local taverns as residents.







. .: There are really a lot of requests. A small or medium business comes in and says: “I don’t have enough money to support my marketing department. And if there is, I'm still like a hole in a hole and I don’t understand what to do. I was told to launch an advertising campaign - customers will come themselves. " We help solve this pain.



What media format will you do?

AK: Now we are not ready to tell the details, but for each business its own strategy. We understood how to solve the problem of classical media when you publish the article “10 reasons to go to Spain”, it died down on the main one and left. We figured out how a person would go through a whole chain with exactly the materials that he should see to make a decision. The first case will show in the spring.

S. B.:: The main task is to build 10–20 partner businesses around Bigpiccci that we could help with - traffic, expertise, people. On the other hand, have a share in them. We really want to work with large advertisers and large special projects, but to refuse all low-marginal and hemorrhoid. If there is a client with specific goals and understanding of the work, we will make for him the necessary advertising project: a special project, native advertising and so on. With the "muddy" we will most likely part. Such a client came and it is clear that he is “muddy”, but he has 300 thousand rubles. You struggle all the time with this contradiction - to take money and do something, or to refuse, because there will be many problems. We decided to refuse and send this traffic to our projects.



What is the percentage of muddy and non-muddy clients?

. .: 20–30% with clear expectations and a specific problem. Usually they understand how to solve problems without Bigpikchi. 10% - complete insanity, there is no sense to fight.



What is their main problem?

. .: The main problem is high expectations. These are people who only master the Internet. Previously, it was possible to come to the Internet, start advertising and you went to business, because there was an empty field. I recently analyzed the cost of advertising in the context of some queries. My eyes on my forehead climbed. People pay $ 100–200 per click. There is fierce competition, and for many people the approach is: “I’ll get something, and how it goes,” but it’s not. Or they say: “Your Internet is crap, nothing works,” but in fact they simply do not know how. It is important to reveal this nuance and immediately explain to a person that one should not wait for the heavens to open.

S. B.: First you need to understand whether it is worth explaining to a person or not. Sometimes no chance.

. .: But it’s cool when you defend your position, explain everything to the client and he comes back after 3 months, six months later, and he also wants. Apparently, he went wrong, and he realized that we didn’t just take his money, broke it, and left it. In 2016, we have 60% - repeat orders. People come back because they understand that smart things are said here, they share expertise.







Tell us what is the interaction in the editorial?

S. B .: We worked in Slack for half a year, but we scored on it after we changed the entire wording ... Yes, we replaced the entire wording, in December.



Why have you replaced the editors ?!

S. B.: I really dislike working with depressed people. Now there is such a stratum of people from journalism ... well, in short, the creative humanities. They are depressed on some topic all the time. Yes, people are professionals, they worked in "Lenta.ru" and "Ria", but depressed does not go out of my head.



AK: Have you seen the profile of actress Gorbacheva on Instagram ? She had a good sketch on the subject. "In winter, Elsa contracted tune-ups." The main thing - do not get infected!







Does this affect their work?

S. B.: On everything! On me, on my family, because they fucking start working. When I wake up and see my employee on Twitter that she wanted to go out the window at night! Well, what can I talk to her about the next day ?! I'm starting to feel sad about it. I worked on content for 5 years myself, and when we picked up the editors from people who worked in the federal media, I realized: on the one hand, they know and know me more and more, but, on the other hand, many have problems in their heads. Which are treated or not. We still have people who are being treated and who somehow switched to our wave. We said goodbye to the others and took in their place people who are ready to move the Bigpikchu forward. We need to grow.



What is the coolest thing you have done over the past year as a media platform?

S. B .: It seems to me that we gave a second life to the Longrid in RuNet. Because they began to put a cross: difficult to implement, are not sold, the audience is not needed, they are not read from mobile phones. But our case studies confirm that even posts with advertising elements read 150-200 thousand people and distribute them over the network. The main thing is that when you come to advertisers with them, it looks like a new format! This is interesting for them, they are tired of all these advertising posts, mediyka. They need something new. Therefore, they look at longrids with interest and buy.