It's time to tell you how I was Beeline for 4 years on Habré - and what I learned about Habr during that time
Yesterday there was another seminar Habra on how to make corporate blogs, and I could not stand it and told this story.
Of course, it was not quite me, but close. The fact is that a long time ago I was offered to help VimpelCom with a blog. On a bit unusual conditions. The first was the absence of any official - from here and completely tear-off posts (for some of which in the corporate segment would have boldly torn off hands and not only), and the most topical issues (Base station is bad? How else!), And in general a lot of things.
')
But I'll start from the beginning. So, Habr was then a cake - big and brutally aggressive, there were no hubs, and corporate blogs were something like a section of “dead end sludge”. For any link or advertising then almost banned. Or scored up to -50 per hour, for example. With a corporate snout in such a Kalashny series it was impossible.
And yet - Beeline, like any mobile operator, had thousands of people who were not very happy with its existence. Therefore, the first point of the strategy was rather unusual, and few could afford to repeat it. It's simple: they write only techies, and marketing for a gun shot does not fit the posts.
Techies, by the way, turned out to be absolutely awesome. Only they wanted to spit on Habr, by and large. As an everywhere.
The first main question is why do you need a mobile operator? Clearly, PR and all things, but - why? The answer is very simple: in fact, there are not so many places where the PPSOS may seem good or thought out. He has everything just like a sysadmin or a plumber - they remember only when something is not working. So, technical work and burrowing into the wilds of how things work and why - this is a positive contact. Interesting? Yes. Helpful? And how. Later, as the history developed, somewhere in the second year, it became clear that this was also an excellent opportunity to inform about how it generally works within the company. It is no secret that today every second corporate blog here solves the problem of HR PR - that is, finding new people or creating an image of a positive employer. The third factor - did the materials before large implementations (such as the first NFC in St. Petersburg). The plan is this: a press conference with clever words for journalists - and didactic materials for them and for ordinary people at Habré on the same day. A clear technical explanation from educational program to hardcore, what is it, removed a lot of questions and misunderstandings. Well, plus several times the task was to recruit beta testers - she, too, was perfectly solved. The authors of these posts with the "come to test" just demolished a wave of those who want.
Naturally, it all dragged out to a large coverage in social networks and, moreover, attracted the attention of journalists.
And then - complete freedom, you just have to find interesting topics and write. Such a good job in the advertising business has not been for a long time. Because, in fact, if you remove the entire routine that my company assumed, I met with the best technical experts, and they told me what they were doing.
Here it is necessary to stop a little and explain that usually engineer Habr is actually up to the bulb. As well as journalists. As well as other people who distract him from setting up a satellite post, calibrating an atmospheric laser or picking a new equipment. Moreover, journalists to such a person to let the most dangerous. Because without an understanding of what the techie says, new sensations can be born in the spirit of "The scientist raped a journalist."
So, in order for the technical specialist to write something, you need to persuade him. And even better - to make sure that he told everything, we wrote it down and made it into a post. Or that he gave us the materials, and we formulated it. Or - so that we work together for half a day, and he showed everything. In general, we most often met with unconscious knowledge and unwillingness to write anything at all.
At that moment, it became clear that my team (specifically, the Loft advertising agency, which we had long since almost for fun founded with a graduate of the city school press center Astrakhan koterina ) has awesome competence. Previously, we thought that our main story - it is completely fucking reckless in terms of PR moves. It was sometimes interesting to solve the problems of clients who required such an approach. Well, this my knowledge was constantly applied in the Mosigra. In general, I must say that Mosigra is a full advertising business in half with cognitive science. Because at first it was necessary to teach people to play board games (more precisely, restore culture), and then promote their network and production. Therefore, the experience was, and we sometimes took up the merry orders of large customers. Could afford to choose and work only with those who like.
But back to VimpelCom. After the first couple of meetings, a scene took place at the exit from the conversation. Quintessence: “Listen, you are the first contractor who generally understands what the engineer says. Moreover, he does not just understand, but asks questions. ” This was a surprise. Somehow, in my naivety, I thought that PR of technical companies is being made by adequate people. As it turned out later - no, never a techie from the agency will not be allowed directly to the customer. Because either he is not there, or he does not need an agency then.
At first, my experience with communication made itself felt: it turned out to ask the right questions. We had a common cultural code, and stories, too. Then, a little later, when we learned more and more about the specifics of the equipment, network planning, and so on, knowledge began to take shape in a single structure. It was possible to accurately compare what was connected with what and ask a question that made the engineer think hard, then get interested in himself and start digging. It was the most valuable thing, because when the engineer became interested, the material was definitely very, very good.
There were also contact people. For example, the real grandfather for Habr was the “grandfather” Vlasov, who was known almost as a communication specialist since the days of echo conferences. He and a couple more people (technical heads of departments) began to suggest topics themselves or answer questions.
Pretty quickly formed a list of rules for behavior on Habré. Here is a sample checklist:
I tried not to go into the discussion and not to show my attitude towards the company. Moreover, do not play for the operator on the operator’s side. Because you know - "when you start ordering the same brand of canned beans that the object of your development, you burn out." For all the time commented on their posts just a few times.
