August 19, 2016 at 10:05It's time to tell how I was a Beeline on Habré for 4 years - and what I learned about Habr during this time
Yesterday there was another Habr seminar 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, a long time ago I was offered to help VimpelCom with a blog. On a little unusual conditions. The first was the absence of any officialdom — hence completely detachable posts (for some of which the hands of the corporate segment would be boldly torn off), and the most relevant topics (the Base station is harmful? How much more!), And a lot more.
But I’ll start from the very beginning. So, Habr then had a cake - big and brutally aggressive,there were no hubs, and corporate blogs were a bit of a dead-end section. For any link or advertisement then almost banned. Or scored up to -50 per hour, for example. With a corporate snout in such a kalashny row 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: only techies write, and marketing for a cannon shot does not fit posts.
Techies, by the way, were completely awesome. They just wanted to spit on Habr, by and large. As an everywhere.
The first main question is why does a cellular operator need this at all.It’s clear, PR and all things, but - why? The answer is very simple: in fact, there are not so many places where the PPSC may seem good or thoughtful. He has everything like a system administrator or a plumber - they remember only when something does not work. So, technical work and digging into the jungle of how everything is arranged and why - this is a positive contact. Interesting? Yes. Is it helpful? And how. Later, as history developed, somewhere in the second year, it became clear that this was also a great opportunity to inform about how the company works internally. It's no secret that today every second corporate blog here solves the HR PR problem - that is, finding new people or creating the image of a positive employer. The third factor - materials were made 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 on 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 - it was also well solved. The authors of these posts with “come to test” were simply demolished by a wave of comers.
Naturally, all this dragged out on a large reach in social networks and, in addition, attracted the attention of journalists.
And then - complete freedom, you just need 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 whole routine that my company took upon myself, I met with the best technical experts, and they told me what they were doing.
Here it is necessary to stop a bit and explain that usually the Habr engineer is actually a damn thing.As well as journalists. As well as other people who distract him from setting up a satellite post, calibrating an atmospheric laser or picking in new equipment. Moreover, it is often dangerous to let journalists to such a person. Because without understanding what the techie says, new sensations in the spirit of “A scientist raped a journalist” may be born.
So, for the technical specialist to write something, we must persuade him. And even better - to make sure that he told everything, we wrote it down and designed it in the form of a post. Or so that he gives us the materials, and we formulate this. Or - so that we work together for half a day, and he showed everything. In general, most often we met with unconscious knowledge and an unwillingness to write something at all.
At this point it became clear that my team (specifically - Loft advertising agency, which we have long been almost for fun with established urban school graduate of the press center of Astrakhan koterina) there is awesome competence. Previously, we thought that our main story was completely freaking crazy recklessness in terms of PR moves. It was sometimes interesting to solve the problems of customers who required this approach. Well, this knowledge of mine was constantly applied in Mosigre. In general, I must say that Mosigra is a solid advertising business in half with cognitive science. Because at first it was necessary to teach people how to play board games (more precisely, restore culture), and then promote their network and production. Therefore, there was experience, and sometimes we took up the fun 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 meeting room. Quintessence: “Listen, you are the first contractor who generally understands what the engineer is saying. Moreover, he does not just understand, but asks questions. ” This was a surprise. By my naivety, I thought that the PR of technical companies is being made by adequate people. As it turned out later - no, the techie on the part of the agency will never be allowed directly to the customer. Because either he is not there, or then he does not need an agency.
At first, my experience with communication made itself felt: it turned out to ask the right questions. We had a common cultural code, and example bikes too. Then, a little later, when we learned more and more about the specifics of equipment, network planning, and so on, knowledge began to take shape in a single structure. It was possible to precisely compare what was connected with what and ask a question that made the engineer think hard, then become interested in himself and start digging. This was the most valuable, because when the engineer became interested, then the material was definitely very, very good.
Contact people also came across. For example, the “grandfather” of Vlasov became a real find for Habr. He has been known since almost since the echo-conferences as a communications specialist. He and a couple of people (technical heads of departments) began to propose topics themselves or answer questions.
Quite quickly, a list of rules for behavior on Habré was formed. Here is a sample checklist:
I tried not to get into the discussion and not show in any way my attitude to 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 he commented on their posts only a few times.
Now how to choose the topic. Our main contact were PR specialists. I must say that these are just insanely cool people: first Katya Turtseva (the “steel lady” who started with the call center operator, now she’s somewhere in Boston in IT), then Nadia Ivanova (she knew how to find a common language with any person in the company and knew exactly how to interest someone) and Katya Lebedeva (perfectly versed in technology and knowing what to ask, a man of honesty, always verifying facts very carefully; now she’s in Yandex), Lena Simkina (she’s a communications monster and “ your kid ", able to quickly resolve complex consents Nia). At first, we simply raised that there was something interesting for journalists in VimpelCom, and then we started digging deeper. And even deeper. So much deeper that much of the “excavated” was a surprise for the central office employees themselves. Sometimes. A common language with the signalmen was established immediately after they realized that they were not a journalist.
