How START runs SMM and content marketing
Why do we begin preparing to promote START’s original movies and series on social media long before the actual filming? How has social media changed in the last two years, and why is it important to create different content for different audiences? How do we grow our audience, and how do we measure success? Why do you need backstage footage from the set, can you copy your competitors, and what qualities are required for working with social media? These are the questions we asked Yulia Drevova and Dariko Tsulaya, heads of our SMM and content marketing teams.
Why would SMM managers travel to the set of a TV series?
The SMM managers who run all of our social media accounts work closely with the content marketing team, which arranges trips to film sets so that we can create backstage videos for our original projects. We study the script and shooting plan well in advance, which means that we can record content with actors and directors during the first shooting days. This content — the kind of live footage that the audience loves so much — is then released in the format of stories or “circles” in Telegram. It’s worth noting we plan ahead to make content for the entire project life cycle, including both material that can be released during filming to pique viewers’ interest without giving away spoilers, and material that can be published post-premiere to encourage audience discussion in the comments.
Simultaneously, our content marketing team works on “making-of” movies: half-hour documentaries featuring actors’ and crew’s commentary and footage from the sets of our series. These documentaries offer a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of START hits like Gold Diggers, To Live a Life, or The Vampires of Midland, revealing, for instance, which actor made the other cast members break character the most during filming. But our social media promotion isn’t limited to just films and series we produce. For instance, this year we attempted to integrate product updates from our VOD-service into our social media, in order to additionally showcase our technological platform. We can also receive assignments from related departments or from the studio.
While START is a media conglomerate, when it comes to attracting audiences, a streaming service is very much unlike a TV channel. On TV, the marketing goal is to draw viewers to the first episode. If people tune in for the first episode, this means the marketing succeeded; if they don’t, the marketing failed. If they stop watching after the first episode, it means they didn’t enjoy the content. In our case, everything is different. Our work is long-term, focused on building a loyal audience and enhancing our brand image, among other things.
Much more than “making memes”
SMM is often mistakenly viewed as a simple chore. What can be that hard about writing a post, making a meme, creating a collage, or editing a reel? But in reality, it is extensive and meticulous work that requires both creativity and management skills, not to mention watching every episode of a series from start to finish. We have huge project support spreadsheets with tasks for every manager, as well as a weekly plan for all our social media — we have 10 in total. Over the past two years, we’ve differentiated our content by publishing three to four unique posts daily for each social media community, using different creative elements, texts, and formats.
All texts for the week undergo a rigorous review process: with so much content for various platforms, it’s very likely that we might overlook something. We also produce content at a rapid pace, generating a vast amount of material that we don’t even attempt to store on any kind of device. Our department consists of four SMM managers, one of whom started out as an intern. It was important for us to nurture an individual who would fit seamlessly into the team, as even the best and brightest can struggle to adapt to an already established work style and format.
On top of working with creative content, texts, and videos, all our SMM managers are also skilled in using Photoshop, as well as photo and video editing. Another member of the team is our editor, who fully supports the SMM staff and edits a portion of our behind-the-scenes clips and “making-of” movies.
The content marketing team includes a producer, who monitors our series’ shooting schedules, collaborates with the department head and the making-of’s scriptwriter to create a list of shooting days when we will be making marketing content on-set, briefs the videographers and correspondent, and then oversees footage and interview transcription. These transcripts are used not only by SMM managers but also by our PR team, for instance. When a new series is ready for release on the platform, the team begins writing the script for the making-of movie, getting it approved by producers, editing, and so forth. This is a significant standalone process, but it yields great results: START’s behind-the-scenes videos set the industry standard and have received accolades at professional award ceremonies.
Why use separate posts and formats for different social networks?
While it was once possible to simply copy and paste content across all social networks, the approach has now changed. Every second, users are finding something new to capture their attention. Meaning that SMM teams are essentially competing for every single view. Over the past two years, SMM professionals working in Russia have faced a significant challenge: some of the social networks where audience growth was factored into our KPIs have stopped functioning properly. Realizing that we could not just give up, we began creating different content for a variety of audiences.
