“Prometheus” VK: call on the powers of the Gods to your page!

What it is?

At the end of 2021, VKontakte developers presented a new algorithm to users. The Prometheus system in VK is an artificial search intelligence trained not only to view profiles, but also to look for pages with unique and interesting content among them. The most creative of them receive a special mark in the form of a fire for a whole week and are shown in the “Recommendations” block to all users whose interests are similar to the theme of your work. Given that up to 9 billion posts are viewed on VK every day, you can imagine how many people will be able to see your profile! With such support, promoting your group or personal page will not be difficult at all.

After a week, your page will be reviewed again by artificial intelligence and it is quite possible that you will be marked again. After all, the number of marks is not regulated; you can receive it at least every week.

Historical reference. Prometheus is the hero of the myths of Ancient Greece, who gave people fire. The phrase “Promethean fire” in everyday speech means the desire for high and noble goals.

“Old people” on the social network still remember the times when the recommendations feed was formed according to a different principle. It was based on 2 factors:

1. at the speed of gaining likes. It is believed that truly good material quickly becomes popular;
2. based on the interests of friends. Your friends viewed some posts and liked them. The robot considered and decided that you might also be interested in this.

But since the Prometheus fire appeared in VK, the principle of how recommendations work has changed. Now the feed depends ONLY on the interests of a particular user.

Before moving on to the question of how to get the Promethean fire in VK, let's figure out why it is given, what it is needed for and how it works.

What is it needed for?

Imagine that you have worked on your page and received the Prometheus badge in VK. What will it give you as an author and why is it interesting as a reader?

You are the Author

First of all, this is expanding the audience of your readers. And the most important thing is that your materials will be shown to exactly those people who are interested in your topic. That is, if you do airbrushing on rims and post your work on a social network, those who are interested will see it. And not stamp collectors, for example. All you have to do is get users interested in your work. And you will have a whole week for this, at least. And then, who knows, perhaps you will receive the badge again.

This mark is recognition of your talent. And this should undoubtedly become a source of pride for you that out of millions of users, the robot chose you.

Another interesting “bunion” is a bot teacher. He will tell you how to promote your page quickly and at the lowest cost. After all, he is familiar with all VKontakte users and knows everything about them.

You are the Reader

For the reader, the fire of Prometheus on VKontakte is an algorithm for high-quality selection of materials that will be of interest to you. The principle of “getting to know” the user is as follows:

• Interests. The robot remembers everything:

1. which page did you stay on for longer than usual?
2. what do you write about yourself;
3. where do you like;
4. In addition, the robot will even remember the time at which you most often view posts on a certain topic. And he will helpfully slip similar ones at the same time.

• The recording itself. The second parameter that the system checks is content. Quality, uniqueness, relevance and correspondence of the photo/video to the text of the post. And also the reaction of readers. The more readers stop at a post and then look at the entire page, the more likely it is that the profile will receive the Promethean light. This means that only really interesting posts will be included in the recommendations.

Please note that the topic of the profile does not matter (if these are not posts on the topic 18+, they will never be included in the recommendations). Among the authors marked with a light there is even a school teacher.

How the smart feed and the recommendations section of VKontakte work

1. How do your algorithms understand that a post is interesting to a specific user? Can you list the factors that most influence the reach of a post? The quality of the content, the response from the audience - this is clear. Anything less obvious?

We analyze the user's activity in the feed and raise higher those posts with which he is more likely to interact: like, write a comment, stick, open a photo, read an article, watch a video. These actions are very different, we predict them separately. Next, all this is taken into account by a general algorithm, which, based on all factors, performs ranking.

2. At your speech at “ MEN2 ” you said that even little things such as the weather and the user’s mood affect the reach of a post. How does the tape understand this?

Behind any post there is a huge number of ranking indicators. Each component is a certain value that describes the post itself, its author, the time of day at the time of viewing the recommendations, the speed of the reader’s Internet connection and many other criteria.

If a user visited the news feed or recommendations section while in a deep forest and with a poor Internet connection, we will not show him a bulky video at the beginning of the feed. The algorithm also takes into account the day of the week and time of day. This way, the morning recommendations feed will contain more news and information content, and in the evening - media and entertainment content.

Sergey Paranko, director of media ecosystem at VKontakte

3. Do you have a document that lists all the factors that the algorithm takes into account? Or has he already become so trained that even you don’t know by what parameters he provides coverage for a particular record?