There were, of course, difficult cases, sometimes at all. In them, when I couldn’t take the information and figure it out more precisely, I had to use the good old method “we will sign it for you” - a “humanitarian” text was written, which the PR suggested that the expert sign it. The expert predictably stood up and made edits, that is, in fact, rewrote everything. And, full of righteous anger, he offered to publish it. What we wanted.
The workflow is lined up like this. About once a month there was a big meeting in Beeline, experts from different directions gathered there. They told what they had and how. I also often traveled around the country, and met in new cities with local experts. I’ll tell you about the brightest posts to make it a little clearer.
First post greetingwas that we categorically did not want to publish. The fact is that without knowing the specifics of Habr, going to the resource and saying “Hello, this is a hedgehog, and he will live here” is a suicidal undertaking. We already had an example of Sberbank, which was warmly greeted in the same post "Go Back to Hell." The only natural reaction to the fact that the mobile operator appears in your social network is to report some kind of bug. If it really freaked out, then adding a value judgment. After long battles, I still had to publish it like that - but I persuaded Katya to combine it with a post about a set of beta testers so that at least something useful remained. The post came out at +59, which surprised me incredibly. The fact is that, firstly, it seems that the whole TM team supported him, because of which he reached the main team in a matter of minutes, and, secondly, this was an important precedent for Habr.
Then the post “ On departure with a repair team ” was especially noted - one of the teams just photographed the work process, and we came across this set of pictures. Two things happened at once. Firstly, their leader saw this on Habré and became insane from various minor safety violations. Secondly, commentators ofigeli from how cool and "official" and unequivocally decided that this statement, they say, does not happen so clean in the real world.
Then, all of a sudden, Vlasov decided to answer a couple of common questions about SIM cards. The epoch-making post about the processor, memory and file system of the chip turned out . At the same time, people tried to write simply about their directions - either Blackberry, then television. We looked at how Habr reacts, and studied how to do it, and how not to.
It was very difficult to push a post about the harm of base stations , but in the end they did it. It was read in bulk by lawyers, PR specialists and security officers (most likely, it was they).
A guy from Krasnodar posted a couple of photos from the flood in Krymsk to the corporate blog, where they were allowed to restore communication. This was the first emergency, and the case of good journalistic work was not to be missed. We caught the "liquidator" Yuri right before leaving Moscow (he was on a business trip) to a cafe on Belorusskaya and asked what was there for an hour. Fast- in fact, his recorded direct speech (slightly processed) plus preserved photographs. What a miracle filters have passed - it’s just happiness. A less adequate company would not have missed “no matter what happens”. It seems that PR himself was dragging himself on the fact that such things could be told. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Beeline traditionally had strong network planning, and here they gave channels to other operators. Oh, yes, by the way, when we started digging into the architecture of the network, a whole series of posts was born from local things to the level of highways. Feeling - as if you are talking to the creators of Assembler.
Then we found contacts of specialists who live and work in the Far North, the Far East and other interesting places. There was a whole series of stories about communication in fields and distant factories. Here is the first. It was damn interesting to call up these "wild" places and listen through the hard cracking noise and double satellite delay, what is there and how. The photographs were very fascinating: either the base station on the truck failed under the ice, then the snow should be knocked off the broom with a broom. Of course, the guys, unlike the Moscow engineers, somehow filtering the bazaar, told everything as is, indicating who the deer was and in what situation. We learned a lot about contractors, suppliers and equipment features. Well, at the same time a couple of affectionate about marketing. All this fell into posts in the form of equivocations and hints, mind you. Therefore, when you read on the corporate blog something like “the supplier surprised me several times” - you should know that it’s “we are fucked up here from what they got up to.”
At this point, we began to figure out what generally makes stable systems work and how the network is developing. First, a professional paranoid came to us - a person who counts company money and knows the theory of probability. Here is his post . A dream job is simple. Almost immediately, we met the most important in network planning - banderass . It was just hickporn .
At the same time, we went on a visit with Katya Turtseva to Okhlobystin. Who doubted that he is he, do not hesitate. The story is that he registered on Habré on the road, very early in the morning before filming, and for the first time indicated 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 for other specialists). But here 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. Leave it, fucking bloggers. In general, the post, of course, was a hurricane, but I strongly remembered - there are no such people on Habr. The engineers are here, the rest are not.