Now how topics were chosen. Our main contact was PR. I must say that these are simply insanely cool people: first Katya Turtseva (“steel lady”, who started as a call center operator, now she is somewhere in Boston in IT), then Nadya Ivanova (she knew how to find a common language with anyone in the company and knew exactly how to interest anyone) and Katya Lebedeva (ideally versed in technologies and knowing what to ask, person-honesty, always very carefully verifying the facts; now she is in Yandex), Lena Simkina (she is a monster of communications and " your kid "able to quickly resolve complex consistency Nia). At first, we simply raised that there is something interesting for journalists in VimpelCom, and then we started digging deeper. And even deeper. So much deeper that much of what was “dug out” became a surprise for the employees of the central office themselves. Sometimes. A common language with signalers was settled immediately after they understood that they were not a journalist.
There were, of course, difficult cases, sometimes - quite. In them, when I could not remove the information and figure out more precisely, I had to use the good old method “we will sign it with you” - the “humanitarian” text was written, which the PR suggested to sign to an expert. The expert predictably stood up and made edits, that is, in fact, rewrote everything. And, bursting with righteous anger, offered to publish it. What we wanted.
Workflow lined up like that. About once a month there was a big meeting in Beeline, experts from different directions gathered there. They told them what and how. I also often traveled around the country, and met with local experts in new cities. I'll tell you about the brightest posts to make it a little clearer.
The first post-greeting was something that we categorically did not want to publish. The fact is that without knowing the specifics of Habr, go to the resource and say “Hello, this is a hedgehog, and he will live here” is a suicidal venture. We already had an example of Sberbank, who was warmly greeted in the same post “Go back to hell”. The only natural reaction to the fact that the mobile operator appears on your social network is to report a bug. If you completely vybesilo - then adding a value judgment. After long fights, I still had to publish it this way - but I persuaded Katya to combine it with a post about a set of beta testers so that at least something useful would remain. The post came out to +59, which surprised me incredibly. The fact is that, firstly, it seemed that the entire team of TM supported him, which is why he came to the main in a few minutes, and, secondly, it was an important precedent for Habr.
Then the post “ On departure from the repair team ” was especially noted - one of the teams just took pictures of the workflow, and we came across this set of pictures. Two things happened at once. First, their leader saw it at Habré and ohrenel from various minor safety violations. Secondly, commentators ofigel on how everything is cool and “officially” and unequivocally decided that this statement, they say, does not happen so purely in the real world.
Then, quite suddenly, Vlasov decided to answer a couple of frequent questions about SIM cards. It turned out an epochal post about the processor, memory and file system of the chip. At the same time, people tried to write simply about their directions - either Blackberry, or television. We looked at how Habr responded, and learned how to do it, and how not to.
It was very hard to push a post about the harm to base stations , but in the end it did. He was read in a crowd by lawyers, PR managers, and security officers (most likely they were them).
In the corporate blog a guy from Krasnodar posted a couple of photos from the flood in Krymsk, where they were allowed to re-establish communication. This was the first emergency, and the case of good journalistic work could not be missed. We caught the “liquidator” Yuri right before leaving Moscow (he came on a business trip) at a cafe in Belorusskaya and asked him what time it was. Post - in fact, his recorded direct speech (slightly processed), plus the preserved photos. What a miracle this filter has gone through is just happiness. A less adequate company simply would not have missed "as if something happened." It seems that PR also dragged himself from the fact that you can tell such things. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Beeline has traditionally strong network planning, and here they gave channels to other operators. Oh, yes, by the way, when we began to delve into the network architecture, a whole series of posts was born from local things to the level of highways. Feelings - as if talking to the creators of the Assembler.
Then we found contacts of specialists who live and work in the Far North, in the Far East and in other interesting places. There was a whole cycle of stories about communication in the fields and distant plants. Here is the first . It was pretty darn interesting to call up these “wild” places and listen through the hard noise crackling and double satellite delay, what is there and how. Very fascinated photos: the base station on the truck under the ice fell, then the snow should be knocked down with a broom from a plate. Of course, the guys, unlike Moscow engineers, somehow filtering the bazaar, told everything as it is, denoting who exactly is a deer and in what situation. We learned a lot about contractors, suppliers and equipment features. Well, at the same time a couple of tender marketing. All this got into the posts in the form of equivocation and hints, please note. Therefore, when you read something like “a supplier several times surprised” in a corporate blog - you know, this is “we were fucking awkward from what they were doing”.
At this point, we started to find out what sustainable systems generally make and how the network is developing. First, a professional paranoid professional came out to us - a person who counts the company's money and knows the theory of probability. Here is his post . Dream job is simple. Almost immediately we met the most important thing in network planning - banderass . It was just a gyporn .
In parallel, we went on a visit with Katya Turtseva to Okhlobystin. Who doubted that he was he, do not doubt. The story is that he registered on Habré on the road, very early in the morning before the shooting, and for the first time indicated the mail gmail.ru instead of gmail.com. So his main nickname was occupied by himself. I immediately sent a second invite, he did everything right and published a post (we made it up in advance, as well as for other specialists). But then the shooting began, and Ivan could not answer for a long time. We called his assistants, and they said - no, now the episode is over, then it will come to you. Get away, fucking bloggers. In general, the post, of course, was a hurricane, but I firmly remembered - do not need such people on Habr. The engineers are theirs, the rest are not.
