How to set up a VKontakte news feed based on your interests. Instruction. How the smart VKontakte feed works: ranking posts in VK News feed in VK

If you are the owner of your own community, then you have probably heard about the smart VKontakte news feed. Today we will analyze what a VKontakte smart feed is and how to use it. What are the pros and cons it gives project authors and what you need to know so that your subscribers still see the content addressed to them in the news feed.

How the Vkontakte news feed is formed

Today, people receive a huge amount of information from various sources. She pours on them from everywhere. From TV screens, on the street, in supermarkets, on phones, on websites and, of course, in social networks.

People add friends to themselves, join various groups, subscribe to publics and thus form their VKontakte news feed.

Well, since everyone has at least a hundred friends and, in addition, there are about a hundred more communities in the arsenal, a person simply cannot read the content that flows like a river on him.

According to experts, users have time to view no more than 20% of the information that is published in their news feed, and often the most necessary and important remains behind the scenes.

After the introduction of smart tape, the situation has changed radically. The smart feed algorithm reorders the news and shows interesting posts above the rest. Moreover, these are individual settings and for each individual user of VKontakte they are their own, personal.

How smart tape "knows" what exactly you are interested in

A smart tape is smart enough to constantly learn. It studies and analyzes many factors and determines how much a person will be interested in the information that you publish in the group.

What are these factors? First of all, human interaction with content is the basis. Smart feed analyzes which posts you like the most, what you repost, what you comment on.

In addition, the relevance (date) of publications, the popularity of your posts with other people and how actively they interact with them are analyzed.

VKontakte claims that a lot of users have already switched to a smart feed, and after that the number of post views increased by 20%, and "likes" - by 40%.

How to enable smart feed

In order to enable the smart feed in your VKontakte profile, you need to go to your page and click on the "news" button

Your news feed will open in front of you. Pay attention to the “Interesting first” button, which is located on the right under the “News” block.

By moving the slider, you can turn the Interesting First button on and off, thus turning the smart feed on or off in your profile.

How smart feed is useful for owners of VKontakte groups and publics

A smart feed is not only useful for users, as they get more relevant and interesting posts in their news feed.

The smart feed is also useful for owners of VKontakte groups and publics, as it increases the reach and response of the target audience.

How do we need to work with the VKontakte community now so that our subscribers can see our posts? Let's look at each item in detail.

1. Unique content

Smart feed hits communities that are used to stealing other people's content. If you want your posts to be shown to your subscribers, create your own unique, high-quality and diverse content.

You can do this in any subject - you just need to turn on your imagination and head. We work according to the rule: “Less is better”. Let your group have 1 post per day, then such that it collects a lot of likes, reposts and comments.

Now there is no point in publishing 5 posts per day in a group. If they are not interesting to users, they simply will not see them. You will post your content for yourself.

2. Record format

If a person likes long posts more, then the smart feed will show them to him. If he likes collections of pictures, then he will see exactly the pictures lined up in a beautiful visual row.

3. Quality media content

People are now picky and are already very selective about pictures that are worth watching and liking. And if in the social network "Odnoklassniki" you can often find photos of poor quality, then VKontakte does not work anymore.

VK monitors the quality of media content, and if you want your posts to be higher in the news feed of your readers, then take the trouble to adhere to the following rules:

• The size of photos and illustrations in landscape orientation must be at least 700px wide;
• Use video in high quality - 720p or 1080p;

4. Feedback

If earlier many administrators closed comments under posts so as not to waste their precious time on moderation and spam removal, now this should never be done.

Vice versa! You need to swing the comments and encourage people to communicate.

Posts with comments become more meaningful and arouse the keen interest of readers, which means that they will be shown in the news feed of people higher.

In no case do not close the comments, but rather keep the communication in them. Call for fellowship. Communicate with people yourself. Work on engaging people in the conversation. Comments will complement your posts and make them more meaningful. Users will see such publications higher in their news feed.