By this year, we have gained experience and well knew what works on Habré and what doesn’t. An important thing happened in the middle of the project. I asked TM to fasten the statistics of post views so that the author could see it (then no one knew how many people read the post - this was only in corporate statistics). Habr took and opened it for everyone - this is the same eye icon at the bottom of the post with a viewing counter. With this eye, another wonderful story - thanks to the quick update of statistics, it became possible to navigate not by rating growth, but by views. This made it possible to put quick tests.
Here, for example, are the little things that helped raise the posts:
In general, the expedition piled on the sea.
At the same time, the second post-disaster about flooding in the Far East came out . How they worked there is just a fairy tale. Here we found photographs in the reports, and shot a chronicle of the working records of the teams, and were able to figure out who did what. The magical grandfather, who was not left without communication in the village with the water around, personally proved to me that not all mobile operators are evil bastards. His awesome quote, by the way, then went to press releases.
Or here is one of the first posts of tales on Habréfounded a new genre. I must say that there were twice as many tales, and there was very, very hardcore, like the girl called the call center and asked for the phone number and full name of the installer, who came in May, so that she could congratulate the newly made father. But most of it had to be removed - somewhere the security guards were turning a finger at the temple, somewhere the lawyers were stunned (not the right word) by reality, but somewhere the PR decided that he was fucking. Even with our crazy approach - well, fuck it.
There was one more new genre for Habr - FAQ, here is the first such post . Then there were more, but it was this one that became iconic in coolness. The main thing is to find questions whose answers are simply nowhere to google.
During this period, the workflow and strategy in general settled down. A new author came out, received a mountain of pluses and an invite, called for the next. In the comments, we collected interesting questions and scattered through PR on the company. Plus, PR gave us all its sources, and we knew what was happening inside. The post was prepared for about three weeks: the material itself was either taken orally from the speaker (and then turned into a post), or it was written by the specialist himself and shown to us. Then the engineer quietly trudged on how official formulations can be replaced with human language. But colleagues convinced him that it was so, and everything went smoothly. The post was finally coordinated (we very carefully insisted on checking the facts and ironically responsible for the bazaar, so PR re-checked the post with someone else in the subject), a lawyer (if necessary), a security officer, and go ahead. By the way cut percent 10 posts each time. Noticing the trend, we began to write more recklessly and frankly, and the security guards (it seems they were them) each time cut out the most egregious. But only one thing. So the blog was getting closer and closer to reality.
Now we need to talk about the comments. Engineers tried to respond to what was not necessary and not to respond to what was needed. We taught very simple things. Firstly, if you 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 that friendly, but they felt that they were in the same boat. Guys from Megaphone and MTS came to our posts a couple of times and also helped out. "Ours", by the way, helped them in their posts sometimes. In general, there was no competition among engineers - it was somewhere far away where tariffs were planned. I must say, there were a dozen minimum cases where they worked quite calmly with each other at the facilities, because it was necessary - if you didn’t work, people would be left without communication. If they were competing, then they would not have lifted a finger, would have watched how, due to failures, the subscribers of the “enemy” are leaving. But no, communication as such is more important. The same in the comments, the territory of the common cause. By the way, this is a very striking contrast to the Mail.ru blog of that time, where colleagues could come to their author in the comments and start to lower it merrily.
It was also very important not to turn every post into anti-advertising network. For example, you don’t need to do this (Megafon’s example, one of the latest posts): The
post, to put it mildly, didn’t have very many views (which means it was uninteresting or too official), but, more importantly, the 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 PR perfectly solved one simple task: it informed that it was necessary to leave Megaphone. This is a question of the quality of preparation of the material and the ability to answer for the bazaar.
So, so that everything was fine, comments should be considered as a continuation of the post and work with them.
The position that we did not let anyone but the engineers into the blog helped a lot to work with the negative. “Why is your tariff so expensive?” - and from some moment the readers themselves began to protect the authors - they say, do not touch the uncle, he twists the nuts. Uncle could help 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 fervor and interest right on the spot.
At that moment, another serious joy happened: Beeline suddenly activated his White Paper project. Like, you have to be honest and generally. The post turned out to be strange - at first it was read a little. I looked at it and thought: damn it, a huge company, admits mistakes, and I participate in all this. If only there wouldn’t be an outburst, if only not an outburst.
A couple of high-profile posts - about Yakutia and about Cambodia - ( one , two ). It was also difficult to push Cambodia - firstly, the author was not from Beeline (more precisely, he already worked at the European headquarters and did not submit to Russia), and secondly, just then the operation in Cambodia was curtailed, and this was not the most successful time for VimpelCom there. But experience turned out to be more important, and thanks, again, due to the mega-adequacy of the PR department, which was already directly stuck on the Habr, everything worked out.
