Being the head of social media, and even of Kinopoisk – one of the most important resources about cinema – is no easy task. We talked with Alik about how to understand the intricacies of interacting with the audience, juggle different tasks, and at t...

– “Dezhurny po Kinopoisk” – for some, including me, sounds intriguing and interesting. Not everyone knows about this project. Tell us, what is it?

Inside Yandex, there is an unwritten rule: you can safely bring your friends, acquaintances, and family to the office. It's part of our corporate culture, and it's even encouraged to bring someone for a tour. Personally, I always loved bringing guests because you walk around and only hear: “Wow, you have a massage chair! That's amazing! You have a whiteboard where you can write so much! You have free markers here, you can take them all and take them home!”

And you know, the feeling that you can share a piece of the magic and joy you encounter at work with other people becomes so big and voluminous that you really want to share it not only with your loved ones but with everyone. And it was from that perspective that we looked at it when we created the show.

In general, “Dezhurny” is a big team effort, and actually, my main role, my task in this process is simply to show up at the right time for the shoot, talk, have a little fun. And the main concepts of promotion and ideas are behind a big team. Initially, the project was conceived by Dima Okhotnikov and Lena Ryabtseva. Dima is our creative director, and Lena is a video producer and also a director. And we all came up with this concept together.

Going back to the beginning, it all started with live streams we did on our social media. It was the COVID period, everyone was self-isolating, and it became clear that it was quite difficult to invite stars for in-person big interviews, so we decided to go online.

Almost everyone went to social media and held live streams there, and we decided not to lag behind. And when COVID ended, we realized that we had interested the stars in the new format, and we could continue interacting with them. So we started thinking about what else we could make out of it. It turns out we combined the idea of what you can share from work with the format of live streams with stars. And on that basis, “Dezhurny po Kinopoisk” came together.

– What did this project give you professionally, and maybe it somehow affected your life?

At Kinopoisk, I actually handle social media. So initially, it wasn't like I joined some host department where we train every day, develop diction, and come up with cool jokes. No, it's more of an additional activity and hobby, let's call it that.

For me personally, it helped, at the very least, to navigate the office quite well. It's a good skill because our offices are huge (laughs).

You need to manage to run from one meeting room to another in a few minutes without getting lost. Plus, it really helps to open doors a little to see how things work inside. When we invite people to participate in “Dezhurny po Kinopoisk”, everyone usually recognizes us, remembers hearing about the show somewhere, and agrees to collaborate with us. Overall, it's a dialogue with the industry, with the guys involved in film production. And when they already know about us, it's certainly easier to do some cool joint things.

From a professional point of view, it's really not my level of competence to be a showman or host. I only have some natural abilities. So I can't say it's my professional story. Rather, it's about contacts and the opportunity to communicate with people I didn't know before and involve them in joint activities in the future.

– We've covered the professional aspect. Has there been any experience at work that also affected your life? 

Does it help me in my personal life? I don't think so. Or rather, I'd say it's not that level of attention yet. The only thing is, now my mom can more easily explain to the neighbors what her son does. Because before it was like “he does something on the internet,” but now she can just turn on Kinopoisk and show that her son hosts a show.

– Do the show's guests actually work at Kinopoisk and do something for a whole week?

Of course, the guys don't work for us for a week because they are very busy. And it would be too expensive and lengthy an experiment to pull famous actors, musicians, and bloggers out of their daily lives to work in some position at Kinopoisk for a week.

We try to fit everything into a one-day format and give them the opportunity to try different professions, so here we'll have to break the magic a little that is created in the episodes. Well, to be honest, I'm afraid they wouldn't handle all the tasks they were given very well, especially over a week (laughs). Everyone does what they are good at. The guys are great at music, acting, film, blogging stuff, but at the same time, I'm sure if you ask them to promote some project, they won't be at a loss.

– How did you end up at Kinopoisk?

Well, connections (laughs). It's always like that. How is Moscow conquered? At least, that's how it formed in my head: when you come to Moscow, your task is to get into a certain circle of the profession you're interested in. Then you start communicating with different people and entering such circles. Conventionally, there is a design circle – guys who do art, for example. Some other circle that understands fashion. Such circles intersect with each other. And so gradually you start communicating with everyone.

For example, I worked for some time at an online publication and got into the circle of editors and journalists. Then a vacancy appeared here at Kinopoisk – there was an announcement on social media that they were looking for an SMM specialist. In the comments, someone wrote that there is this good boy, we need to take him. So they took me (laughs).

