December 28, 2018 at 11:45Green cat about space content
November 29, 2018 at the Habr " Content " conference , Vitaly Egorov Zelenyikot spoke . Vitaliy is the main popularizer of the theme of space in the domestic blogosphere. He shared his personal experience in promoting projects, spoke about his income and gave advice to novice bloggers.
Under the cutscene is the transcript of his report.
Probably, many have not heard anything about any Green Cat". I’m the wrong blogger. I didn’t succeed in becoming such a blogger that different brands would come in and pay for product promotion or advertising. Advertising is the least I could monetize on. I was asked to tell you about what I’m doing and how I’ve gotten to that: I write about space, popularize astronautics, talk about space exploration, private astronautics, interplanetary research.In this case, my example is not entirely about business, although, of course, there is some activity in space.
Sun attempts to interact with the advertisers were somehow not very successful I did not want to advertise the fact that I was offered, even for money, and the fact that I would like to advertise in my area -. range of small, mostly, it is the state activity.
It all started in childhood. There were books in childhood and there was a great interest in space. One of my first books about space was Gennady Chernenko, “But we will fly!” When, after 25 years, I accidentally saw her in a museum, I even took a photograph for memory.
I left blogging and success in general with Mars, and the first step towards this was also taken in childhood. I fell into the hands of a book by V.V. Shevchenko "The Call of the Mysterious Mars." There were pictures in it that I didn't like at all, but the contents of the book really interested me. After reading this book for fifteen years I had absolutely nothing to do with astronautics. My first attempt at blogging was the topic of UFOs. I sat in a large public VKontakte and was surprised at the huge amount of nonsense that was discussed there. Then I began to explain to them what they were wrong in, began to postpone their posts separately. But that was only the beginning.
On August 6, 2012, the all-terrain vehicle Curiosity boarded Mars. I looked at the animation of the Mars rover landing operation, looked at how the people from NASA who were involved in this event were jubilant, and the thought popped up in my head: “I want it too!” After that, I decided to advance my dream - I visited Baikonur, worked together with a company that launched spacecraft (they, however, had not yet drifted to Mars, but were moving in this direction). The desire to touch the cosmos ruled and guided me. Finally, I found an area in which a space blogger could be sought after. Next was the opening of the public “Curiosity Mars rover,” in which I began to describe the journey of the rover on Mars. Now more than three hundred thousand VK users are subscribed to this public.
Then there was Habr. Exit to Habr in October 2012 was the birth of the Green Cat. Initially, I had a nickname in the mail zelenyikoteyka, and when I came to Habr and they told me "Write about space", I began to register and thought that space and the "green cat" are somehow solid, I need to grow up. So I became a Green Cat. The first post on Habré was signed not by me. The publication aroused interest, in the comments they wrote "write more." Then the girl who posted my post answered that the author was not really her, and an invite was sent to me right away. At that time, an invite on Habré was a great achievement. At first I began to write about Mars, then I realized that I was cramped in the framework of this topic, and in the winter of 2012 I opened yet another public "Open Space", where I wrote about space in general.
He quickly became the largest public on this topic, and at some point we even outstripped Roscosmos by the number of subscribers. However, after cleaning up the dead accounts, we got 417 thousand subscribers against 460 thousand from Roskosmos.
Another interesting experiment was when I decided to prove that Roscosmos does not know how to popularize astronautics, while we have something to popularize, and I can do it better. I opened the public Electro-L. This is a domestic spacecraft that flies and photographs the Earth. We processed photos, made news, and then the moment came when a single public of one satellite outstripped the entire public of Roscosmos by the number of subscribers. At that time, there was indeed an acute shortage of information in this area.
Well, my main success, the peak of my promotional career, can be considered the event that occurred in the spring of 2013, when we found the Mars-3 spacecraft on Mars. And it was we who discovered it: I and another group of people who were engaged in this task. The Soviet spacecraft Mars-3 sat on the surface of Mars back in 1971, and since then no one knew its exact location. Plus or minus the “two elbows” on the map knew, and exactly where - no one could tell for sure. We took satellite images of this place from the NASA archive, found this device, and proved that it was exactly him. About this event they wrote on the NASA website, then Pavel Durov reposted the publication. But they did not write about it on the Roskosmos website.