By this year, we gained experience and knew well what worked on Habré and what did not. An important thing happened in the middle of the project. I asked TM to fix the statistics of post views for the author to see (then no one knew how many people read the post - it was only in corporate statistics). Habr took it and opened it for everyone - this is the same eye icon at the bottom of the post with a view counter. With this eye, another great story - thanks to the quick update of the statistics, it became possible to navigate not by rating growth, but by views. This made it possible to put quick tests.
Here, for example, small things that helped raise posts:
In general, the exp halt the sea.
At the same time, the second post-catastrophe about flooding in the Far East came out. How they worked there is just a fairy tale. Here we found both photographs in the reports, and made a chronicle on the working records of the teams, and were able to figure out who did what. The magic grandfather, who was not left without a connection in the village with the water around, proved to me personally that not all cellular operators are evil reptiles. His awesome quote, by the way, then sold out on press releases.
Or here one of the first posts on Habré tales founded a new genre. I must say that there were twice as many tales, and there was a very, very hardcore sort of like a girl calling a call center and asking her to hand over the phone and the name of the installer, who came in May, so that she could congratulate the newly made father. But most of them had to be removed - somewhere the security guards twisted their fingers at their heads, somewhere the lawyers were stunned (not the right word) from reality, but somewhere the PR decided that well, fuck it. Even with our crazy approach - well, fuck it.
There is another new genre for Habr - FAQ, here is the first such post . Then there were more, but this one became significant in terms of coolness. The main thing is to find questions, the answers to which are simply nowhere to google.
During this period, the workflow and strategy in general have settled down. A new author came out, got a mountain of pluses and an invite, called for the next one. In the comments we collected interesting questions and scattered through the PR of the company. Plus, PR gave us all of its sources, and we knew what was going on inside. The post was prepared for about three weeks: the material itself was either verbally filmed from the speaker (and then turned into a post), or was written by the specialist himself, and was shown to us. Then the engineer quietly dragged on how the official language could be replaced with human language. But colleagues convinced him that this was necessary, and everything went smoothly. The post was finally agreed (we very carefully insisted on checking the facts and iron responsibility for the bazaar, so PR checked the post with someone else in the subject), a lawyer (if necessary), a security officer - and forward. By the way, they cut 10 percent of the post every time. Noticing the trend, we began to write more hopelessly and frankly, and the security guards (it seems they were them) each time cut out the most glaring. But only one. So the blog was getting closer and closer to reality.
Now you need to tell about the comments. Engineers tried to respond to what was not needed, and not to react to what was needed. We taught very simple things. First, if they scold the operator, and not you - do not worry. Secondly, answer your questions accurately and in detail. Here the team helped a lot - the authors of other posts came and helped. Techies, by the way, really respected each other. And they were not so friendly, but they felt that they were in the same boat. A couple of times guys from Megafon and MTS came to our posts a couple of times and also helped out. “Ours”, by the way, sometimes helped them in their posts. In general, there was no competition among engineers - it was somewhere far away where tariffs were planned. It must be said, there were a dozen cases of minimum, where they worked quietly with each other at the sites, because it was necessary - if not to work, people would remain without communication. If they were competing, they wouldn’t move a finger, they would see how the subscribers of the “enemy” leave because of failures. But no, communication as such is more important. The same thing in the comments, the territory of the common cause. By the way, this is a very bright contrast compared to the blog of Mail.ru at that time, where colleagues could come to their author in the comment and start to let it go merrily.
It was also very important not to turn each post into an anti-advertising network. For example, you don’t need to do this (for example, Megaphone, one of the later posts):
The post scored, to put it mildly, not very many views (it means it was uninteresting or too official), but more importantly, those five thousand people who read it immediately saw something, generally speaking, quite the opposite. In the first comment - a solid negative. From my point of view, the post from the point of view of public relations perfectly solved one simple task: it informed me that I had to leave Megafon. This is a question of the quality of the preparation of the material and the ability to be responsible for the market.
So, for everything to be fine, comments should be viewed as a continuation of the post and work with them.
The position of the fact that we did not allow anyone, except engineers, into the blog helped us to work with the negative. “What is your fare so expensive?” - and from a certain moment the readers themselves began to defend the authors - they say, don't touch the uncle, he turns the nuts. The uncle could help a maximum with a higher priority of the ticket, but no more. On the other hand, a couple of intricate technical bugs still got - they were investigated with passion and interest on the spot.
At that moment, another serious joy happened: Beeline suddenly activated his White Paper project. Like, you have to be honest and in general. The post turned out to be strange - at first it was little read. I looked at it and thought: damn it, a huge company, admits mistakes, and I participate in all this. If only there is no release, if only there is no release.
Another couple of high-profile posts - about Yakutia and about Cambodia - ( one , two ). It was also difficult to drag Cambodia - first, the author was not from Beeline (or rather, he was already working at the European headquarters and did not submit to Russia), and second, just then the operation in Cambodia collapsed, and it wasn’t the best time for Vimpelcom there. But the experience turned out to be more important, and thanks to, again, the mega-adequacy of the PR department, which was already directly stuck on Habr, everything turned out.