PR suddenly stepped forward and published a book. Naturally, the book with all posts of employees from Habr. A fat figovina came out: it looks like bad American police officers beat petty criminals in crime films. Not a telephone directory, of course, but it was quite possible to go off. I think every author was pleased to hold such a thing in his hands. And I found out that 20-30 posts is a very dofig of letters, and I also thought about my book about Mosigra. How it ended - well, you most likely know.
Let's get back to Beeline again. Here, for example, the remembered stories yet. About transferring a cell number- in fact, it’s a very controversial thing, and the other operator simply could not release it. It was necessary to understand in detail the topic of which one cannot speak, to recall the surprises of the law, to recall the crooked deadlines, to recall the reluctance of small operators to cooperate ... In short, there was still a swamp. And most of it was raked by techies. Look at the post - this is the most glamorous version of what happened. Here is a beautiful givtone wrote about his routers and asked to see what happened. We agreed on a heading a couple of days, but it came out just like that, achivka . Another post about highways with excellent photos from the fields. We dragged him for almost three months - the lawyers could not agree on the map and the status of ownership of some lines. Herethe first post from my hometown of Astrakhan - I remember how I broke into the director’s office of the region almost “off my feet” and began to explain what I want. It turned out he was a former installer. After 20 minutes, we stood on the roof of the building two blocks away, and he brushed off his trousers and a jacket (I had to walk five meters on all fours in a very dusty construction), talking about the installation with a twinkle in my eyes. I probably will not forget for a long time how, without hesitation, he plopped down in this official form into the mud and crawled.
Well, the last posts where we helped until the 4 years of the contract ended - this is about the satellite station (here is the firstbut everything is worth reading from the author). The specialist is a jack of all trades; he knows everything about satellite communications. Modest. Taciturn. It is unrealistic to get information out of it. Before that they tried it - it wasn’t given. Then for the second time in my life I applied the journalistic technique of the “student” - I didn’t introduce myself very carefully, and he decided that I was such an intern from the company who was explained about satellite communications, to put it mildly, through the ass. Further as on rails - I told my version of how it works (he took a kind of “exam” for me), he was jarred, and he corrected. I wrote, standing under the snow on the roof, trying to simultaneously close the lens with my hand from the snow. Then he got into a conversation and began to poison the bikes, showing either the place where the crow had boiled, or the place where they had raised the plate to the roof from. There was a machine of memories. Well, then he showed the archive of photos from the film. It was all just magical, for the sake of this, probably, 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 trudged when givtone suddenly said about Mosigra, and they spat him:
And this was justified. For example, Mail.ru (the leader now and then in corporate rating) made an average post with 22.514 views (15.300 people by median), rating - 31.8 (median - 25.5), Megaphone as a direct competitor to Beeline on the site - readings by 33.373 on average, the average post rating is 20.8. The median rating is only 13.5, views - 22.650 per post (few posts, there is an outlier with an interesting engineering post that stands out in the line - if you look at it in two years, then there is generally 9600 per post and rating 9). Mosigra had 64.790 average views per post (median - 52.800 people per post), an average rating of 97.3 (median 78). And Beeline - 51.887 views (median 40.401) with an average rating of 57 (46 medians).
Final tips are:
To this - the correct time of publication at the time of the maximum advantage of a karmometer or almost guaranteed to get into the best with a jam there as long as possible during the daytime peak traffic on 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, the 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 you managed to create. We, in fact, have accumulated a whole library of engineering knowledge, which would be very difficult to obtain in another way. And finally, I want to say thanks again to all those who managed to get to know during this time. It was incredibly interesting.
Of course, it was not quite me, but close. The fact is, a long time ago I was offered to help VimpelCom with a blog. On a little unusual conditions. The first was the absence of any officialdom — hence completely detachable posts (for some of which the hands of the corporate segment would be boldly torn off), and the most relevant topics (the Base station is harmful? How much more!), And a lot more.
But I’ll start from the very beginning. So, Habr then had a cake - big and brutally aggressive,there were no hubs, and corporate blogs were a bit of a dead-end section. For any link or advertisement then almost banned. Or scored up to -50 per hour, for example. With a corporate snout in such a kalashny row 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: only techies write, and marketing for a cannon shot does not fit posts.
Techies, by the way, were completely awesome. They just wanted to spit on Habr, by and large. As an everywhere.
The first main question is why does a cellular operator need this at all.It’s clear, PR and all things, but - why? The answer is very simple: in fact, there are not so many places where the PPSC may seem good or thoughtful. He has everything like a system administrator or a plumber - they remember only when something does not work. So, technical work and digging into the jungle of how everything is arranged and why - this is a positive contact. Interesting? Yes. Is it helpful? And how. Later, as history developed, somewhere in the second year, it became clear that this was also a great opportunity to inform about how the company works internally. It's no secret that today every second corporate blog here solves the HR PR problem - that is, finding new people or creating the image of a positive employer. The third factor - materials were made 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 on 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 - it was also well solved. The authors of these posts with “come to test” were simply demolished by a wave of comers.