This was the only time I really did, albeit a small, but independent research and made a discovery. In the future, I only did what I told about travels and studies of others, I continue to do this now. To date, my total audience is approximately one and a half million subscribers. Half of them are subscribers of the Open Space community in My World. 95 percent (if not more) there are bots, and therefore I am not proud of it. Nevertheless, 28 thousand read me in LiveJournal, only 10 thousand are watching on YouTube so far, and Vkontakte will get 700 thousand for two publics.
Further, I would like to share experience that will be useful for those who want to write on their own, and not take advantage of bloggers that have already taken place.
In life, you can do anything - embroider a cross, write about space, take interviews and so on. If a person does something for a long time, at some point he reaches perfection. And then they begin to pay him for his favorite work. In other words, "do what you love, no matter what, and sooner or later they will start paying for it."
A share of luck in this, of course, is present too. For example, I was lucky with the employer. At the early stage of my activity, the private space company Dauria Aerospace, one of the first in Russia, appeared. It made it possible to promote not only the company, but also to promote itself. Therefore, the blogger Green Cat developed separately, and Dauria developed separately.
The employer was happy with everything. He understood that I devote a significant part of my time to blogging, and therefore I understood this lesson with understanding, also realizing that a separate resource could also be useful to him. First there were VKontakte, then blogs, Habr. And then came the media who needed analytics. Few people do analytics about astronautics in Russia, and any thought outside the mean press releases has a price. In the list of publications where I was published, there are Forbes and RBC, where there were several articles. The pinnacle of my writing career is publishing in Kommersant. In general, there is a demand for such articles.
One of my strongest works is the article I wrote about the Dauria company in the magazine Popular Mechanics, after which the magazine paid me as a journalist. That is, I promoted the company, received a salary for it, and in addition to this I received a fee from the publisher. This is a high level of PR.
If you structure the sources of my income, you can see that there is no advertising at all. The main part is influenza, that is, the formation of public opinion (by the way, I only recently learned this word), beneficial to the one who pays. In this case, private astronautics pays. I did not succeed with the advertisers at all, the relationship with them is short-term, and even if they were satisfied. On the one hand, there is an interest in advertising, but, on the other hand, I am not ready to advertise what I never dare to advise from the bottom of my heart. The only exception is private astronautics, since I am deeply convinced that astronautics are needed, that it needs to be developed and popularized. In turn, the astronautics understands that my activity is useful, and thus we had a good union with it.
I regularly write articles on Habr and in other publications, there is support for subscribers who are simply interested in activities in space and my thoughts on this topic. Twenty percent of my income comes from PR. I interact with government agencies and commercial entities as a remote PR consultant, as a small PR agency promoting space projects.
Now a few lessons that I have learned from all my activities.
The first was unsuccessful. The reason for the failure was that it was very physically difficult to drag a whole bunch of brands on yourself. When, for example, I compare myself with Asya Kazantseva, I see how well done she is: she publishes books in tens of thousands of copies, constantly goes with lectures, including paid ones. In her case, the ratio on the income chart will be more than mine. She is developing one brand - Asya Kazantseva. And I get Green Cat, Mars rover, Open Space, DAURIA, and even Vitaly Egorov as a separate brand. When you start working at the same time with everything, you get the feeling that you are carrying a heavy suitcase without a handle - and it’s hard to drag and throw. In the case of Outer Space, it’s a little easier for me, because there has already been formed an editorial board that works independently, and I only keep an eye on this project from time to time,
Another piece of advice that is relevant for companies is not enough to write about others. In addition, you also need to do something yourself to write about you. This is a very important thing from the point of view of promoting your own brand, and in general. My example of this is working on a spacecraft project that we want to launch on the moon so that it photographs the landing sites of the Americans. The task chosen is the most hype one you can find. The most controversial and discussed topics (except for black holes and other problems of the "far space") are whether there is life on Mars and whether the Americans were on the moon. If we manage to launch such an apparatus to the moon, then in the future it will be possible to think about launching a satellite to Mars.