PR suddenly stumbled and published a book. Naturally, the book with all posts of employees from Habr. A thick figure came out: like the bad American police beat the petty criminals in crime films. Not a telephone directory, of course, but it was quite possible. I think every author was pleased to hold such a thing in their hands. And I learned that 20-30 posts - this is a very dofig of letters, and I also thought about my book about the Mosigra. What ended - well, you probably know.
Again, back to Beeline. Here, for example, remember the stories yet. The transfer of a cell phone number is actually a very controversial thing, and another operator simply could not release it. It was necessary to sort out the topic in detail — about — which — it’s impossible to talk about, remember the surprises of the law, recall the deadline curves, recall the reluctance of small operators to cooperate ... In short, there was something else about the swamp. And most of this rake techies. Look at the post - this is the most glamorous version of what happened. Here is a beautiful givtone wrote about their routers and asked to see what happened. We agreed on the title for a couple of days, but it came out just like that, achivka . Another post about the highway with great photos from the field. We dragged him for almost three months - lawyers could not agree on the map and the status of ownership of certain lines. Here is the first post from my native Astrakhan - I remember how almost "from a foot" I broke into the director's office in the region and began to explain what I wanted. It turned out he was a former installer. Within 20 minutes we were standing on the roof of the building two blocks away, and he, brushing off his trousers and jacket (had to walk on all fours about five meters in a very dusty construction), with a glance in his eyes told about the installation. I probably will not forget for a long time how he, without hesitation, flopped in this official form into the dirt and crawled.
Well, the last posts where we helped, until the contract expired for 4 years - this is about the satellite station (this is the first one , but it’s worth reading everything from the author). A specialist is a jack of all trades, he knows everything about satellite communications. Modest. Taciturn. Information from him to pull out is unreal. Before that they tried - it was not given.Here, for the second time in my life, I applied the journalist’s reception of a “student” - he didn’t introduce himself very carefully, and he decided that I’m an intern from the company who was told about satellite communications, to put it mildly, through the ass. Then, like on rails, I told my version how it works (he took a kind of “exam” for me), he jarred, and he corrected. I wrote, standing under the snow on the roof, trying to close the snow lens at the same time with my hand. Then he got into conversation and began to poison the bikes, pointing to the place where the crow had boiled, then to where they had been raising the plate to the roof. There was a machine of memories. Well, and then showed the archive of photographs from the film. It was all just magical, for the sake of this, perhaps, I once took up the project. In the end, I felt that behind all these words is a whole life and a whole history of satellite communications in Russia.
It turned out great. Most of all, I dragged when givtone suddenly said about Mosigra, and it was filled up:
And it had a basis. For example, Mail.ru (the leader now and then by corporate rating) did an average post of 22,514 views (15,300 people by median), rating - 31.8 (by median - 25.5), Megaphone as a direct competitor of Beeline at the site - readings at 33.373 on average, the average post rating is 20.8. The median rating is only 13.5, views are 22.650 for the post (there are few posts, there is an emission with an interesting engineering post that stands out in the line — if you look for two years, then there is generally 9600 for the post and rating 9). Mosigra had 64.790 average views per post (median — 52.800 people per post), with an average rating of 97.3 (median 78). And Beeline - 51.887 views (median 40.401) with an average rating of 57 (46 for the median).
The final tips are:
To this is the correct time of publication at the moment of maximum plus of a karmometer or almost guaranteed getting into the best with getting stuck there as long as possible for the time of daily traffic peaks in Habré. Plus - the lack of corporate branding (many then bought bright pages, from which it seemed that you were somewhere on another site after Habr) and, in general, understanding that posts should be useful to the audience, and not the audience should be useful to Beeline.
Something like that.
I hope you enjoyed the extravaganza that you managed to create. We, in fact, have accumulated a whole library of engineering knowledge that would be very difficult to obtain in another way. And finally, I want to say thanks again to all those who managed to meet during this time. It was incredibly interesting.
Of course, it was not quite me, but close. The fact is that a long time ago I was offered to help VimpelCom with a blog. On a bit unusual conditions. The first was the absence of any official - from here and completely tear-off posts (for some of which in the corporate segment would have boldly torn off hands and not only), and the most topical issues (Base station is bad? How else!), And in general a lot of things.
')
But I'll start from the beginning. So, Habr was then a cake - big and brutally aggressive, there were no hubs, and corporate blogs were something like a section of “dead end sludge”. For any link or advertising then almost banned. Or scored up to -50 per hour, for example. With a corporate snout in such a Kalashny series it was impossible.
And yet - Beeline, like any mobile operator, had thousands of people who were not very happy with its existence. Therefore, the first point of the strategy was rather unusual, and few could afford to repeat it. It's simple: they write only techies, and marketing for a gun shot does not fit the posts.
Techies, by the way, turned out to be absolutely awesome. Only they wanted to spit on Habr, by and large. As an everywhere.