Naturally, all this dragged out on a large reach in social networks and, in addition, attracted the attention of journalists.
And then - complete freedom, you just need 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 whole routine that my company took upon myself, I met with the best technical experts, and they told me what they were doing.
Here it is necessary to stop a bit and explain that usually the Habr engineer is actually a damn thing.As well as journalists. As well as other people who distract him from setting up a satellite post, calibrating an atmospheric laser or picking in new equipment. Moreover, it is often dangerous to let journalists to such a person. Because without understanding what the techie says, new sensations in the spirit of “A scientist raped a journalist” may be born.
So, for the technical specialist to write something, we must persuade him. And even better - to make sure that he told everything, we wrote it down and designed it in the form of a post. Or so that he gives us the materials, and we formulate this. Or - so that we work together for half a day, and he showed everything. In general, most often we met with unconscious knowledge and an unwillingness to write something at all.
At this point it became clear that my team (specifically - Loft advertising agency, which we have long been almost for fun with established urban school graduate of the press center of Astrakhan koterina) there is awesome competence. Previously, we thought that our main story was completely freaking crazy recklessness in terms of PR moves. It was sometimes interesting to solve the problems of customers who required this approach. Well, this knowledge of mine was constantly applied in Mosigre. In general, I must say that Mosigra is a solid advertising business in half with cognitive science. Because at first it was necessary to teach people how to play board games (more precisely, restore culture), and then promote their network and production. Therefore, there was experience, and sometimes we took up the fun 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 meeting room. Quintessence: “Listen, you are the first contractor who generally understands what the engineer is saying. Moreover, he does not just understand, but asks questions. ” This was a surprise. By my naivety, I thought that the PR of technical companies is being made by adequate people. As it turned out later - no, the techie on the part of the agency will never be allowed directly to the customer. Because either he is not there, or then he does not need an agency.
At first, my experience with communication made itself felt: it turned out to ask the right questions. We had a common cultural code, and example bikes too. Then, a little later, when we learned more and more about the specifics of equipment, network planning, and so on, knowledge began to take shape in a single structure. It was possible to precisely compare what was connected with what and ask a question that made the engineer think hard, then become interested in himself and start digging. This was the most valuable, because when the engineer became interested, then the material was definitely very, very good.
Contact people also came across. For example, the “grandfather” of Vlasov became a real find for Habr. He has been known since almost since the echo-conferences as a communications specialist. He and a couple of people (technical heads of departments) began to propose topics themselves or answer questions.
Quite quickly, a list of rules for behavior on Habré was formed. Here is a sample checklist:
- A post is written only by someone who has a direct technical relation to the topic. If the post was gathered by several employees, the one who can answer the questions most accurately publishes.
- Each employee must have an exact position in the profile at the time of the publication of the post (we had a couple of security officers, they wrote something neutral, like a manager, plus some people removed the position after a week). This is necessary so that the person commenting on the post knows exactly who he is talking to.
- After 4 hours of publication, the author is in touch to quickly respond to comments. The same time is in touch with PR, if the issue will concern the policy of the company. Answering questions about the company as a whole can only be done by checking with the PR if they haven’t talked out anything superfluous (Beeline is a joint-stock company, and any insider information accidentally issued may become an unpleasant incident).
- No one ever speaks on behalf of the company, only on their own.
- Comments that are not directly addressed 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 was between readers.
I tried not to get into the discussion and not show in any way my attitude to 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 he commented on their posts only a few times.
Now how to choose the topic. Our main contact were PR specialists. I must say that these are just insanely cool people: first Katya Turtseva (the “steel lady” who started with the call center operator, now she’s somewhere in Boston in IT), then Nadia Ivanova (she knew how to find a common language with any person in the company and knew exactly how to interest someone) and Katya Lebedeva (perfectly versed in technology and knowing what to ask, a man of honesty, always verifying facts very carefully; now she’s in Yandex), Lena Simkina (she’s a communications monster and “ your kid ", able to quickly resolve complex consents Nia). At first, we simply raised that there was something interesting for journalists in VimpelCom, and then we started digging deeper. And even deeper. So much deeper that much of the “excavated” was a surprise for the central office employees themselves. Sometimes. A common language with the signalmen was established immediately after they realized that they were not a journalist.
There were, of course, difficult cases, sometimes at all. In them, when I couldn’t take the information and figure it out more precisely, I had to use the good old method “we will sign it for you” - a “humanitarian” text was written, which the PR suggested that the expert sign it. The expert predictably stood up and made edits, that is, in fact, rewrote everything. And, full of righteous anger, he offered to publish it. What we wanted.