A whole complex of factors inspired me to start this project. First of all, this is dissatisfaction with the interplanetary success of Roscosmos, which in twenty-five years launched as many as two of its own spacecraft, and both times - into the Pacific Ocean. Obviously, I will not live to see the day when Roscosmos creates its own Mars rover, it is easier to do it yourself. To implement such an ambitious project, we organized crowdfunding and raised a certain amount, which, of course, is sorely lacking. When they say to me: “Hey, have you collected the money, but where is the satellite?” I reply, “Calm! We just need a thousand more of such crowdfunding. " So we will not fly soon, although the work is underway. I will add that becoming news is not enough. We need to work actively on this, and if you started this business, you need to drag it further.
One more urgent advice - write books. It’s not easy to start writing a book and it’s even harder to understand what it is for. It seems that everyone is sitting on gadgets and therefore no one needs books. I, too, for a long time held this opinion, while I was lined up for publishing houses who wanted me to write a book. “Somehow later,” I thought. Then I was fired from DAURIA, and I felt free, I had a lot of time that I decided to spend with benefit, that is, write a book. I wrote it, from a distance.
And after that, I found out that children still read books. Books for them are a way to escape from the gadget. Books cannot be read through a smartphone, so they mainly communicate with each other using a smartphone. When they want peace, they pick up books, and paper ones, because the tablet also has Internet access and you don’t particularly read it. “Paper” is still in demand, so work in this direction is necessary. It’s also cool when you come to the bookstore and say: “Well, let’s look ... mmm ... They say that it’s a good author. We must take it. ”
The situation with television is somewhat similar to what I spoke about earlier. When you become a prominent expert, you can comment on the position of the company or the area in which it works (if you are an official PR man), It is normal when a PR man is an independent expert or an expert in this field. Television is ready to invite such people, to name the brand name, 70 percent is quite loyal to this, especially if you give them competent content and explain what they want to know. That is, you must become an expert for the media. Not just a contact for reaching out to any company speaker, but becoming a company speaker yourself. This is if we talk about working as a PR manager.
If we talk about the activities of an expert who writes analysts, then recently I realized the real value of participation in television programs. Recently, something has been constantly happening with us - then suddenly something falls, then something is not drilled, then the head of the Russian Space Agency says something wrong. And then they begin to turn from television with a request to comment. And in Ostankino it happens you have to travel, and to Shabolovka. Yesterday, for example, I was in the Radio Liberty studio. At first it seems cool - “Wow! They called me to the TV. ”
You immediately agree and go, sometimes quite far away (for example, I once flew to Belarus for a half-hour transfer (of course, at their expense). But then you begin to understand - after all, this is my personal time, which I could to spend as I see fit. Of course, the interview is a pathos event, they will pay attention to you, but remember that in this case you do the content not for yourself, but for them.
Of course, this cooperation is mutual, but the “exhaust” from this is not so big. You have reached a certain level, your name is on TV, but there is no further growth as such. The biggest gain I had was when a ten-minute video about Mars-3 was released on Rossiya24 channel. And then about five hundred people joined the public on VKontakte. Otherwise, such appearances on "Echo of Moscow", on "Radio Vesti", on the Lighthouse, etc., give ten people who are added to social networks. Although, of course, this increases your credibility, and when a person visits your page and sees published videos from the TV with your participation, it works positively. In general, the response is small. To change this, you need to do something your own. Do not just go to different "guests", but have your own project, which will be anchor and to which all these your visits will lead new people. The simplest is a YouTube channel.
I had an interview on Goblin’s “Intelligence Survey” - 170 thousand views and 2 thousand joining YouTube. As you can see, meetings with YouTube are quite effective. However, you need to understand that today the audience watched the video with you, tomorrow or even half an hour later - with someone else, and they already forgot about you. Such a video works for recognition, and then this work consists only in the number of people who came and signed up for your project. And for this, your project must be developed. You will interest people, they will come to you and stay with you if you do something interesting. So you need to walk, but without a project that would support all these trips, this is a rather inefficient activity.
- Have there ever been threats to your content? Perhaps some authorities did not like what you were writing?