To make your life easier, just turn on the unwanted comments filter and that's it.

5. Publication frequency

The times when the reach of your posts was directly related to the number of posts have sunk into oblivion. Now, if you want to achieve higher reach, you need to post interesting and unique content first. On the contrary, an excessive number of posts can lead to a decrease in coverage in the future.

6. Relevance of news

How do you feel about hashtags? If you follow the latest news on VKontakte and use hashtags, your posts will be shown higher in the news feed.

7. Proper use of reposts.

Don't do regular reposts! Their time has passed. Well, if you liked someone's post, then give your assessment and, after adding personal comments, publish it in your group. Better yet, just retell the information in your own words and don't forget to link to the source.

8. Promotion tools

And of course (who would doubt it), if you want as many people as possible to see your content, the VKontakte social network offers to use its tools for promotion.

9. Statistics

And don't forget analytics. Statistics are everything! Be sure to keep an eye on your community stats and pay close attention to the reach of posts in your group. Only in this way will you be able to study the preferences of your target audience and, as a result, increase the reach of your content.

“Chief editor of the GetGoodRank blog, web analyst, blogger.
Smart VK feed is formed based on the interests of users. We talk about the factors by which the VK algorithm determines the interest of users in posts and ranks posts.»

The average user is subscribed to several hundred pages, groups and friends, from which about 500 publications appear in his feed daily. Studies of audience activity on VK have shown that a person consumes no more than 20% of the information that enters the feed. In such a stream of publications, it is easy to miss important information. That is why the social network VK launched a smart feed. We tell you how the smart VK feed works and what its advantages are for the authors of publications.

The smart feed is driven by a new post ranking algorithm that calculates user interest in posts and places more interesting posts above the rest in the feed.

Observations of users who turned on the smart VK feed showed that their activity increased by an average of 20%, and the number of likes by 40%. Smart VK feed increases the coverage of the target audience for the authors of publications.

Smart VK feed in action

VKontakte traditionally uses the machine learning method to form the user's news feed. The algorithm takes into account many factors to determine how the post matches the interests of the user and where in the feed to show it.

Among the analyzed factors:

• user activity in comments
• post likes
• post view time
• clicking on links in a post
• post reposts
• user interactions with media files: audio, video, photos
• record marks “ It is not interesting” - this mark is of particular importance, since the action reduces the priority of other similar posts in the user's feed.

Based on the received data, an individual order of entries in the news feed of each user is formed.

If the user activates the smart feed in the desktop VK, then the feed will be connected automatically on mobile devices.

findings

Changing the VK newsfeed, taking into account user behavior, once again proves that behavioral factors, the quality of the user interface, the availability of functions for the user are of paramount importance for the success of a project on the network.

The owners of VKontakte seem to be flirting with SMM specialists, offering to find clues on their own that would help them understand exactly how the ranking of posts in the feed and recommendations works. Such an approach, in principle, has the right to life, because if we thoroughly know all the features of the algorithm, we can easily manipulate it. So you have to monitor the media space, trying to put together a puzzle from disparate statements. Well, at least sometimes there are large-scale leaks, like the one that served as the reason for the creation of this material. Today's article is based on an interview with Andrey Zakonov, Director of Growth and Research at VK, and Sergey Paranko, Director of Development of the Media Ecosystem of the social network.

How does the smart feed on VKontakte work?

To begin with, let's look at the basis on which recommendations are formed for a particular user. The first thing to realize is that the system puts the interests of the average content consumer at the forefront. You will say: “There is nothing new here, this is how search engines do it, this is how context targeting works.” However, VC went further, trying to take into account factors that change dynamically.

Example 1 The man went to the country and keeps track of updates through an ancient, slow tablet with mobile Internet, the speed of which also leaves much to be desired. The social network sees this and sends posts with bulky videos and GIFs to the very bottom of the feed, even if the posts are characterized by 100% relevance to a particular individual.