If you need advice, though I wasn't asked: communicate with people and try to get to know those guys you find interesting and with whom you share views on the world and profession. It will help.

– Networking is everything.

Yes, it's the main tool in creative humanities professions. In technical ones, you can quite clearly measure a person's success. It's immediately visible and clear whether they are fulfilling their tasks or not.

With humanities and creativity, it won't work that way. Until you spend some time communicating and working with a person, you won't understand how good they are at their profession. So it's all arranged that you get into a circle, communicate with different people, earn some authority and knowledge, including. And this further helps open doors in some way.

It's not like someone took you by the hand, led you, and said: “Here's this position for you.” It didn't appear by itself; I had to earn it, engage in honest painstaking work, spend sleepless nights, and so on. Let's keep quiet that sleepless nights were more often with parties where you communicated with all these people (laughs).

– I, and many readers, have known about Kinopoisk for quite a long time. At the dawn of social media, Kinopoisk was also a platform where you could discuss movies and even find friends with similar interests. Now it can be called a huge and influential entertainment platform. Tell us, how did it become that, and what specifically did you do for it?

Wow, the question perfectly fits the image of an old scruff who just wants to reminisce about the past. Kinopoisk has always been, is, and probably will be the number one resource for movies in the Russian segment of the internet. Because, in addition to the online cinema, it is also a platform with its own database and media, where people learn about movies, rate films, communicate with each other, comment, and wait for premieres together. 

I came to Kinopoisk when it began to develop as an online cinema. At some point, under the influence of various situations (like COVID), it became clear that the need to watch movies without leaving home was increasing. It all came together nicely. And the Kinopoisk team decided to try to make a big and cool online cinema that people would watch. At that time, the focus was on developing the video service, rather than other functions that were on the platform. Everyone invested heavily in this story, and we actively helped with social media. We talked about how movies can now be watched on Kinopoisk, and they are cool and diverse.

Then at some point, COVID passed, and it became clear that regular cinemas were opening again. We decided to remember that we have a ticket sales function. And try to put more effort into it to remind people: Kinopoisk is not only an online cinema. So you kind of reinvent everything a little and remember other functions that this wonderful platform has. 

In general, it's hard to say what Kinopoisk is. It's not just an online cinema, or just a movie database. It's a kind of combination, a huge platform with a ton of entertainment. I have a favorite example: when Steve Jobs presented the iPhone, he said: “Imagine three functions: internet, phone, and music. And all this is one device.” That's how the iPhone was born. It seems to me that Kinopoisk is also such an iPhone, only it combines not three functions, but many more. And each time you present these functions from a slightly different angle, depending on conditional business goals or circumstances.

And social media is an important tool for audience interaction with the product – Kinopoisk itself. We are that invisible line that, on one hand, separates users from the product, and on the other hand, builds some communication. And at the same time, you can't say that our social media is purely marketing; we also create an original product.

– Tell us, how many posts per week are published on the big Telegram channel, and how many people work to create and publish these posts?

Finally, I can talk about the entire team that works with us.

In fact, the fact that I have the opportunity to appear in “Dezhurny po Kinopoisk” is solely thanks to the team that handles the tasks perfectly and doesn't bother me (laughs).

On the big Kinopoisk Telegram channel, we currently publish about 3-4 posts per day. Accordingly, per week we get about 20-something. But that's only Telegram, which is big. Besides it, we have other social networks.

On VK, for example, we churn out posts almost like a machine gun, because there is an algorithmic feed. Literally every hour, 3-4 posts come out, for active posting 10 hours – that's 30 posts per day, accordingly, about 220 posts per week. But that only sounds scary; in reality, half of it is automated, there are special services that help you do cross-posting to different social networks, and you don't need to stuff a post into each one separately.

The volume is large because we respond to requests from our text editorial team, which writes large materials on the site, then the video department, which makes short and long videos for YouTube in the format of shows and small video explainers that we directly publish on social media. And further: we respond to requests from adjacent teams, such as PR or product.

We work like in an MFC mode, where you have a queue of people who come and say that an important post needs to be published urgently.

Pasha Maltsev, head of the news service, compares us to a psychological support service. Our main task is to calm everyone down, give them a chance to speak, hug, support, say: “You're not crazy, everything is fine, everything will be okay.” And then we take the request into work, and when it is useful and normal for subscribers, we publish it. That's kind of our functionality.