Not. No one promised to break the face, but there was talk about crowdfunding, when they reproached us for collecting money, and we did not introduce the satellite and did not launch it to the moon. There were complaints about us and accusations that we were scammers. In such cases, I always asked: “Did you even drop off on this project? If I took off and was dissatisfied with work, I can return them. Yes, we are delaying the deadlines, but the work continues and we are moving towards the goals that we have set for ourselves. ”We regularly publish reports on the work done. Maybe it would be worth increasing their frequency.
Many did not like my eloquent and hot post " Lunar conspiracy as a test for aptitude". If a person believes that the Americans were not on the moon, then this person considers everyone around us to be liars or fools - all scientists (both American and Soviet), all Russian cosmonauts who are convinced that the person was on the moon. Such a person does not believe in the ability of people, in the ability of a person as a species to achieve such a great achievement. My post caused a huge number of comments, over five thousand. Contractions were in full swing for several weeks after publication. At first I tracked the messages, but then I quit being, and I don’t go into these “Augean comments”.
Another problem is politics. Cosmonautics, of course, is connected with politics, but I try to cut this topic off. It doesn’t always work out, but I try to stay aloof. For example, in the same "Outer Space" for a commentary on politics, a person receives a ban for a week, and if this is repeated, then forever. People just go to space and science to take a break from all this booth, which they see every day in the news on TV.
- The Public of Roscosmos - 400 thousand subscribers, the main content is “Space with a Human Face”, in Russian. Public NASA - 30 million subscribers, content - "Space with a human face", the main language is English. Kim Kardashian - 150 million subscribers, the main content is ass. The question arises - are technical blogs doomed to picking in the mud as a percentage of such popular blogs or is there any hope?
In this case, the problem is not that NASA or Roscosmos poorly popularize their subjects. Just an ass closer than space. The astronauts are somewhere far away, it is not clear where they fly, and indeed, maybe the Earth is flat. And the ass is always there. This topic is close to people and therefore more interesting.
I had two large influx of users. The first time it was with Mars-3, when everyone saw that ordinary users of VKontakte can independently go and make a discovery. And the second time it was connected with the Chelyabinsk meteorite. For most people, astronomy is somewhere out there, something distant and incomprehensible. But when astronomy comes to your home, then it immediately becomes relevant. So here is the issue of relevance. Any medical topic will go much better than a space one, any blogger who teaches how to cook buns will be more popular than a blogger who teaches spacecraft design. Because buns love everything, and spacecraft are something incomprehensible and complex. This is as natural as gender distribution among readers: 75% are boys and 25% are girls. Just because that the boys like the pieces of iron more. We can’t change this in any way. The exception is perhaps Elon Musk. Of course, he is also far from Kim Kardashian, but he walks well and managed to take a fresh look at space.
You have been working for a long time and started your public when there was little such content on the Web. And, probably, therefore there was such an active influx of users. And if you started your activity now, which social network would you choose? And another question: is it worth using some social networks that many consider dying, for example, the same LJ?
I have LJ most active in communication and he does not die. There are three types of social networks: links, such as Telegram, Twitter, there are networks with little content like Facebook or VKontakte, as well as a blog platform. There are a lot of the latter - this is LJ, and Medium, and many others. But in the end, people don’t care where you post your content. If they are subscribed to your pages, they will go to any site, wherever you publish your content.
As for LJ, he is very active inside, there is always a lively discussion. When I started LJ six years ago, they told me “What are you ?! LJ is dying! ” And so he is still "dying." After changing the rating system, my motivation for actively writing there fell. It turned out so that blogs got to the top, where the author posted one picture and one phrase. The main thing is that the publication is followed by seething in the comments. For my subject, writing so often fails, and the normal pace is one post per week. It is possible and a little faster, but it will already be stressful. Now I understand that with my content and my requirements for its quality it is impossible to fight for high places in the LJ ranking, that's why I do not try.
I have a page with 1,600 Telegram subscribers, but it's getting worse, everyone is looking for insiders there. I have no insiders from outer space and I do not see Telegram as a serious direction, where it would be worth investing.
And if I started my activity now, then I would choose YouTube as the most important tool.