We know the list of factors, but everything is unique for each user-record pair. Therefore, just by looking at a post, it is impossible to say how good it is, it’s subjective. A post about local news from Moscow in St. Petersburg is absolutely irrelevant to me, and you may not be interested in my news feed about machine learning and social networks.

4. Is it possible to artificially increase the reach of a post by purchasing likes and shares on promotion services?

Not worth it. In the long run, this will definitely lead to lower coverage. In addition to the fact that likes and shares do not play a central role in the ranking of a post, such cheats are highly likely to be detected by us.

However, traffic to a post from references on other social networks can indeed improve the organic reach of a post, and there is no penalty for this.

5. Is there an optimal text length for maximum reach in the smart feed? For example, in the announcement of an article - no more than 500 characters. And in a longread created in the editor, there are no more than 10,000?

There is no optimal length apart from the reader's focus. Everything is based on involvement; if you have an informational message, try to write succinctly, in an information style. If you are trying to attract a person to click on a snippet, the same principle is succinct and engaging. Just don’t fall into clickbait, it will negatively affect your reach.

If you're telling a story, captivate the person. All large forms, typically more than 1,000 characters, are best typed in the article editor, breaking up the text with multimedia inserts.

6. Smart Feed favors high-quality videos (over low-quality ones). What is “high-quality video” for VKontakte? What characteristics does it have?

Videos 720–1080 rub.

7. Does VK try to detect fake news? Is the veracity and reliability of the data important, or only the audience's interest in the recording?

On VKontakte there is no pre-moderation of content - as on other platforms, users can freely publish and discuss topics that interest them. At the same time, anyone can report illegal, offensive or inaccurate content in their opinion using the “Complain” button. We consider all complaints without exception. VKontakte has one of the largest moderation services and we respond as quickly as possible.

8. How do you feel about competitions for the most active subscribers and competitions for subscription + repost? They are allowed by the VK rules, but does this somehow affect the coverage of posts (positively or negatively)? Do you recommend using competitions for promotion in VK?

This is a legal way of promotion, but you need to keep in mind that in this way you are attracting an irrelevant audience to your subscribers. This can have a negative side effect—followers who don't engage with your group's main content can have a negative impact on the reach and virality of your posts.

Promoting a community on social networks: from creating a concept to making a profit

9. Articles created in the editor receive more coverage than articles leading to a third-party site. What should commercial sites and blogs do in such conditions? How can they attract VKontakte users to their site?

A business group on any social network is first and foremost a community. If you treat it exactly like a media asset, you will succeed. Forcing a user to another site, without providing an alternative, in communication can upset a person. As they say: you want to sell me your product, but you do it without respect.

On the VK platform you can communicate with clients/readers, sell goods, receive money transfers and much more. We are developing our ecosystem and making it as convenient as possible for users. And in this regard, it is also beneficial for a business to develop its site within VK. The article editor is another tool for communication and community building.

10. Will wiki articles now receive less coverage than editor-based articles?

It's not the format that decides, but the user's interaction with your content. An interesting story told with a lot of interaction from readers will receive coverage regardless of the presentation format. Another thing is that it is more convenient to hold the audience’s attention with the tools available in the article editor.

Specifically about wiki pages, they do not fall into the “Recommendations” section on mobile devices, they are basically a desktop tool, so yes, their reach is lower than that of other delivery formats.

Example from Texterra’s practice: a unique article created in the editor received 8.5K coverage, while reposts of blog articles usually get no more than 2K

11. Some users complain that they do not see interesting and necessary posts. Why is this happening? And do you have any thoughts about following the Facebook path - making sure that users’ feeds contain more personal content rather than commercial ones?

We are constantly experimenting with different ranking models, and the main metric is user engagement. You can always send clear signals to the neuron by hiding a couple of posts from unwanted public pages.

12. You say that you cannot purchase bots at all. How then can the community gain its first audience? If you sign up relatives and friends, it turns out that the audience is still not the target one. And if you buy advertising, no one will subscribe to an empty community. How to find a way out?

People come to you for content. Therefore, your community will not be empty if you tell things there that are interesting to the target audience. Advertising for the target audience is an ideal option to start with. This will give you a core audience that will help you grow organically.

13. How do you understand that a penalty has been imposed on the community? How to remove it?

Looking at the statistics, this can be seen in the decreased coverage. Analyze what you have been doing in recent days, which can be regarded by the platform as unwanted actions: clickbait, aggressive audience withdrawal, unoriginal content, too frequent posting. Stop doing this. And it will go away on its own in two days

14. Are there filters based on topic? (For example, “adult content” is downgraded). If yes, what topics have reduction coefficients?