The team is small: there is a head of the news service, and he has four news workers who do all the output during the week from Monday to Sunday, 24/7. There is also separately Alexey Darbinyan – the person responsible for special projects within social media. Six people – the team that makes Kinopoisk's social media. All the social media you see.

I really like the association with a pioneer camp. My task is to make sure everyone enjoys themselves, comes up with things together, grows, does cool stuff, and everyone feels good about it. It doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes, like in a pioneer camp, someone argues with someone, someone calls their parents and asks to be picked up.

From the outside, it may seem like some kind of entertainment, but in reality, a person just comes, turns on the computer, and sits at work for 10 hours. But again, now you might think it's some monotonous work, but you have a huge list of tasks, here you argued with someone in the chat, there you had to prove and explain something, here you spent 3 hours trying to put the right picture in the right place.

– Kinopoisk has had its own extensive community for a long time. I'm curious how it grew around it on social media, were there any special techniques used for this?

One of the tasks was to form a community of people around Kinopoisk that could calmly and boldly discuss movies and accept the fact that everyone can love different films. And we came up with different formats to solve this task.

For example, now we have many posts tied to people communicating and discussing movies: what movie you watched or which actor makes you want to watch a particular film. They come and start talking about what they saw. Thus, we form a question, the audience gets involved, starts communicating with each other.

We have a wonderful section where they recommend movies. Quite a lot of people write reviews on the Kinopoisk website. And on social media too: they can both recommend some movie and be the person who asks what else to watch. For this, we came up with a post format that has two mechanics: you either come and ask about a movie, or you come and answer these questions, recommend what to watch.

The section lives great, we are not needed there at all. You just release a post, and then everyone in the comments remembers some early Kubrick film they watched somewhere in the kitchen at three in the morning and now talk about those feelings. It's very interesting to watch all this and it's gratifying that you can create conditions in which people can communicate on topics that interest them.

– Telegram channels now play a big role in the media space. Almost all major news we learn from there. And they, as a rule, are the first to publish this news. What do you think is the phenomenon of their influence? Why do people like to learn something new about the world from there?

There are objective reasons. The number of available social networks that you can freely enter, register, and pick up content has decreased quite a lot. And also Telegram is initially a text-based environment that came through IT and media circles. That is, I heard about Telegram quite early because journalists mainly used it to communicate with each other.

And this sets a certain vector. If the core of your audience is IT people plus media, then accordingly, they will consume and spread news there much faster than anywhere else. 

Plus, Telegram itself is super news-oriented. It's the only resource that doesn't have an algorithmic feed, it's chronological, and that's very important in a news service.

Also, it's the only messenger where you can write news with a minimal entry barrier. You don't need to register or perform any complex actions for that. You just took and made two channels in three clicks and already start thinking that you're almost the main newsmaker. That also says a lot.

It seems to me that this is exactly the objective reason why news took root there, and it wasn't some popular choice. No, it's just convenient, all events historically formed in such a way that it happened there.

– How can a Telegram channel “grow on its own,” and what specifically influences this?

Ours grew on its own. I didn't have budgets for promotion within Telegram. We did some special projects in the form of a Telegram bot that generated neuromemes. But these were rather one-off stories related to Kinopoisk content. So I'm saying that our Telegram channel received organic growth thanks to the enormous love and strength of the team that invests in it.

What needs to be done for a channel to grow? Constantly, every day, reinvent it. I think this is the biggest problem and the biggest strength of social media. You must constantly become the best version of yourself, because today one form is supported, and tomorrow another. To be successful, you need to change your approach to publishing news and posts on social media in one day. In Telegram, it's the same – you look at the numbers and what works for you today. And then you figure out how to scale, strengthen, make more frequent what works today, and see how it grows further.

Conventionally, the first format that allowed us to gain some first, large, and significant audience was news. Then at some point, we realized that news no longer brings an audience; we need something else. We started forming a list of sections that could attract a new audience. We began to look more actively at reposts: what people like more, what they are ready to repost.

There is an understanding: if a person makes a repost, it means they saw it. Another person who hasn't seen it may have an incentive to subscribe to your Telegram channel after that. You start thinking about what unique content you create, why they should subscribe to you.

Why, for example, the news format won't always work – because at some point, everyone around will write news. The source of news is plus or minus always the same. Everyone will reprint it. So you need to come up with some unique thing that will be only yours and no one else's. And what could that be? For example, video – you see if it works or not. Then you try to make a new platform for communication. Oh, look, it turns out people seem to communicate with each other.