The workflow is lined up like this. About once a month there was a big meeting in Beeline, experts from different directions gathered there. They told what they had and how. I also often traveled around the country, and met in new cities with local experts. I’ll tell you about the brightest posts to make it a little clearer.
First post greetingwas that we categorically did not want to publish. The fact is that without knowing the specifics of Habr, going to the resource and saying “Hello, this is a hedgehog, and he will live here” is a suicidal undertaking. We already had an example of Sberbank, which was warmly greeted in the same post "Go Back to Hell." The only natural reaction to the fact that the mobile operator appears in your social network is to report some kind of bug. If it really freaked out, then adding a value judgment. After long battles, I still had to publish it like that - but I persuaded Katya to combine it with a post about a set of beta testers so that at least something useful remained. The post came out at +59, which surprised me incredibly. The fact is that, firstly, it seems that the whole TM team supported him, because of which he reached the main team in a matter of minutes, and, secondly, this was an important precedent for Habr.
Then the post “ On departure with a repair team ” was especially noted - one of the teams just photographed the work process, and we came across this set of pictures. Two things happened at once. Firstly, their leader saw this on Habré and became insane from various minor safety violations. Secondly, commentators ofigeli from how cool and "official" and unequivocally decided that this statement, they say, does not happen so clean in the real world.
Then, all of a sudden, Vlasov decided to answer a couple of common questions about SIM cards. The epoch-making post about the processor, memory and file system of the chip turned out . At the same time, people tried to write simply about their directions - either Blackberry, then television. We looked at how Habr reacts, and studied how to do it, and how not to.
It was very difficult to push a post about the harm of base stations , but in the end they did it. It was read in bulk by lawyers, PR specialists and security officers (most likely, it was they).
A guy from Krasnodar posted a couple of photos from the flood in Krymsk to the corporate blog, where they were allowed to restore communication. This was the first emergency, and the case of good journalistic work was not to be missed. We caught the "liquidator" Yuri right before leaving Moscow (he was on a business trip) to a cafe on Belorusskaya and asked what was there for an hour. Fast- in fact, his recorded direct speech (slightly processed) plus preserved photographs. What a miracle filters have passed - it’s just happiness. A less adequate company would not have missed “no matter what happens”. It seems that PR himself was dragging himself on the fact that such things could be told. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Beeline traditionally had strong network planning, and here they gave channels to other operators. Oh, yes, by the way, when we started digging into the architecture of the network, a whole series of posts was born from local things to the level of highways. Feeling - as if you are talking to the creators of Assembler.
Then we found contacts of specialists who live and work in the Far North, the Far East and other interesting places. There was a whole series of stories about communication in fields and distant factories. Here is the first. It was damn interesting to call up these "wild" places and listen through the hard cracking noise and double satellite delay, what is there and how. The photographs were very fascinating: either the base station on the truck failed under the ice, then the snow should be knocked off the broom with a broom. Of course, the guys, unlike the Moscow engineers, somehow filtering the bazaar, told everything as is, indicating who the deer was and in what situation. We learned a lot about contractors, suppliers and equipment features. Well, at the same time a couple of affectionate about marketing. All this fell into posts in the form of equivocations and hints, mind you. Therefore, when you read on the corporate blog something like “the supplier surprised me several times” - you should know that it’s “we are fucked up here from what they got up to.”
At this point, we began to figure out what generally makes stable systems work and how the network is developing. First, a professional paranoid came to us - a person who counts company money and knows the theory of probability. Here is his post . A dream job is simple. Almost immediately, we met the most important in network planning - banderass . It was just hickporn .
At the same time, we went on a visit with Katya Turtseva to Okhlobystin. Who doubted that he is he, do not hesitate. The story is that he registered on Habré on the road, very early in the morning before filming, and for the first time indicated 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 for other specialists). But here 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. Leave it, fucking bloggers. In general, the post, of course, was a hurricane, but I strongly remembered - there are no such people on Habr. The engineers are here, the rest are not.
By this year, we have gained experience and well knew what works on Habré and what doesn’t. An important thing happened in the middle of the project. I asked TM to fasten the statistics of post views so that the author could see it (then no one knew how many people read the post - this was only in corporate statistics). Habr took and opened it for everyone - this is the same eye icon at the bottom of the post with a viewing counter. With this eye, another wonderful story - thanks to the quick update of statistics, it became possible to navigate not by rating growth, but by views. This made it possible to put quick tests.
Here, for example, are the little things that helped raise the posts:
- The post is out, the author immediately adds the post to his favorites. Previously, it was just something like “touch% post%”, after the appearance of the new sidebar, it was also a way to notify your “friends” (subscribers in the new scheme) about the 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 select several hubs, so we first put it in Svyaz or Infrastructure, and then, at +15 (when the post appeared below the best one in a day), we transferred it to the corporate one. That is, the material went to RSS for 50 thousand people, and then, when it was on the main page and at the best of it, it was transferred to the corporate blog. I learned this trick from Burum when he was not working in TM. By the way, his sad fate with IBM was an excellent warning that there was no croill. Even if marketing offered something like that, we had an iron heavy argument.