The first main question is why do you need a mobile operator? Clearly, PR and all things, but - why? The answer is very simple: in fact, there are not so many places where the PPSOS may seem good or thought out. He has everything just like a sysadmin or a plumber - they remember only when something is not working. So, technical work and burrowing into the wilds of how things work and why - this is a positive contact. Interesting? Yes. Helpful? And how. Later, as the history developed, somewhere in the second year, it became clear that this was also an excellent opportunity to inform about how it generally works within the company. It is no secret that today every second corporate blog here solves the problem of HR PR - that is, finding new people or creating an image of a positive employer. The third factor - did the materials before large implementations (such as the first NFC in St. Petersburg). The plan is this: a press conference with clever words for journalists - and didactic materials for them and for ordinary people at Habré on the same day. A clear technical explanation from educational program to hardcore, what is it, removed a lot of questions and misunderstandings. Well, plus several times the task was to recruit beta testers - she, too, was perfectly solved. The authors of these posts with the "come to test" just demolished a wave of those who want.
Naturally, it all dragged out to a large coverage in social networks and, moreover, attracted the attention of journalists.
And then - complete freedom, you just have to find interesting topics and write. Such a good job in the advertising business has not been for a long time. Because, in fact, if you remove the entire routine that my company assumed, I met with the best technical experts, and they told me what they were doing.
Here it is necessary to stop a little and explain that usually engineer Habr is actually up to the bulb. As well as journalists. As well as other people who distract him from setting up a satellite post, calibrating an atmospheric laser or picking a new equipment. Moreover, journalists to such a person to let the most dangerous. Because without an understanding of what the techie says, new sensations can be born in the spirit of "The scientist raped a journalist."
So, in order for the technical specialist to write something, you need to persuade him. And even better - to make sure that he told everything, we wrote it down and made it into a post. Or that he gave us the materials, and we formulated it. Or - so that we work together for half a day, and he showed everything. In general, we most often met with unconscious knowledge and unwillingness to write anything at all.
At that moment, it became clear that my team (specifically, the Loft advertising agency, which we had long since almost for fun founded with a graduate of the city school press center Astrakhan koterina ) has awesome competence. Previously, we thought that our main story - it is completely fucking reckless in terms of PR moves. It was sometimes interesting to solve the problems of clients who required such an approach. Well, this my knowledge was constantly applied in the Mosigra. In general, I must say that Mosigra is a full advertising business in half with cognitive science. Because at first it was necessary to teach people to play board games (more precisely, restore culture), and then promote their network and production. Therefore, the experience was, and we sometimes took up the merry orders of large customers. Could afford to choose and work only with those who like.
But back to VimpelCom. After the first couple of meetings, a scene took place at the exit from the conversation. Quintessence: “Listen, you are the first contractor who generally understands what the engineer says. Moreover, he does not just understand, but asks questions. ” This was a surprise. Somehow, in my naivety, I thought that PR of technical companies is being made by adequate people. As it turned out later - no, never a techie from the agency will not be allowed directly to the customer. Because either he is not there, or he does not need an agency then.
At first, my experience with communication made itself felt: it turned out to ask the right questions. We had a common cultural code, and stories, too. Then, a little later, when we learned more and more about the specifics of the equipment, network planning, and so on, knowledge began to take shape in a single structure. It was possible to accurately compare what was connected with what and ask a question that made the engineer think hard, then get interested in himself and start digging. It was the most valuable thing, because when the engineer became interested, the material was definitely very, very good.
There were also contact people. For example, the real grandfather for Habr was the “grandfather” Vlasov, who was known almost as a communication specialist since the days of echo conferences. He and a couple more people (technical heads of departments) began to suggest topics themselves or answer questions.
Pretty quickly formed a list of rules for behavior on Habré. Here is a sample checklist:
- The post is written only by someone who has a direct technical relationship to the topic. If the post was collected by several employees - publishes the one who can most accurately answer questions.
- Each employee must have at the time of post publication an exact position in the profile (we had a couple of security guards, they wrote something neutral, like a manager, plus some after a week they removed the position). This is necessary so that the person commenting on the post knows exactly who he is talking to.
- After posting 4 hours, the author is in touch to quickly respond to comments. This is the time for communication PR, if the question will concern the policy of the company. Answering questions about the company as a whole can only be done by clarifying with the public relations whether it is not blurted out anything (Beeline is a joint-stock company, and any accidentally issued insider information can be an unpleasant incident).
- No one ever speaks on behalf of the company, only on his own.
- Comments that are not addressed directly to the author can be skipped: usually people try to turn commenting into a dialogue with the audience. In our case, it was important that the dialogue went between the readers.
I tried not to go into the discussion and not to show my attitude towards the company. Moreover, do not play for the operator on the operator’s side. Because you know - "when you start ordering the same brand of canned beans that the object of your development, you burn out." For all the time commented on their posts just a few times.
Now how topics were chosen. Our main contact was PR. I must say that these are simply insanely cool people: first Katya Turtseva (“steel lady”, who started as a call center operator, now she is somewhere in Boston in IT), then Nadya Ivanova (she knew how to find a common language with anyone in the company and knew exactly how to interest anyone) and Katya Lebedeva (ideally versed in technologies and knowing what to ask, person-honesty, always very carefully verifying the facts; now she is in Yandex), Lena Simkina (she is a monster of communications and " your kid "able to quickly resolve complex consistency Nia). At first, we simply raised that there is something interesting for journalists in VimpelCom, and then we started digging deeper. And even deeper. So much deeper that much of what was “dug out” became a surprise for the employees of the central office themselves. Sometimes. A common language with signalers was settled immediately after they understood that they were not a journalist.