So there is no magic. There is patience and a skill called “react quickly” to what is happening. That's the most important thing. If you want your Telegram channel to grow, change every day.

– What worked and what didn't during the development of the Telegram channel and further work?

At some point, we realized that long posts don't work. Although there was a hypothesis that long posts work great on Telegram because it's a text environment. People there are used to reading, not looking at pictures. It turned out not to be the case. Longreads are not read, but short posts are read. But I'll make an important remark: this worked for us, for our audience, our goals and tasks.

It's not a fact that the same will work in some literary channel where people initially subscribe to read long posts. This is another big difficulty of social media. Why is there no single book or textbook on social media? It cannot exist because, firstly, social media changes quickly, and secondly, they are so flexible to your needs that some general template won't work here.

Because everyone still has their own unique path. Of course, there are common basic approaches, but these are rather basic approaches of marketing, editing, competent writing, creativity, and so on. And then you go on a free path of experiments, work with analytics, and hone your specific style of managing social media. What suits one is not at all a fact that it will suit another.

And also, every day I try to watch the content that competitors and not only them make. A broad exposure allows you to be flexible. I, of course, go my own way, but it consists of a million different things that you've spotted on the side.

– How do social media affect Kinopoisk itself? Is it like a symbiosis or not?

It's definitely an inseparable story. What we do on social media sometimes helps other departments within Kinopoisk choose words for communication and interaction with the audience. Since we publish many posts and are quite flexible in speed of work, our language is also quite mobile. We can communicate in a certain way, come up with some joke. And this then greatly helps Kinopoisk in communication across other streams.

– Tell us, what other special projects do you do for Kinopoisk?

There are many internal events within Kinopoisk and Yandex that I help host as a host. For example, I host our regular gathering of all Kinopoisk, where we share cool presentations with each other and discuss them. In the summer, we have Plus Dacha, where I am also actively involved in hosting events.

Why do I do this? I enjoy it. I clearly understand: yes, I will spend my personal time now, but I will get charged with emotions and have fun. And in general, I'm good at it. I close some internal gestalts. 

Does it interfere with my main work? I don't know, I don't think so much. Because, I repeat, there is a great team. And secondly, it seems I've learned to manage my time well.

– What are your favorite projects and why?

My favorite project is my team. This is also a project because you have to spend a lot of effort to make them feel good. And it's also a project that helps you a lot in the future.

– How do you come up with ideas for new sections and formats on Kinopoisk's social media? Maybe you don't do it alone?

Definitely not alone. And our main strength is that we are not shy about writing all sorts of nonsense in the work chat. I also try to bring all sorts of nonsense as often as possible to lift the mood or for something to come out of it. I didn't just talk about exposure. Firstly, everything has already been invented, and secondly, any creativity skill says that if you combine different parts of several things, you get something new.

So I look around, save a lot of memes, send a lot of reels to the chat, so that later I can look at them, giggle, and from that, when needed, you can come up with some idea of your own.

– What was the most unusual or risky project, and what were its results?

The most unusual projects are those that come out outside the planned content plan. For a couple of years now, a meme about Anton, who was on duty on the day of the release of the series “House of the Dragon,” has been circulating on the internet – it ended up being a cool story that didn't seem so at first, when we accidentally sent a message with a swear word to the Kinopoisk Telegram channel instead of sending it to the internal editorial chat.

We quickly deleted the post, but it was noticed, and a force started on social media: “Oh, look, Kinopoisk messed up.” Fortunately, we not only managed to play it off in subsequent posts and make a joke out of it, but also made Anton himself a “cult” editorial employee, who has been asked about in comments for two years now when the new season about the Targaryens comes out. They ask how he is doing, whether he still works, whether he still publishes posts or not.

Then two years later, on the day that message was published, we returned, made a video breakdown in true crime style, how it happened, why that message was written. And that video got another million reach and views. In short, it turned out to be a very cool thing.

– Taking this opportunity, I want to ask how we can grow on Telegram and in general as a media outlet? Share a couple of secrets or hint at what we should pay attention to?

Answer the question: what do you want from social media?

Conventionally, if the request is “we need more audience,” then you need to come up with formats and posts that will help attract more new audience. And then you can develop formats, information about which is freely available.

And if, for example, there is an understanding that you don't need a large audience, but rather a small community, but very warm, actively communicating with each other, that's a different approach, and you build on that. And in posts, you need to encourage people to write as many comments as possible, and you further form a blog. In general, it all depends on the goals and tasks you set.

 – What new forms of content do you think may appear in the future?