- When a new post came out, a corporate mailing was made to all employees with accounts - they say, see what, vote. On better days (near the end of the blog), this newsletter has grown to 30 voting users. Nevertheless, there were depressingly few votes from her: 2-3, rarely - 4-5.
- Typos were sent to the PM. They were immediately corrected and added to karma, if they could. Sometimes the speakers couldn’t write either to me or to PR (Katya had a user with karma +60, plus then another Katya had +15) - then they added.
- For each useful comment with new information, they added karma to the post.
- It turned out, for example, that two pictures before kat work fine right away (then many who repeated this technique). In the same place, I found out that the signature to the photo before kat adds attention to the post, and so I learned that any glossy pictures that at least somehow give off officiality are immediately a cross on the material.
- Any attempt to bring something in the official language is minus 30% at least to the readings of the post.
In general, the expedition piled on the sea.
At the same time, the second post-disaster about flooding in the Far East came out . How they worked there is just a fairy tale. Here we found photographs in the reports, and shot a chronicle of the working records of the teams, and were able to figure out who did what. The magical grandfather, who was not left without communication in the village with the water around, personally proved to me that not all mobile operators are evil bastards. His awesome quote, by the way, then went to press releases.
Or here is one of the first posts of tales on Habréfounded a new genre. I must say that there were twice as many tales, and there was very, very hardcore, like the girl called the call center and asked for the phone number and full name of the installer, who came in May, so that she could congratulate the newly made father. But most of it had to be removed - somewhere the security guards were turning a finger at the temple, somewhere the lawyers were stunned (not the right word) by reality, but somewhere the PR decided that he was fucking. Even with our crazy approach - well, fuck it.
There was one more new genre for Habr - FAQ, here is the first such post . Then there were more, but it was this one that became iconic in coolness. The main thing is to find questions whose answers are simply nowhere to google.
During this period, the workflow and strategy in general settled down. A new author came out, received a mountain of pluses and an invite, called for the next. In the comments, we collected interesting questions and scattered through PR on the company. Plus, PR gave us all its sources, and we knew what was happening inside. The post was prepared for about three weeks: the material itself was either taken orally from the speaker (and then turned into a post), or it was written by the specialist himself and shown to us. Then the engineer quietly trudged on how official formulations can be replaced with human language. But colleagues convinced him that it was so, and everything went smoothly. The post was finally coordinated (we very carefully insisted on checking the facts and ironically responsible for the bazaar, so PR re-checked the post with someone else in the subject), a lawyer (if necessary), a security officer, and go ahead. By the way cut percent 10 posts each time. Noticing the trend, we began to write more recklessly and frankly, and the security guards (it seems they were them) each time cut out the most egregious. But only one thing. So the blog was getting closer and closer to reality.
Now we need to talk about the comments. Engineers tried to respond to what was not necessary and not to respond to what was needed. We taught very simple things. Firstly, if you 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 that friendly, but they felt that they were in the same boat. Guys from Megaphone and MTS came to our posts a couple of times and also helped out. "Ours", by the way, helped them in their posts sometimes. In general, there was no competition among engineers - it was somewhere far away where tariffs were planned. I must say, there were a dozen minimum cases where they worked quite calmly with each other at the facilities, because it was necessary - if you didn’t work, people would be left without communication. If they were competing, then they would not have lifted a finger, would have watched how, due to failures, the subscribers of the “enemy” are leaving. But no, communication as such is more important. The same in the comments, the territory of the common cause. By the way, this is a very striking contrast to the Mail.ru blog of that time, where colleagues could come to their author in the comments and start to lower it merrily.
It was also very important not to turn every post into anti-advertising network. For example, you don’t need to do this (Megafon’s example, one of the latest posts): The
post, to put it mildly, didn’t have very many views (which means it was uninteresting or too official), but, more importantly, the 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 PR perfectly solved one simple task: it informed that it was necessary to leave Megaphone. This is a question of the quality of preparation of the material and the ability to answer for the bazaar.
So, so that everything was fine, comments should be considered as a continuation of the post and work with them.
The position that we did not let anyone but the engineers into the blog helped a lot to work with the negative. “Why is your tariff so expensive?” - and from some moment the readers themselves began to protect the authors - they say, do not touch the uncle, he twists the nuts. Uncle could help 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 fervor and interest right on the spot.