There were, of course, difficult cases, sometimes - quite. In them, when I could not remove the information and figure out more precisely, I had to use the good old method “we will sign it with you” - the “humanitarian” text was written, which the PR suggested to sign to an expert. The expert predictably stood up and made edits, that is, in fact, rewrote everything. And, bursting with righteous anger, offered to publish it. What we wanted.
Workflow lined up like that. About once a month there was a big meeting in Beeline, experts from different directions gathered there. They told them what and how. I also often traveled around the country, and met with local experts in new cities. I'll tell you about the brightest posts to make it a little clearer.
The first post-greeting was something that we categorically did not want to publish. The fact is that without knowing the specifics of Habr, go to the resource and say “Hello, this is a hedgehog, and he will live here” is a suicidal venture. We already had an example of Sberbank, who was warmly greeted in the same post “Go back to hell”. The only natural reaction to the fact that the mobile operator appears on your social network is to report a bug. If you completely vybesilo - then adding a value judgment. After long fights, I still had to publish it this way - but I persuaded Katya to combine it with a post about a set of beta testers so that at least something useful would remain. The post came out to +59, which surprised me incredibly. The fact is that, firstly, it seemed that the entire team of TM supported him, which is why he came to the main in a few minutes, and, secondly, it was an important precedent for Habr.
Then the post “ On departure from the repair team ” was especially noted - one of the teams just took pictures of the workflow, and we came across this set of pictures. Two things happened at once. First, their leader saw it at Habré and ohrenel from various minor safety violations. Secondly, commentators ofigel on how everything is cool and “officially” and unequivocally decided that this statement, they say, does not happen so purely in the real world.
Then, quite suddenly, Vlasov decided to answer a couple of frequent questions about SIM cards. It turned out an epochal post about the processor, memory and file system of the chip. At the same time, people tried to write simply about their directions - either Blackberry, or television. We looked at how Habr responded, and learned how to do it, and how not to.
It was very hard to push a post about the harm to base stations , but in the end it did. He was read in a crowd by lawyers, PR managers, and security officers (most likely they were them).
In the corporate blog a guy from Krasnodar posted a couple of photos from the flood in Krymsk, where they were allowed to re-establish communication. This was the first emergency, and the case of good journalistic work could not be missed. We caught the “liquidator” Yuri right before leaving Moscow (he came on a business trip) at a cafe in Belorusskaya and asked him what time it was. Post - in fact, his recorded direct speech (slightly processed), plus the preserved photos. What a miracle this filter has gone through is just happiness. A less adequate company simply would not have missed "as if something happened." It seems that PR also dragged himself from the fact that you can tell such things. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Beeline has traditionally strong network planning, and here they gave channels to other operators. Oh, yes, by the way, when we began to delve into the network architecture, a whole series of posts was born from local things to the level of highways. Feelings - as if talking to the creators of the Assembler.
Then we found contacts of specialists who live and work in the Far North, in the Far East and in other interesting places. There was a whole cycle of stories about communication in the fields and distant plants. Here is the first . It was pretty darn interesting to call up these “wild” places and listen through the hard noise crackling and double satellite delay, what is there and how. Very fascinated photos: the base station on the truck under the ice fell, then the snow should be knocked down with a broom from a plate. Of course, the guys, unlike Moscow engineers, somehow filtering the bazaar, told everything as it is, denoting who exactly is a deer and in what situation. We learned a lot about contractors, suppliers and equipment features. Well, at the same time a couple of tender marketing. All this got into the posts in the form of equivocation and hints, please note. Therefore, when you read something like “a supplier several times surprised” in a corporate blog - you know, this is “we were fucking awkward from what they were doing”.
At this point, we started to find out what sustainable systems generally make and how the network is developing. First, a professional paranoid professional came out to us - a person who counts the company's money and knows the theory of probability. Here is his post . Dream job is simple. Almost immediately we met the most important thing in network planning - banderass . It was just a gyporn .
In parallel, we went on a visit with Katya Turtseva to Okhlobystin. Who doubted that he was he, do not doubt. The story is that he registered on Habré on the road, very early in the morning before the shooting, and for the first time indicated the mail gmail.ru instead of gmail.com. So his main nickname was occupied by himself. I immediately sent a second invite, he did everything right and published a post (we made it up in advance, as well as for other specialists). But then the shooting began, and Ivan could not answer for a long time. We called his assistants, and they said - no, now the episode is over, then it will come to you. Get away, fucking bloggers. In general, the post, of course, was a hurricane, but I firmly remembered - do not need such people on Habr. The engineers are theirs, the rest are not.
By this year, we gained experience and knew well what worked on Habré and what did not. An important thing happened in the middle of the project. I asked TM to fix the statistics of post views for the author to see (then no one knew how many people read the post - it was only in corporate statistics). Habr took it and opened it for everyone - this is the same eye icon at the bottom of the post with a view counter. With this eye, another great story - thanks to the quick update of the statistics, it became possible to navigate not by rating growth, but by views. This made it possible to put quick tests.