Reports from the "Content" Habraconference are available in video format . 16 hours of useful information, 26 presentations and 3 discussions on how to make cool content about and using technology. Discount code: habr_online_promo.
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Under the cutscene is the transcript of his report.
Probably, many have not heard anything about any Green Cat". I’m the wrong blogger. I didn’t succeed in becoming such a blogger that different brands would come in and pay for product promotion or advertising. Advertising is the least I could monetize on. I was asked to tell you about what I’m doing and how I’ve gotten to that: I write about space, popularize astronautics, talk about space exploration, private astronautics, interplanetary research.In this case, my example is not entirely about business, although, of course, there is some activity in space.
Sun attempts to interact with the advertisers were somehow not very successful I did not want to advertise the fact that I was offered, even for money, and the fact that I would like to advertise in my area -. range of small, mostly, it is the state activity.
From Mars to Blog
It all started in childhood. There were books in childhood and there was a great interest in space. One of my first books about space was Gennady Chernenko, “But we will fly!” When, after 25 years, I accidentally saw her in a museum, I even took a photograph for memory.
I left blogging and success in general with Mars, and the first step towards this was also taken in childhood. I fell into the hands of a book by V.V. Shevchenko "The Call of the Mysterious Mars." There were pictures in it that I didn't like at all, but the contents of the book really interested me. After reading this book for fifteen years I had absolutely nothing to do with astronautics. My first attempt at blogging was the topic of UFOs. I sat in a large public VKontakte and was surprised at the huge amount of nonsense that was discussed there. Then I began to explain to them what they were wrong in, began to postpone their posts separately. But that was only the beginning.
On August 6, 2012, the all-terrain vehicle Curiosity boarded Mars. I looked at the animation of the Mars rover landing operation, looked at how the people from NASA who were involved in this event were jubilant, and the thought popped up in my head: “I want it too!” After that, I decided to advance my dream - I visited Baikonur, worked together with a company that launched spacecraft (they, however, had not yet drifted to Mars, but were moving in this direction). The desire to touch the cosmos ruled and guided me. Finally, I found an area in which a space blogger could be sought after. Next was the opening of the public “Curiosity Mars rover,” in which I began to describe the journey of the rover on Mars. Now more than three hundred thousand VK users are subscribed to this public.
Then there was Habr. Exit to Habr in October 2012 was the birth of the Green Cat. Initially, I had a nickname in the mail zelenyikoteyka, and when I came to Habr and they told me "Write about space", I began to register and thought that space and the "green cat" are somehow solid, I need to grow up. So I became a Green Cat. The first post on Habré was signed not by me. The publication aroused interest, in the comments they wrote "write more." Then the girl who posted my post answered that the author was not really her, and an invite was sent to me right away. At that time, an invite on Habré was a great achievement. At first I began to write about Mars, then I realized that I was cramped in the framework of this topic, and in the winter of 2012 I opened yet another public "Open Space", where I wrote about space in general.
He quickly became the largest public on this topic, and at some point we even outstripped Roscosmos by the number of subscribers. However, after cleaning up the dead accounts, we got 417 thousand subscribers against 460 thousand from Roskosmos.
When did success come
Another interesting experiment was when I decided to prove that Roscosmos does not know how to popularize astronautics, while we have something to popularize, and I can do it better. I opened the public Electro-L. This is a domestic spacecraft that flies and photographs the Earth. We processed photos, made news, and then the moment came when a single public of one satellite outstripped the entire public of Roscosmos by the number of subscribers. At that time, there was indeed an acute shortage of information in this area.
Well, my main success, the peak of my promotional career, can be considered the event that occurred in the spring of 2013, when we found the Mars-3 spacecraft on Mars. And it was we who discovered it: I and another group of people who were engaged in this task. The Soviet spacecraft Mars-3 sat on the surface of Mars back in 1971, and since then no one knew its exact location. Plus or minus the “two elbows” on the map knew, and exactly where - no one could tell for sure. We took satellite images of this place from the NASA archive, found this device, and proved that it was exactly him. About this event they wrote on the NASA website, then Pavel Durov reposted the publication. But they did not write about it on the Roskosmos website.