Example 2 As a rule, during the working day, people prefer short and capacious publications (for example, news, memes, etc.), and in the evening they can afford to read longreads. This is also taken into account and the posts that the user is likely to read “here and now” are displayed in the top.

In other words, the VKontakte smart feed algorithm takes into account not just the quality of the post, but also how a particular user will interact with it. This significantly complicates the work of SMM specialists, because now you need to understand the preferences of the target audience more deeply, and not just segment subscribers by gender, age, profession, and other socio-demographic characteristics, as before. Now this measure seems redundant, but given the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies, it is better to prepare!

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Separately, it is worth commenting on example No. 1. Yes, the quality of the network connection and the performance of the client device play a role, but you should not think that adding compressed jpg and low-resolution videos to posts will help increase coverage and show content even to owners of “calculators”. As before, in its work, the VKontakte smart feed gives preference to images with a width of at least 510 pixels and videos in HD and higher. Thus, by lowering the quality of multimedia, you, on the contrary, will reduce coverage.

It is also worth dispelling the myth regarding text content: there are no restrictions on the size of articles. If you want to convey fresh news to the audience, write succinctly and briefly, but when it comes to something large, the main thing is to open the topic. The only caveat: for longreads, it is best to use VKontakte's own HTML editor, added on January 23, 2018. To use it, just click on the inconspicuous icon in the post creation menu.

This tool greatly simplifies the work with text due to the fact that:

● drafts are saved automatically - you will never lose valuable information;
● formatting is also automated (for example, the editor selects the optimal indents for paragraphs and helps create a beautiful preview);
● articles meet the requirements of search engines (hierarchy of headings h1, h2, etc. is respected) - they are indexed as well as pages of ordinary sites.

Another important nuance concerns wiki markup: this format is considered purely desktop, so the materials created with its help, in principle, are not displayed in the “Recommendations” of the VK mobile application. This should be taken into account if the vast majority of your target audience uses portable gadgets.

In addition, the VKontakte smart feed algorithm does not impose a penalty on “special” content (for example, erotic content) - all the same rules apply to it as, for example, to pictures with cats. Pre-moderation also does not exist: you are free to post in a group or public any information that is not prohibited by the legislation of the Russian Federation or the user agreement of the social network. However, do not forget that any reader can complain about the post, including if it contains false information (“fake news”). Applications are considered in manual mode, there is also no critical mass of complaints, upon reaching which the record is deleted.

How to get the fire of Prometheus VKontakte?

At the beginning of the year, VK launched an algorithm designed to help creators of original content become famous. It works as follows: a neural network searches for and analyzes publications, evaluating both their quality and the reaction of readers. By classifying what is found, artificial intelligence adds posts to recommendations to users who may be potentially interested in them. At the same time, even indirect contact with the original source is optional: a person may not know at all about the existence of a particular group and may not have friends in it.

Featured content is prioritized in the search results, which helps increase your reach. After a week, the label can be re-assigned (but to a different post), and so on ad infinitum. Here's what you need to know about the new algorithm:

1. The popularity of the community in absolute terms does not matter

The key is user engagement. If a post is published in a 100,000-strong community that is of interest to at least a hundred people, the system will not pay attention to it. At the same time, a small group with an audience of about 1500 can claim the coveted light if 90% of subscribers like the new post. This is proved by practice: at different times, along with such popular projects as vDud and Duran, Prometheus received a group of folk ensemble SHEDDA (just over 2,000 members), a Canceled public dedicated to canceled games (the number of subscribers recently exceeded 6,000) and even a personal account of extreme photographer Alexander Fedorov (about 2000 subscribers).

2. The popularity of the topic does not matter

There is a myth that AI gives preference only to niches that are interesting to a wide range of users. The same aforementioned Canceled belongs to the gaming industry and can be classified, while something out of the ordinary will not be noticed by the robot: it simply will not be able to determine to whom to recommend the find.