Here, for example, small things that helped raise posts:
- The post came out, the author immediately adds the post to your favorites. Previously, it was just something like “touch% post%”, after the appearance of a new sidebar - also a way to notify your “friends” (subscribers in the new scheme) about publication.
- Published in the morning - then it was extremely important to get into the "best of the day." Let me remind you that for the first couple of years it was not possible to choose several hubs, so we first put it in “Communication” or “Infrastructure”, and then, at +15 (when the post appeared at the bottom of the best for the day), they were shifted to corporate. That is, the material went to RSS for 50 thousand people, and then, when it was on the main page and at its best, it was transferred to a corporate blog. I learned this trick from Burum when he was not working at TM. By the way, his sad fate with IBM was a great warning about the fact that no kroilova. Even if marketing offered something like that, we had a hard iron reason.
- When a new post came out, a corporate newsletter was made to all employees with accounts - say, see what, vote. On the best days (near the end of the blog), this newsletter has grown to 30 users with the right to vote. Nevertheless, the voices from it were depressingly small: 2-3, rarely - 4-5.
- In a personal typos sent. They were immediately corrected and added to karma if they could. Sometimes the speakers could not and wrote either to me or to the PR (Katie had a user with karma +60, plus then another Katie had +15) - then they plied.
- For each useful comment with new information to the post, they added to karma.
- It turned out, for example, that two pictures work perfectly at once to kata (then many who repeated this technique). In the same place, I found out that the caption to the photo before the kata adds attention to the post, and so I found out that any glossy pictures that somehow give away officiality are immediately a cross on the material.
- Any attempt to bring something in an official language - minus 30% at least to read the post.
In general, the exp halt the sea.
At the same time, the second post-catastrophe about flooding in the Far East came out. How they worked there is just a fairy tale. Here we found both photographs in the reports, and made a chronicle on the working records of the teams, and were able to figure out who did what. The magic grandfather, who was not left without a connection in the village with the water around, proved to me personally that not all cellular operators are evil reptiles. His awesome quote, by the way, then sold out on press releases.
Or here one of the first posts on Habré tales founded a new genre. I must say that there were twice as many tales, and there was a very, very hardcore sort of like a girl calling a call center and asking her to hand over the phone and the name of the installer, who came in May, so that she could congratulate the newly made father. But most of them had to be removed - somewhere the security guards twisted their fingers at their heads, somewhere the lawyers were stunned (not the right word) from reality, but somewhere the PR decided that well, fuck it. Even with our crazy approach - well, fuck it.
There is another new genre for Habr - FAQ, here is the first such post . Then there were more, but this one became significant in terms of coolness. The main thing is to find questions, the answers to which are simply nowhere to google.
During this period, the workflow and strategy in general have settled down. A new author came out, got a mountain of pluses and an invite, called for the next one. In the comments we collected interesting questions and scattered through the PR of the company. Plus, PR gave us all of its sources, and we knew what was going on inside. The post was prepared for about three weeks: the material itself was either verbally filmed from the speaker (and then turned into a post), or was written by the specialist himself, and was shown to us. Then the engineer quietly dragged on how the official language could be replaced with human language. But colleagues convinced him that this was necessary, and everything went smoothly. The post was finally agreed (we very carefully insisted on checking the facts and iron responsibility for the bazaar, so PR checked the post with someone else in the subject), a lawyer (if necessary), a security officer - and forward. By the way, they cut 10 percent of the post every time. Noticing the trend, we began to write more hopelessly and frankly, and the security guards (it seems they were them) each time cut out the most glaring. But only one. So the blog was getting closer and closer to reality.
Now you need to tell about the comments. Engineers tried to respond to what was not needed, and not to react to what was needed. We taught very simple things. First, if they scold the operator, and not you - do not worry. Secondly, answer your questions accurately and in detail. Here the team helped a lot - the authors of other posts came and helped. Techies, by the way, really respected each other. And they were not so friendly, but they felt that they were in the same boat. A couple of times guys from Megafon and MTS came to our posts a couple of times and also helped out. “Ours”, by the way, sometimes helped them in their posts. In general, there was no competition among engineers - it was somewhere far away where tariffs were planned. It must be said, there were a dozen cases of minimum, where they worked quietly with each other at the sites, because it was necessary - if not to work, people would remain without communication. If they were competing, they wouldn’t move a finger, they would see how the subscribers of the “enemy” leave because of failures. But no, communication as such is more important. The same thing in the comments, the territory of the common cause. By the way, this is a very bright contrast compared to the blog of Mail.ru at that time, where colleagues could come to their author in the comment and start to let it go merrily.
It was also very important not to turn each post into an anti-advertising network. For example, you don’t need to do this (for example, Megaphone, one of the later posts):
The post scored, to put it mildly, not very many views (it means it was uninteresting or too official), but more importantly, those five thousand people who read it immediately saw something, generally speaking, quite the opposite. In the first comment - a solid negative. From my point of view, the post from the point of view of public relations perfectly solved one simple task: it informed me that I had to leave Megafon. This is a question of the quality of the preparation of the material and the ability to be responsible for the market.
So, for everything to be fine, comments should be viewed as a continuation of the post and work with them.