Everything that is not prohibited by the legislation of the Russian Federation and the rules of the site is possible. Everything that is prohibited is prohibited.

15. A case from our practice. We publish unique articles on the blog every day, and they are immediately parsed by several VKontakte public pages. It turns out that they announce this content first, and we announce it 5-10 minutes later. Does this negatively impact the coverage of our posts?

Yes, ideally, you should be the first to upload content to the social network, then we will identify you as the primary source and your content will be promoted in the “Recommendations” section to new users.

16. That is, the one who first shares the link is considered the original source? If this is the case, we cannot compete with autoparsers, since they do this automatically, but with us manually, we write a unique announcement. What should we do in this case?

I didn’t share the link, but downloaded the content natively. Embeds and links, in principle, do not make you the original source of content. We don’t know what’s on someone else’s video hosting or website, and we don’t parse or analyze this content. That’s why it’s important to upload your materials to the platform’s native submission tools.

The public parsed our article as soon as it appeared on the blog...

And we made the announcement only after 7 minutes

17. How will search engines index articles created using the editor? Wiki articles were well found in searches, but what will happen now?

Articles are perfectly indexed by Yandex from the very start, and by Google already too.

18. the LIVE public hosted by a VKontakte employee? Is it possible to refer to it as an official source of information?

At one's own risk. This is an unofficial community.

How to get the Prometheus light icon in VK?

Since this service began its work, the question: “How to get “Prometheus” on VK” has haunted hundreds of page/group owners. Who would refuse free promotion and additional earnings on the page? But the developers did not leave any clear recommendations for their users to obtain a mark. All that remains is to rely on the experience of pioneers and recommendations from the authors of the social network. Here are the main points you will need to consider:

• Interesting and most importantly unique content. This applies not only to text, but also to pictures. So, if you are a professional user of the Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V keys, you should forget about the icon. It will not work.
• The use of words that outline the topic of your entry, the so-called keywords. You don't need to track the density of the keys and whether they are in a direct occurrence. They just need to be there!
• Use hashtags wisely! Remember that this is not just a set of characters! It should reflect the meaning of your text and correspond to the topic.
• Choose photos/videos wisely. They must be relevant to the topic, be clear and U-NI-KAL-NY-MI.
• Do not use selling commercial words and expressions (such as “buy”, “promotion”, etc.)
• Entries with announcements of a full-fledged article do not promote you to the “Ogonyok” elite. So forget about them.
• Choose a topic that interests you and write about it. There is no need to jump from the topic of partner birth to choosing brake pads for the Lada Kalina.
• Be aware of prohibited topics: sex, violence, cruelty, smoking, alcohol, politics and religion. If you usually write on them, then you’ll have to forget about it.
• Communicate with the reader, make him “hang” on your page longer. The algorithm will estimate the total time spent on your page and will gladly move you forward.
• Try to repost less often. The service doesn't like it. He voted for uniqueness.
• Reduce the number of links to external sites.
• Make your notes regularly, and most importantly, make them beautifully. Break into paragraphs, make lists, highlight with color. In general, get creative!

Users who simultaneously publish on Yandex Zen often think that the principle of the light in VK is the same and that this is the time of peak posting activity. That is, roughly speaking, post the text from 13.00 to 13.17 and you will be happy! Will not be. The algorithm works differently. He doesn’t care what time you posted your entries, he’s interested in the fact itself.

"Prometheus" club

For those who figured out the issue of how to get the Prometheus sign in VK and “broke through” into the elite of authors, they created their own “Prometheus” club in VK. This is a standard social network application and can be found through a search engine. Simply enter the query “Pantheon of Authors”, and the desired application will appear before your eyes.

Navigation there is incredibly simple. 16 general topics have been identified. Select what interests you and look at the latest publications marked with an icon.

Thus, the Prometheus fire tag in VK is an excellent opportunity for authors to advance, and for readers to read interesting and tasty material. So forward to new achievements!

Basic requirements for obtaining the Prometheus Mark

1. Creation of unique content for various purposes through the new article editor: comics, audio, photographs, texts. The robot monitors the appearance of interesting posts that are ready to interest a potential client. Information should not be duplicated; copy-paste is the reason for failure.
2. The quality of design plays an important role. The better the material is presented, the more the subscriber likes it. Likes, reposts, statistical metrics - all this is tracked and recorded by the robot.
3. Do only what you like. There is no need to rush from one area to another. The niche issue is relevant, so before starting your activity, think over a strategy.

If you sum up all the points together, you get the following: be open, create in a familiar industry and create unique, interesting material.