Recently, audiences have been noticeably maturing, transitioning to formats they find comfortable and discovering that there are some places where they will never move. For instance, it’s clear from our VKontakte group that the network’s audience is predominantly aged 35–45. Even though the average VKontakte user is significantly younger. There are some social networks where the gender ratio is nearly 50/50, and others where, for example, women make up 80% of the user base, aligning with the concept of START itself, which traditionally has a predominantly female audience. However, we’re noticing that certain series — like the drama Word of a Goodfella. Blood on the Pavement — are bringing in a previously unseen, mostly male audience. This can be easily tracked by observing the change in gender composition in our Telegram channel, where the number of men tripled after the premiere.
How to maintain and increase your audience when everything is working against you
START’s social media platforms exist to expand our original series’ loyal viewer base and keep audiences updated about new releases. If you have amassed a couple of million subscribers, it hurts to leave them all behind and move to other platforms, the way we had to do in early 2022. At that time, Russian social networks had a lot of raw, untapped potential. “Oh, shorts work really great elsewhere, let’s copy them here!”. However, when we began using this tool, we discovered that while the visuals were there, the functionality was not working properly. As a result, we weren’t gaining the reach and subscribers we needed, leaving us uncertain about how to proceed with our plans.
At the same time, there have been successful cases, largely due to our decision to “keep trying and never stop”. For instance, START launched a blog on YandexZen. For a while, we barely managed it at all, only using it to advertise, as we did not really understand what this platform was for. Last year, when it felt like only Russian social networks would remain accessible within Russia, everyone flocked to Telegram, VKontakte, and Zen. We began to post content on the latter platform, and it would really blow up sometimes. However, the platform’s algorithm underwent several changes, meaning the formats that had worked one month might not yield any results in the next. The team then had to adapt once again to achieve the desired reach and subscriber count. Six months later, Zen approached START and invited us to a conference to discuss our successful case studies.
It’s worth noting that both Russian and foreign social networks tend to ask for payment for promotion. We initially didn’t pay anything to promote our groups. And when we tried purchasing advertising from bloggers on Zen, it was less effective than posts with diverse, high-quality content prepared by our managers. We found that most SMM managers from other companies would stop trying and experimenting on Zen after running into the very first obstacle, like an algorithm issue or lack of understanding. Our team, on the other hand, never stopped trying, and this persistence paid off greatly for us. Now, the return on investment in Zen is clearly visible. Immediately after posting, SMM managers can intuit in an instant whether the idea was successful or not, whether it resonated or not, whether they managed to tap into an underlying trend or not.
How have social media changed over the course of 5 years?
In every possible way: from formats and users to the networks themselves. All of this has transformed radically in just 5 years. Firstly, the number of social networks has increased. As has the number of people willing to consume content. Adding to that, they are now consuming much more content, at a faster pace. Users are constantly losing focus and need to be highly selective. To keep up with these changes, we need people who specialize in texts and people who specialize in creative content. In this respect, START boasts a uniquely versatile team.
Previously, formats were not as diverse as they are now. For instance, if you travel by subway, you will see that everyone is engrossed in their phones, from children to the elderly. What they are looking at, though, differs from person to person. As a result, social networks have adapted to this format and have started using various engagement techniques. Over the past two or three years, short vertical videos — something that will instantly captivate viewers — have become popular across all social networks. They can include ads, clips from a movie or series, or blog previews. The user is immediately hooked. This kind of content goes back to vines — short, humorous clips that people would watch about 10 years ago. They weren’t very popular in Russia. Eventually, vines evolved into short vertical videos, pioneered by TikTok and now found on all social networks in one way or another. That’s why now, when we go to a filming location, the videographers are asked to shoot actors on set in a way we can later adapt footage for vertical videos.
Why are social media so dependent on the format? When introducing a new feature, they want it to become popular and widely used. Let’s look at YouTube. You would assume that its user base is accustomed to hour-long vlogs or lengthy interviews, but when YouTube added shorts — 15-second vertical videos tailored for mobile phones — they took off brilliantly. START already has over 2 million subscribers on YouTube, with 80% of the traffic coming from shorts. These videos serve as the starting point for interaction, and the goal is to make users want to subscribe and watch such content regularly. For the SMM department, every short is a battle for the user’s next step.
How to measure performance?
Social media are used for creating knowledge of our content for external audiences. That is, people visit them, consume some content, and learn about the project, even if we weren’t able to include a clickable link in the description. They discover our content without us needing to spend any budgets on advertising, which is beneficial for the business.