This is also a delusion: the VKontakte Prometheus algorithm tries to build associative chains, anticipating what might potentially interest the regulars of the site. Thanks to this, such posts once appeared in the feeds of many people.

The author of the community, as the name implies, is engaged in trying on the hairstyles of anime characters on trams. Artificial intelligence appreciated the extraordinary idea, which is difficult to attribute to any genre of art, providing the project with free advertising.

3. Prometheus Only Considers Native Content

In the context of VKontakte, this means material created specifically for a social network and uploaded to a public or group. Naturally, the algorithm does not take into account announcements of two or three sentences, accompanied by embed inserts. The system is fully automated and it can only access the content that is uploaded to the VK servers. Therefore, if you want to get fire, you must:

● write original materials using the VK editor;
● use community albums to upload pictures;
● add video and audio to your own social media player;
● stream on the VK LIVE platform.

4. Unlike the VKontakte smart feed algorithm, there are unacceptable topics for Prometheus

There are two of them: adult (not only pornography, but also erotica) and shock content of any nature that can cause rejection on the part of most people (for example, filming of surgical operations). In addition, the system rejects deliberately “garbage” communities created exclusively for the sale of advertising space, so you should not abuse the placement of promotional posts.

5. Prometheus Helps You Attract New Subscribers

Another common misconception is that the algorithm, although it helps to increase coverage (which increases by 10 times on average), however, attracts an inert audience without helping to increase the subscription base. Sergei Paranko refutes this with the following figures.

As you can see, there is a positive trend, but a lot depends on the subject matter, the quality of other posts and the frequency of their publications. Obviously, no one will subscribe to a half-dead public, and a community where exclusive photos from space are posted will be of interest to more people than a group dedicated to the pre-revolutionary interiors of St. Petersburg. Therefore, having received the coveted Prometheus VKontakte, be prepared to start working closely with a new audience, just as illustrator Anton Andreev did.

Being noticed by AI, he took the trouble to create a welcome comic that served as a landing page for all newcomers, and also increased the frequency of publications. The result is over 25 thousand subscribers as of July 2018, which is an excellent result for a private group whose owner did not use commercial promotion methods (targeted advertising or custom posts in thematic communities).

Let's summarize

Now you know almost everything about the Prometheus algorithm and the VKontakte smart feed that is required to successfully promote communities. In any case, everything that can be found in open sources. Of course, no one will publish a list of factors that the neural network takes into account when calculating the relevance of posts: in this case, targeted advertising would lose all meaning, and it is precisely due to it that social networks live. But in addition, they live thanks to the creativity of users: without articles, memes and videos, VK would be just another messenger, and besides, not the most convenient. In turn, content makers need an audience that would be able to appreciate the fruits of their labor, preferably in a freely convertible equivalent. And as long as such a mutual need exists, we certainly will not be left without work.

The news feed of the Vkontakte social network includes records of friends, groups and communities to which you are subscribed. Previously, all posts were displayed in chronological order - that is, the first places were occupied by new posts, and the old ones gradually went down. In the summer of 2016, the social network introduced a smart Vkontakte feed and post ranking. Now the feed gets the posts that you like, and they are not displayed in chronological order.

Smart tape Vkontakte can be turned off. In the feed settings, uncheck the "Interesting first" box, and you will return to the usual chronological version of the feed.

How smart feed works VKontakte

Smart feed VKontakte is a complex algorithm that is constantly learning. It evaluates your reaction and the reaction of other users of the social network to certain posts and shows those that react positively. Posts that you reacted to negatively, the smart feed does not show.

The smart feed includes:

• records of communities and groups in which you are active - put likes, leave comments;
• posts of accounts with which you often interact - write messages, leave likes and comments on the wall;
• posts that your friends have commented or rated, as long as they have good social proof;
• posts in the format you like - for example, video compilations, long text, pictures.