This was the only time I really did, albeit a small, but independent research and made a discovery. In the future, I only did what I told about travels and studies of others, I continue to do this now. To date, my total audience is approximately one and a half million subscribers. Half of them are subscribers of the Open Space community in My World. 95 percent (if not more) there are bots, and therefore I am not proud of it. Nevertheless, 28 thousand read me in LiveJournal, only 10 thousand are watching on YouTube so far, and Vkontakte will get 700 thousand for two publics.
A bit about income
Further, I would like to share experience that will be useful for those who want to write on their own, and not take advantage of bloggers that have already taken place.
In life, you can do anything - embroider a cross, write about space, take interviews and so on. If a person does something for a long time, at some point he reaches perfection. And then they begin to pay him for his favorite work. In other words, "do what you love, no matter what, and sooner or later they will start paying for it."
A share of luck in this, of course, is present too. For example, I was lucky with the employer. At the early stage of my activity, the private space company Dauria Aerospace, one of the first in Russia, appeared. It made it possible to promote not only the company, but also to promote itself. Therefore, the blogger Green Cat developed separately, and Dauria developed separately.
The employer was happy with everything. He understood that I devote a significant part of my time to blogging, and therefore I understood this lesson with understanding, also realizing that a separate resource could also be useful to him. First there were VKontakte, then blogs, Habr. And then came the media who needed analytics. Few people do analytics about astronautics in Russia, and any thought outside the mean press releases has a price. In the list of publications where I was published, there are Forbes and RBC, where there were several articles. The pinnacle of my writing career is publishing in Kommersant. In general, there is a demand for such articles.
One of my strongest works is the article I wrote about the Dauria company in the magazine Popular Mechanics, after which the magazine paid me as a journalist. That is, I promoted the company, received a salary for it, and in addition to this I received a fee from the publisher. This is a high level of PR.
If you structure the sources of my income, you can see that there is no advertising at all. The main part is influenza, that is, the formation of public opinion (by the way, I only recently learned this word), beneficial to the one who pays. In this case, private astronautics pays. I did not succeed with the advertisers at all, the relationship with them is short-term, and even if they were satisfied. On the one hand, there is an interest in advertising, but, on the other hand, I am not ready to advertise what I never dare to advise from the bottom of my heart. The only exception is private astronautics, since I am deeply convinced that astronautics are needed, that it needs to be developed and popularized. In turn, the astronautics understands that my activity is useful, and thus we had a good union with it.
I regularly write articles on Habr and in other publications, there is support for subscribers who are simply interested in activities in space and my thoughts on this topic. Twenty percent of my income comes from PR. I interact with government agencies and commercial entities as a remote PR consultant, as a small PR agency promoting space projects.
What to do and what not to do
Now a few lessons that I have learned from all my activities.
Do not pull a bunch of projects
The first was unsuccessful. The reason for the failure was that it was very physically difficult to drag a whole bunch of brands on yourself. When, for example, I compare myself with Asya Kazantseva, I see how well done she is: she publishes books in tens of thousands of copies, constantly goes with lectures, including paid ones. In her case, the ratio on the income chart will be more than mine. She is developing one brand - Asya Kazantseva. And I get Green Cat, Mars rover, Open Space, DAURIA, and even Vitaly Egorov as a separate brand. When you start working at the same time with everything, you get the feeling that you are carrying a heavy suitcase without a handle - and it’s hard to drag and throw. In the case of Outer Space, it’s a little easier for me, because there has already been formed an editorial board that works independently, and I only keep an eye on this project from time to time,
Become a news item
Another piece of advice that is relevant for companies is not enough to write about others. In addition, you also need to do something yourself to write about you. This is a very important thing from the point of view of promoting your own brand, and in general. My example of this is working on a spacecraft project that we want to launch on the moon so that it photographs the landing sites of the Americans. The task chosen is the most hype one you can find. The most controversial and discussed topics (except for black holes and other problems of the "far space") are whether there is life on Mars and whether the Americans were on the moon. If we manage to launch such an apparatus to the moon, then in the future it will be possible to think about launching a satellite to Mars.
