PRIMARY DIGITAL TOOL OF VOGUE.UA
BY MARIA ZHDANOVA
Maria Zhdanova, digital project manager at Vogue.UA, describes IO Technologies’ web analytics service and why Facebook should be ‘led’.
I’d like to tell you about a service we are using — IO Technologies.
We were approached by a startup that developed their own media analytics system. This analytics system differs from other platforms, such as Google Analytics, by allowing for easy customization for different job functions. For example, a person working on social media needs to keep track of how successful certain posts are, and how many people followed each link to the homepage.
We can also set our monthly goals and see how close we got to reaching them.
“When we started working with digital media, we decided to focus on numbers as a means of evaluation.”
Therefore, we never say “no one likes the article, let’s just drop it”. We check how many people read it and try to find out at what point we lost them. We analyze the behaviour of our readers and develop new ideas based on the results.
IO allows you to pinpoint the exact part of the article at which people stopped reading it, and at what percentage rate. Typically, if the article consists of several long paragraphs, all you have to do is insert some images to break up the text. In other cases, it’s enough to simply shorten paragraph length to improve content readability.
Sometimes we discover that certain search requests are becoming popular. People are looking for certain phrases, and our website might have a relevant article. In such cases, we can revive the text, rework it, add new content, update images, and post it again.
In fact, many people forget about content recycling, but, for example, this is the way the New York Times built up their recipes content. They just took recipes from newspapers (some of which were published 70 years ago) and made a website from that.
For instance, spring-summer trends only live for one season, however, an article about the importance of Ukrainian embroidery and ornament symbolism will be in demand every year on Embroidery Day, and we can always return to it.
IO allows us to see today’s situation — what performs well and what fails. Thus, at midday, I can understand whether or not we had a successful day. If not, we use heavy artillery, like Kate Middleton or Monica Bellucci, to boost performance as articles about famous celebrities are always in demand.
It helps us plan our days to have news articles, long reads, hot topics, or viral stories that improve reach. We’re not afraid of posting long read articles as we already know they work best in the evening and on the weekends.
People expect big brands, such as Vogue, to be their guide on how to live, what to buy, what to read, and how to ultimately live a ‘Vogue’ lifestyle. A mix of different topics allows us to highlight this lifestyle.
When writing about the fashion trends of the upcoming season we create content based on recent fashion shows and clothing worn by celebrities and models. We publish these articles on our website and write new ones based on information that was previously published.
“Facebook is not just a traffic generator.”
When articles get hyped up on Facebook we turn them into ads, which has proven to be very efficient. Sometimes such content goes viral, but since it doesn’t come from our public it has to be posted on our page.
Currently, a big chunk of media profit in the world is taken by Facebook. However, if you can’t fight, you should lead. Although Facebook declares that it supports the media world, it actually does not do much.
For instance, after a company spends money on advertising, organic reach starts to decline and it can take a long time for it to rise again. But it is not an obstacle, and I believe we’ve found the right tactics to work round this.
Also, Vogue.UA belongs to Condé Nast Holding, which includes all of Vogue’s international editions, and we have connections with the Facebook central office through the holding. If we have problems (account locking or verification issues), we use these connections.
Facebook is a stand-alone platform and should not be taken as a primary source of traffic for your website. With this platform, mass media can have completely different audiences.
Many mass media organisations in the world (even the Washington Post) have started working with Facebook groups as thematic platforms for niche topics.
I think that the rest of the media will soon realize the opportunities here too.