Let's look at each of the examples in more detail.

Group and community posts. The more often you are active in the public, the more of his posts will be in your feed. Group posts that you hardly visit will gradually disappear from the news.

Posts from accounts you interact with. If you turn on the smart feed, it will not contain posts from friends with whom you hardly communicate. And vice versa - if you actively interact with the user, you will see his publications.

Posts friends have interacted with. This is where the rule of social proof comes into play. The more reposts, comments, and ratings a post your friend has liked, the more likely they are to be featured in your news feed.

Posts of your favorite format. Smart feed is constantly evaluating your actions. If you like collections of tracks most often, it will give priority to such records in the future. If you like long articles, they will gradually rise above other formats in the feed.

How to get to the top of the Vkontakte feed

We have prepared some tips to help you increase the reach of your posts.

Post unique content

June 1, 2018 appeared on the social network algorithm "Nemesis". It protects unique content from copying. The principle of the algorithm is simple - it finds the original source, that is, the group in which the entry was first published, and gives preference to it when publishing. Other things being equal, posts from the original source will rank higher in the smart feed.

To consistently publish unique posts, create a content plan. Write down what and when you will talk about, what add-ons you will use - photos, videos, GIF animation. If you have to use non-unique content, dilute it with your own preview, announcement, description. Fully copied posts will also be shown in the feed, but much lower than unique posts.

Motivate your followers to be active

It happens that people like the content and they are happy to read it, but do not like or comment on the posts. In this case, posts in the feeds of subscribers will appear less and less, even despite the large number of views.

To avoid this, motivate subscribers to be active. You can do this in different ways:

• Ask for a like if you liked the post at the end of each post.
• Ask any easy question, the answer to which will take a couple of minutes or seconds.
• Touch on "hype" topics that are expected to cause a lot of discussion - for example, talk about flayers of a suitable target audience.
• Hold contests for likes, reposts or comments with valuable prizes - the better they are, the more people will take part.

Be careful with "hype" topics. If followers react negatively to them and hide the post, you may lose your reach.

A follower post with questions is a great way to get more comments

Another way to create an activity in a group is contests and sweepstakes in VK .

Evaluate statistics

Study the statistics of a group or account - it is available from the moment the page is created. Several parameters are important here:

Emphasis on quality, not quantity

Previously, to increase reach, it was enough to publish posts often. And it didn't matter what quality they were. Now, according to representatives of Vkontakte, infrequent but interesting entries receive more coverage. "Infrequent" in their understanding - publications that come out every 2-3 hours: this is clearly seen in the screenshot.

By posting less often than usual, you get extra time to prepare them. This will improve the quality of the content, which means it will indirectly push the updated smart feed to the top.

Screenshot from Vkontakte blog post - rarer posts will get more coverage

Look for current news

You should not touch on topics that were relevant a week, a month, a year ago. The more “fresh” the topic for the news, the better it will be perceived by the target audience and the smart VKontakte feed. This is due to the algorithm: other things being equal, posts published later are shown higher. That is, if you and your competitors post the same posts and get approximately the same number of likes, but you post a little later, it will be shown higher in the feed: chronological order is preserved here.

Another tip is to use the hashtags from the Trending Topics section if they are appropriate. Posts with relevant hashtags usually garner more reach than posts without hashtags, even if the content is the same.

A striking example - a group with 21 members published a post with relevant hashtags and received 47 views, one like and one repost, 2 comments in 13 minutes

Use promotion tools

The younger your page or group, the less people see it. And to get to the top of the news feed, you need to show posts to many subscribers. It turns out a vicious circle. Therefore, you can use paid promotion tools - for example, targeted advertising , advertising posts, entries in large communities. This will help increase the number of subscribers and collect social proof, which will affect the ranking of posts in the feed.

And what will you do or are already doing so that the VKontakte smart feed helps in promotion? Share with us in the comments!