Well, I'm not much of a futurist. Probably everyone will consume content in VR glasses. Honestly, I don't know, I'm not sure. And what scares me? I'm scared that I don't understand at all what content the alpha generation consumes – the one after zoomers. If with zoomers it's still more or less clear, then alpha is a complete dark forest. And what they will perceive as an adequate post in the future – no one knows.

The content they currently consume is for people with the maximum level of ADHD, just cranked up to 100%, where you have 500 billion different details on the screen at the same time. And from this stream, you need to extract one main thought.

And it also scares me because I still don't imagine what it could be. There are fears of the unknown. But that it will definitely be a different consumption model – 100%.

There will definitely not be long texts, not breakdown videos, not anything similar. It seems to me, it will be something shorter, maybe through several simultaneous entry points: through hearing, sight. That is, you will both read and listen at the same time.

– You have degrees in psychology and political science. That's impressive. I suppose they help you in your work? And why didn't you work in one of those professions?

It will be funny to find out which universities I graduated from. I received my psychology education at MEPhI – Moscow Institute of Physics and Engineering, and I studied political science at Moscow Pedagogical University. How they are connected – no idea, but that's how it happened.

Psychology education – such, I think, a basic humanities education that taught me how to learn properly and greatly developed all my soft skills, on which much of my work relies. It didn't give me knowledge so much as skills that helped a lot in work. At least, it's definitely about the skill of interacting with people, working in a team, in conflict situations, how to deal with them and generally build relationships within the team. Although, honestly, I dropped out of the institute in my third year because I played KVN and didn't study, but I needed to study.

And my second higher education is a master's degree. It's the aforementioned political science. I went there because it's not just political science, but internet technologies in politics and management. I learned how to collect data and analytics from social media. This also helps me a lot now. That is, it's an approach to understanding that behind every line in social media, there are real people who react in some way.

When I first started studying, there was no profession called SMM specialist yet. Few people imagined that it could lead me to the point where I am now. And everything came together in some ideal way. Or maybe I was just lucky because I always tried to do what I'm interested in, rather than go where you are forced to.

– I watched episodes of the aforementioned “Dezhurny po Kinopoisk” – you hold yourself well on camera, and your natural charisma is felt.

Thank you.

– Have you ever thought about becoming an actor?

No, never. Actually, I'm very difficult to work with. Lena Ryabtseva always complains about this (laughs). Lena, hello again! Let me remind you that she is our director of “Dezhurny po Kinopoisk”.

I'm not a professional actor, and accordingly, I don't have the skill of professional work on camera. Yes, I can joke, clown around, make jokes, but the understanding of framing, where to look, how to do what, and so on, is completely absent in me. Do I want to do this? No, I don't. You must strictly follow the director's vision. And it's quite difficult for me when I'm told what to do. I know I'm doing everything wrong, I suffer because of it, I apologize, I cry, but in the end, I still do everything, stepping over myself.

By the way, there is an interesting story about actor Sergei Gilev. Few people know that before becoming an actor, he worked with social media at Kinopoisk.

As they say here: the position of head of social media at Kinopoisk is such that first – host, then, apparently, actor. But we already have an acting streak closed, one of the SMM specialists at Kinopoisk has already become an actor. That's it, no more needed (laughs).

– And finally, let's return to “Dezhurny po Kinopoisk”: you always ask your guests to name their favorite movies so that viewers can write reviews in the comments. Name your favorite films?

Do you think why we always ask these questions? Because I know how hard it is to answer them.

There is definitely one film that I always rewatch, and it seems to be a system-forming part of my personality. It's “Morning Glory” with Harrison Ford and Rachel McAdams. A movie about a girl who worked as a segment producer and producer of a morning show on TV. This is my favorite film because it reflects my position, my attitude to the work I do. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it. If you feel bad, watch it. If you've run out of movies, watch it. If you need to cheer up and understand that everything will be fine, watch this movie.

Also “Harry Potter” is a basic part of almost every millennial.

And let's say: the first part is some romantic and unique movie for me, then some part of pop culture geek content (that's “Harry Potter”), and the third part, to show off, let it be “Ocean's Thirteen”. I think it's an amazing film that I'm ready to rewatch an infinite number of times.

Well, and also the film with Julia Roberts “Erin Brockovich”. But it seems a bit similar to “Morning Glory”, so let the third on the list still be “Ocean's Thirteen”, and “Erin Brockovich” is in parentheses, but also a cool film that I really love.