The position of the fact that we did not allow anyone, except engineers, into the blog helped us to work with the negative. “What is your fare so expensive?” - and from a certain moment the readers themselves began to defend the authors - they say, don't touch the uncle, he turns the nuts. The uncle could help a maximum with a higher priority of the ticket, but no more. On the other hand, a couple of intricate technical bugs still got - they were investigated with passion and interest on the spot.
At that moment, another serious joy happened: Beeline suddenly activated his White Paper project. Like, you have to be honest and in general. The post turned out to be strange - at first it was little read. I looked at it and thought: damn it, a huge company, admits mistakes, and I participate in all this. If only there is no release, if only there is no release.
Another couple of high-profile posts - about Yakutia and about Cambodia - ( one , two ). It was also difficult to drag Cambodia - first, the author was not from Beeline (or rather, he was already working at the European headquarters and did not submit to Russia), and second, just then the operation in Cambodia collapsed, and it wasn’t the best time for Vimpelcom there. But the experience turned out to be more important, and thanks to, again, the mega-adequacy of the PR department, which was already directly stuck on Habr, everything turned out.
PR suddenly stumbled and published a book. Naturally, the book with all posts of employees from Habr. A thick figure came out: like the bad American police beat the petty criminals in crime films. Not a telephone directory, of course, but it was quite possible. I think every author was pleased to hold such a thing in their hands. And I learned that 20-30 posts - this is a very dofig of letters, and I also thought about my book about the Mosigra. What ended - well, you probably know.
Again, back to Beeline. Here, for example, remember the stories yet. The transfer of a cell phone number is actually a very controversial thing, and another operator simply could not release it. It was necessary to sort out the topic in detail — about — which — it’s impossible to talk about, remember the surprises of the law, recall the deadline curves, recall the reluctance of small operators to cooperate ... In short, there was something else about the swamp. And most of this rake techies. Look at the post - this is the most glamorous version of what happened. Here is a beautiful givtone wrote about their routers and asked to see what happened. We agreed on the title for a couple of days, but it came out just like that, achivka . Another post about the highway with great photos from the field. We dragged him for almost three months - lawyers could not agree on the map and the status of ownership of certain lines. Here is the first post from my native Astrakhan - I remember how almost "from a foot" I broke into the director's office in the region and began to explain what I wanted. It turned out he was a former installer. Within 20 minutes we were standing on the roof of the building two blocks away, and he, brushing off his trousers and jacket (had to walk on all fours about five meters in a very dusty construction), with a glance in his eyes told about the installation. I probably will not forget for a long time how he, without hesitation, flopped in this official form into the dirt and crawled.
Well, the last posts where we helped, until the contract expired for 4 years - this is about the satellite station (this is the first one , but it’s worth reading everything from the author). A specialist is a jack of all trades, he knows everything about satellite communications. Modest. Taciturn. Information from him to pull out is unreal. Before that they tried - it was not given.Here, for the second time in my life, I applied the journalist’s reception of a “student” - he didn’t introduce himself very carefully, and he decided that I’m an intern from the company who was told about satellite communications, to put it mildly, through the ass. Then, like on rails, I told my version how it works (he took a kind of “exam” for me), he jarred, and he corrected. I wrote, standing under the snow on the roof, trying to close the snow lens at the same time with my hand. Then he got into conversation and began to poison the bikes, pointing to the place where the crow had boiled, then to where they had been raising the plate to the roof. There was a machine of memories. Well, and then showed the archive of photographs from the film. It was all just magical, for the sake of this, perhaps, I once took up the project. In the end, I felt that behind all these words is a whole life and a whole history of satellite communications in Russia.
It turned out great. Most of all, I dragged when givtone suddenly said about Mosigra, and it was filled up:
And it had a basis. For example, Mail.ru (the leader now and then by corporate rating) did an average post of 22,514 views (15,300 people by median), rating - 31.8 (by median - 25.5), Megaphone as a direct competitor of Beeline at the site - readings at 33.373 on average, the average post rating is 20.8. The median rating is only 13.5, views are 22.650 for the post (there are few posts, there is an emission with an interesting engineering post that stands out in the line — if you look for two years, then there is generally 9600 for the post and rating 9). Mosigra had 64.790 average views per post (median — 52.800 people per post), with an average rating of 97.3 (median 78). And Beeline - 51.887 views (median 40.401) with an average rating of 57 (46 for the median).
The final tips are:
- A theme that somehow affects everyone (+ 20%)
- - , — , «one mistery solved» (+20%)
- (+10%)
- - . . , (+30%).
- : « » ( ).
- , (+10%).
- (+10%)
To this is the correct time of publication at the moment of maximum plus of a karmometer or almost guaranteed getting into the best with getting stuck there as long as possible for the time of daily traffic peaks in Habré. Plus - the lack of corporate branding (many then bought bright pages, from which it seemed that you were somewhere on another site after Habr) and, in general, understanding that posts should be useful to the audience, and not the audience should be useful to Beeline.
Something like that.
I hope you enjoyed the extravaganza that you managed to create. We, in fact, have accumulated a whole library of engineering knowledge that would be very difficult to obtain in another way. And finally, I want to say thanks again to all those who managed to meet during this time. It was incredibly interesting.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/308092/
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