A whole complex of factors inspired me to start this project. First of all, this is dissatisfaction with the interplanetary success of Roscosmos, which in twenty-five years launched as many as two of its own spacecraft, and both times - into the Pacific Ocean. Obviously, I will not live to see the day when Roscosmos creates its own Mars rover, it is easier to do it yourself. To implement such an ambitious project, we organized crowdfunding and raised a certain amount, which, of course, is sorely lacking. When they say to me: “Hey, have you collected the money, but where is the satellite?” I reply, “Calm! We just need a thousand more of such crowdfunding. " So we will not fly soon, although the work is underway. I will add that becoming news is not enough. We need to work actively on this, and if you started this business, you need to drag it further.
Write books
One more urgent advice - write books. It’s not easy to start writing a book and it’s even harder to understand what it is for. It seems that everyone is sitting on gadgets and therefore no one needs books. I, too, for a long time held this opinion, while I was lined up for publishing houses who wanted me to write a book. “Somehow later,” I thought. Then I was fired from DAURIA, and I felt free, I had a lot of time that I decided to spend with benefit, that is, write a book. I wrote it, from a distance.
And after that, I found out that children still read books. Books for them are a way to escape from the gadget. Books cannot be read through a smartphone, so they mainly communicate with each other using a smartphone. When they want peace, they pick up books, and paper ones, because the tablet also has Internet access and you don’t particularly read it. “Paper” is still in demand, so work in this direction is necessary. It’s also cool when you come to the bookstore and say: “Well, let’s look ... mmm ... They say that it’s a good author. We must take it. ”
The situation with television is somewhat similar to what I spoke about earlier. When you become a prominent expert, you can comment on the position of the company or the area in which it works (if you are an official PR man), It is normal when a PR man is an independent expert or an expert in this field. Television is ready to invite such people, to name the brand name, 70 percent is quite loyal to this, especially if you give them competent content and explain what they want to know. That is, you must become an expert for the media. Not just a contact for reaching out to any company speaker, but becoming a company speaker yourself. This is if we talk about working as a PR manager.
About the benefits of TV
If we talk about the activities of an expert who writes analysts, then recently I realized the real value of participation in television programs. Recently, something has been constantly happening with us - then suddenly something falls, then something is not drilled, then the head of the Russian Space Agency says something wrong. And then they begin to turn from television with a request to comment. And in Ostankino it happens you have to travel, and to Shabolovka. Yesterday, for example, I was in the Radio Liberty studio. At first it seems cool - “Wow! They called me to the TV. ”
You immediately agree and go, sometimes quite far away (for example, I once flew to Belarus for a half-hour transfer (of course, at their expense). But then you begin to understand - after all, this is my personal time, which I could to spend as I see fit. Of course, the interview is a pathos event, they will pay attention to you, but remember that in this case you do the content not for yourself, but for them.
Of course, this cooperation is mutual, but the “exhaust” from this is not so big. You have reached a certain level, your name is on TV, but there is no further growth as such. The biggest gain I had was when a ten-minute video about Mars-3 was released on Rossiya24 channel. And then about five hundred people joined the public on VKontakte. Otherwise, such appearances on "Echo of Moscow", on "Radio Vesti", on the Lighthouse, etc., give ten people who are added to social networks. Although, of course, this increases your credibility, and when a person visits your page and sees published videos from the TV with your participation, it works positively. In general, the response is small. To change this, you need to do something your own. Do not just go to different "guests", but have your own project, which will be anchor and to which all these your visits will lead new people. The simplest is a YouTube channel.
I had an interview on Goblin’s “Intelligence Survey” - 170 thousand views and 2 thousand joining YouTube. As you can see, meetings with YouTube are quite effective. However, you need to understand that today the audience watched the video with you, tomorrow or even half an hour later - with someone else, and they already forgot about you. Such a video works for recognition, and then this work consists only in the number of people who came and signed up for your project. And for this, your project must be developed. You will interest people, they will come to you and stay with you if you do something interesting. So you need to walk, but without a project that would support all these trips, this is a rather inefficient activity.
Answers on questions
- Have there ever been threats to your content? Perhaps some authorities did not like what you were writing?
