Strategic Social Media Relaunch for the Ukrainian Media “Vezha”

In 2021, the editorial team of the Ukrainian news outlet “Vezha” reached out to me, looking to improve reader engagement, adapt their content to their own needs, and grow their audience.

What the editorial team set out to do:

• activate the outlet’s existing audience;
• develop and roll out a single, recognizable visual style for the posts;
• use new tools for engaging with readers.

The project was carried out as part of the Local Media Innovations program, run by the NGO “Lviv Media Forum” with support from the International Renaissance Foundation. The program promotes innovative approaches and good practices that help Ukrainian newsrooms engage effectively with their audiences.

For “Vezha,” I provided mentoring and expert support aimed at improving reader engagement, adapting content to readers’ needs, and growing the audience.

First, a quick look at the main results in numbers

In the very first month of work, we managed to:

• increase the reach of Instagram posts by 181%;
• increase content interactions by 691%.

As part of the project, I developed a social media concept for the outlet, along with an original style of visual communication with readers.

One of the main goals was to unlock the potential of the outlet’s social media pages and boost audience engagement. On Instagram especially, the starting figures for reach and engagement had plenty of room to grow, given how substantial and steady the audience already was. So that’s the likely growth point I tackled first.

To grow reach and engagement, I chose several relevant formats — storytelling through interactivity (quizzes, tests, polls), series of informative stories, and galleries plus IGTV as the most effective tool for retaining the audience. I developed a recognizable design style that we stuck to throughout the whole project.

Tactically, I picked a few directions for working with the audience:

• hook them with unexpected information;
• amplify high-quality editorial multimedia content;
• use content to spark emotion in people who care about their city (pride, anger, surprise, and so on).

So the social media pages wouldn’t clash with the outlet’s overall concept, I worked with the editorial team to choose a pool of topics — both editorial ones and ones I suggested. With this approach, the team can keep expanding that palette on their own going forward.

INNOVATIONS INTRODUCED ON FACEBOOK

A unified visual style of communication

Before we started, the outlet’s feed looked fairly monotonous — mostly posts linking back to the website. By introducing new formats for presenting information, I built recognizable design elements into each type of content. The foundation was the brand colors: red and white.

Strengthening video: caption videos

Caption videos (short video stories with subtitles) in the Facebook feed were a new practice for the newsroom — and the audience loved them: some of the videos got over 60,000 views. They were made both on current city-life topics (road repairs and the like) and on topics with no tie to a specific date. I chose the widest possible range of subjects to reach different target audiences.

New sections and their visualization

The content was diversified with new recurring sections, “number of the day” and “number of the week,” which we used to develop, tease, or extend the life of articles on the website. “Repackaging” editorial material and extending its lifespan also happened through the “quote” section, which amplified the key points of articles.

Instagram carousels as anchor posts

I picked topics that were easy to adapt to this platform, which demands brevity, speed, and dynamism. It was important to move away from simply duplicating editorial material, so the page would be interesting even for the outlet’s loyal audience, who already consume content from the website regularly. When building the content, I focused on consistent output, simplicity, strong visuals, and interactive presentation.

This refreshed design layout also visually revamped the whole Instagram grid and made the page more appealing.

Interactive mechanics in Stories

I backed up every post on a historical topic with Stories that told the gist of it in an unconventional, informal way.

Over the course of the project, the editorial team and I fine-tuned the mechanics for effectively connecting editorial content with social media audiences. We successfully diversified the content and, especially on Instagram, did a great job of getting interaction going and activating readers. Together with the editorial team, we laid the foundation and the main groundwork — which the newsroom can keep building on, reinforcing and developing it further.