But besides enhancing knowledge about our projects, SMM managers have a secondary task: to grow a specific social network. When some social networks were hit by turbulence last year, their reach diminished. But we still managed to grow over the course of that year. We analyze the statistics for our public pages, individual posts, specific projects, and overall performance every day and to varying degrees. Since all SMM managers are both responsible for and invested in this task, they are deeply integrated into the process and have a clear understanding of where everything comes from.
Like short videos on the Instagram [which is banned in Russia], for instance: the social network started prioritizing reels lately. If your reel appeals to a large number of your followers when they first see it, the algorithm pushes it into the Recommended section, and from there, it takes off. This results in an additional free audience that interacts with our project.
We are aware that in some cases, we need to focus on engagement, and in others, we need to look at reach. On platforms like TikTok, we concentrate on the number of views, similar to YouTube, because likes are always the least significant metric there. As opposed to views, which reflect actual performance.
The key metric for our social network videos is whether they help support a specific project during its launch. Then we create a bonus making-of movie, and finally our the team evaluates what ended up working and how well.
Obviously, native content should not be overlooked. Getting included in the news feed matters to us. It’s important to respond and produce content at high speeds without compromising on quality. At times, acting extremely quickly and beating everyone else to the punch is critical.
Everyone is snooping on everyone else
There are things that our SMM and content marketing teams pioneered. Generally, everyone tends to keep tabs on each other. It’s only normal. For instance, short vertical videos weren’t our original idea. But our team quickly understood that they should definitely be used wherever the format is applicable. The main rule is not to get bogged down in routine. SMM is like a continuous conveyor belt, where the workload keeps increasing exponentially: there are always more projects, more ideas for new launches. The team also adds on to this by taking on new social networks and using more formats.
If vertical videos now need to be subtitled, we’ll subtitle them. Some might not bother, but consumer habits have already changed: many watch videos without sound and read the subtitles instead, which affects views. Therefore, we need to do everything to make the video more appealing to users: it’s not just some footage from some kinds of series, but a clip featuring familiar actors and dialogue snippets. That’s the kind of logic that works.
Our principle is: don’t fear trying new things. Even if it doesn’t work, something else will. Don’t fear being creative. Don’t get tethered to the same tried-and-true methods. Whether it’s social media or additional videos from various platforms, we always talk to editors and videographers to see how we can film something differently.
Keeping tabs on what’s happening is a must. You need to adapt, quickly catch on to trends, formulate hypotheses, and verify them. If a new idea proves successful, it’s quickly implemented and spread across all social networks. Our team already has a good feel of our audience and knows which post captions will hit the mark. The key is to make the caption respond to the user’s needs.
For instance, we had some great behind-the-scenes videos for the series To Live a Life. Normally, these types of videos would get a lukewarm reception — simply because they are edited differently, and tend to be too long. So, with the help of the project promotion team, we shot a new type of clips for social media, with humorous skits featuring the actors from the show. And they did amazing: the format turned out to be popular.
When it comes to actual backstage footage, it’s crucial to produce more than just “safe” content that pleases everyone. That’s too boring. You’ve got to find a hook that will excite your audience, while staying within the brand’s rules. At START, series are produced quite quickly, while quality levels remain high. And in content marketing, the pace is even faster, because content quickly becomes outdated.
What do you need to learn to become a successful SMM manager?
Having a good eye is key. You should actually be interested in the field, as well as be highly creative or good at writing, especially short texts. Not every copywriter is good at SMM: lengthy and complex texts definitely won’t work, as social media prioritize visuals.
It’s also crucial to immerse yourself in the content: if you are not passionate about it, it will be hard to create relevant, in-the-moment posts that will go viral. You need to learn all the ins and outs of the product and content you’re working with: our team does this by reading scripts, discussing promotional strategies with promo producers, and watching all the series from start to finish — often multiple times.
In other words, the SMM department should be part of the brand and write on behalf of the brand. Ultimately, it’s not about lead generation, conversions, or rapid-fire purchases — all the things that business accounts strive for. Our goal is much larger. START’s SMM department would struggle with bringing in a new person straight from the market, no matter how experienced they are, because they’d have to fit into the already established system. For those wishing to join a team like ours, it would be best to intern at the company that interests you before you start growing a career. This will help you integrate into the work process.
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