Not. No one promised to break the face, but there was talk about crowdfunding, when they reproached us for collecting money, and we did not introduce the satellite and did not launch it to the moon. There were complaints about us and accusations that we were scammers. In such cases, I always asked: “Did you even drop off on this project? If I took off and was dissatisfied with work, I can return them. Yes, we are delaying the deadlines, but the work continues and we are moving towards the goals that we have set for ourselves. ”We regularly publish reports on the work done. Maybe it would be worth increasing their frequency.
Many did not like my eloquent and hot post " Lunar conspiracy as a test for aptitude". If a person believes that the Americans were not on the moon, then this person considers everyone around us to be liars or fools - all scientists (both American and Soviet), all Russian cosmonauts who are convinced that the person was on the moon. Such a person does not believe in the ability of people, in the ability of a person as a species to achieve such a great achievement. My post caused a huge number of comments, over five thousand. Contractions were in full swing for several weeks after publication. At first I tracked the messages, but then I quit being, and I don’t go into these “Augean comments”.
Another problem is politics. Cosmonautics, of course, is connected with politics, but I try to cut this topic off. It doesn’t always work out, but I try to stay aloof. For example, in the same "Outer Space" for a commentary on politics, a person receives a ban for a week, and if this is repeated, then forever. People just go to space and science to take a break from all this booth, which they see every day in the news on TV.
- The Public of Roscosmos - 400 thousand subscribers, the main content is “Space with a Human Face”, in Russian. Public NASA - 30 million subscribers, content - "Space with a human face", the main language is English. Kim Kardashian - 150 million subscribers, the main content is ass. The question arises - are technical blogs doomed to picking in the mud as a percentage of such popular blogs or is there any hope?
In this case, the problem is not that NASA or Roscosmos poorly popularize their subjects. Just an ass closer than space. The astronauts are somewhere far away, it is not clear where they fly, and indeed, maybe the Earth is flat. And the ass is always there. This topic is close to people and therefore more interesting.
I had two large influx of users. The first time it was with Mars-3, when everyone saw that ordinary users of VKontakte can independently go and make a discovery. And the second time it was connected with the Chelyabinsk meteorite. For most people, astronomy is somewhere out there, something distant and incomprehensible. But when astronomy comes to your home, then it immediately becomes relevant. So here is the issue of relevance. Any medical topic will go much better than a space one, any blogger who teaches how to cook buns will be more popular than a blogger who teaches spacecraft design. Because buns love everything, and spacecraft are something incomprehensible and complex. This is as natural as gender distribution among readers: 75% are boys and 25% are girls. Just because that the boys like the pieces of iron more. We can’t change this in any way. The exception is perhaps Elon Musk. Of course, he is also far from Kim Kardashian, but he walks well and managed to take a fresh look at space.
You have been working for a long time and started your public when there was little such content on the Web. And, probably, therefore there was such an active influx of users. And if you started your activity now, which social network would you choose? And another question: is it worth using some social networks that many consider dying, for example, the same LJ?
I have LJ most active in communication and he does not die. There are three types of social networks: links, such as Telegram, Twitter, there are networks with little content like Facebook or VKontakte, as well as a blog platform. There are a lot of the latter - this is LJ, and Medium, and many others. But in the end, people don’t care where you post your content. If they are subscribed to your pages, they will go to any site, wherever you publish your content.
As for LJ, he is very active inside, there is always a lively discussion. When I started LJ six years ago, they told me “What are you ?! LJ is dying! ” And so he is still "dying." After changing the rating system, my motivation for actively writing there fell. It turned out so that blogs got to the top, where the author posted one picture and one phrase. The main thing is that the publication is followed by seething in the comments. For my subject, writing so often fails, and the normal pace is one post per week. It is possible and a little faster, but it will already be stressful. Now I understand that with my content and my requirements for its quality it is impossible to fight for high places in the LJ ranking, that's why I do not try.
I have a page with 1,600 Telegram subscribers, but it's getting worse, everyone is looking for insiders there. I have no insiders from outer space and I do not see Telegram as a serious direction, where it would be worth investing.
And if I started my activity now, then I would choose YouTube as the most important tool.
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