At that moment, another serious joy happened: Beeline suddenly activated his White Paper project. Like, you have to be honest and generally. The post turned out to be strange - at first it was read a little. I looked at it and thought: damn it, a huge company, admits mistakes, and I participate in all this. If only there wouldn’t be an outburst, if only not an outburst.
A couple of high-profile posts - about Yakutia and about Cambodia - ( one , two ). It was also difficult to push Cambodia - firstly, the author was not from Beeline (more precisely, he already worked at the European headquarters and did not submit to Russia), and secondly, just then the operation in Cambodia was curtailed, and this was not the most successful time for VimpelCom there. But experience turned out to be more important, and thanks, again, due to the mega-adequacy of the PR department, which was already directly stuck on the Habr, everything worked out.
PR suddenly stepped forward and published a book. Naturally, the book with all posts of employees from Habr. A fat figovina came out: it looks like bad American police officers beat petty criminals in crime films. Not a telephone directory, of course, but it was quite possible to go off. I think every author was pleased to hold such a thing in his hands. And I found out that 20-30 posts is a very dofig of letters, and I also thought about my book about Mosigra. How it ended - well, you most likely know.
Let's get back to Beeline again. Here, for example, the remembered stories yet. About transferring a cell number- in fact, it’s a very controversial thing, and the other operator simply could not release it. It was necessary to understand in detail the topic of which one cannot speak, to recall the surprises of the law, to recall the crooked deadlines, to recall the reluctance of small operators to cooperate ... In short, there was still a swamp. And most of it was raked by techies. Look at the post - this is the most glamorous version of what happened. Here is a beautiful givtone wrote about his routers and asked to see what happened. We agreed on a heading a couple of days, but it came out just like that, achivka . Another post about highways with excellent photos from the fields. We dragged him for almost three months - the lawyers could not agree on the map and the status of ownership of some lines. Herethe first post from my hometown of Astrakhan - I remember how I broke into the director’s office of the region almost “off my feet” and began to explain what I want. It turned out he was a former installer. After 20 minutes, we stood on the roof of the building two blocks away, and he brushed off his trousers and a jacket (I had to walk five meters on all fours in a very dusty construction), talking about the installation with a twinkle in my eyes. I probably will not forget for a long time how, without hesitation, he plopped down in this official form into the mud and crawled.
Well, the last posts where we helped until the 4 years of the contract ended - this is about the satellite station (here is the firstbut everything is worth reading from the author). The specialist is a jack of all trades; he knows everything about satellite communications. Modest. Taciturn. It is unrealistic to get information out of it. Before that they tried it - it wasn’t given. Then for the second time in my life I applied the journalistic technique of the “student” - I didn’t introduce myself very carefully, and he decided that I was such an intern from the company who was explained about satellite communications, to put it mildly, through the ass. Further as on rails - I told my version of how it works (he took a kind of “exam” for me), he was jarred, and he corrected. I wrote, standing under the snow on the roof, trying to simultaneously close the lens with my hand from the snow. Then he got into a conversation and began to poison the bikes, showing either the place where the crow had boiled, or the place where they had raised the plate to the roof from. There was a machine of memories. Well, then he showed the archive of photos from the film. It was all just magical, for the sake of this, probably, 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 trudged when givtone suddenly said about Mosigra, and they spat him:
And this was justified. For example, Mail.ru (the leader now and then in corporate rating) made an average post with 22.514 views (15.300 people by median), rating - 31.8 (median - 25.5), Megaphone as a direct competitor to Beeline on the site - readings by 33.373 on average, the average post rating is 20.8. The median rating is only 13.5, views - 22.650 per post (few posts, there is an outlier with an interesting engineering post that stands out in the line - if you look at it in two years, then there is generally 9600 per post and rating 9). Mosigra had 64.790 average views per post (median - 52.800 people per post), an average rating of 97.3 (median 78). And Beeline - 51.887 views (median 40.401) with an average rating of 57 (46 medians).
Final tips are:
- A topic that one way or another concerns everyone (+ 20%)
- Something surprising inside, - as one of the readers said, “one mistery solved” (+ 20%)
- Clear title without yellowness (+ 10%)
- No attempt to sell anything. No conclusions for readers. We lay out the facts, everyone decides for himself (+ 30%).
- A very accurate fact-checking and immediately asking yourself: “what would an evil competitor get to the bottom” (he insures against critical situations).
- A good picture taken in the field or drawn directly by a specialist (+ 10%).
- Clear responses to comments (+ 10%)
To this - the correct time of publication at the time of the maximum advantage of a karmometer or almost guaranteed to get into the best with a jam there as long as possible during the daytime peak traffic on 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, the 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 you managed to create. We, in fact, have accumulated a whole library of engineering knowledge, which would be very difficult to obtain in another way. And finally, I want to say thanks again to all those who managed to get to know during this time. It was incredibly interesting.