Workplaces: Nikita Belogolovtsev, head of storytelling at Yandex.Dzen

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

About responsibility for the surname, finding yourself and the signs of a good story.

"A man with an unknown surname is screwing up for himself, and I for the whole family": about work on television and father

You studied at the Faculty of International Journalism at MGIMO, and then worked in television for several years. How did you become a host?

- I was born into an acting family, so the camera light never gave me panic, and the TV did not seem like something mysterious.

At first I studied at a general education school and put on plays and performances there. In the ninth grade I was transferred to the theater and music school "Class-Center", where, in addition to standard subjects, the program includes acting, stage speech and playing at least one musical instrument. Here I was taught to soberly assess what I can and, most importantly, I cannot do.

When you play on the same stage with truly talented people who, after a few years, will become famous actors and musicians, you realize that you are not as beautiful as you thought. That is why I did not go to theater or music school, but chose the faculty of international journalism.

While studying at the university, I was invited to host the "Conversation Without Rules" program on the O2TV channel. It all happened quite by accident: there was a girl working there who studied with me in the same school. She remembered that I was a smart guy and knew how to wave her hands, so she proposed me. This is how my presenter career began: I went on air for an hour two days after I was accepted. Then I hosted about 10 more programs on various television and radio channels. I was lucky to have great programs, so it's not a shame to remember.

What is the coolest and most difficult part of the presenter profession?

- While working in the frame, you are in a state of one hundred percent euphoria: you do something cool and feel it with your whole body. If a person has left this profession and says that he is not bored, then he is most likely lying.

But working on a linear broadcast every day, when you have to talk very often and a lot, is difficult. In the first month, all funny stories from his own life end, and in the second - all funny cases and anecdotes from friends. Unfortunately, this does not negate the fact that you still need to come to work and tell something for four hours every day.

I cannot fail to mention your dad - the famous actor, comedian and TV presenter Sergei Belogolovtsev. Did the responsibility for the surname press on you during your work?

- Very much. When something turns out, everyone around repeats: "Well, yes, of course, this is the son of Belogolovtsev." But when you are wrong, the point, of course, is that nature rests on children. In general, if a person with an unknown surname is screwing up for himself, then I screw up for the whole family.

However, you get used to it pretty quickly. Of course, my father's success helped in one way or another: the people with whom my father worked or simply crossed paths in life, a priori treated me better. And some were just pinned that Belogolovtsev would work for them. On the one hand, I have earned the right to say that my career in radio and television is a product of my own efforts. But at the same time, it is foolish to deny that there is still a small merit of the surname in this.

Are you often compared to your father?

- Quite rarely, because we do different things: dad is a brilliant actor, and I like to speculate more. Roleplaying, emotion or grimace, which fly out of my father as organically as possible, have always been harder for me. I chose what suits me best: reflections, analytics, conversations with guests. I think if my surname was Bely, and not Belogolovtsev, there would be about zero reasons to compare us.

Why did you leave television after all?

- I can't say that I got up straight and left. This is how the circumstances developed: most of the projects on television ended, but new ones did not appear. The space, where I did not have to make a compromise with myself every second, narrowed, so that there were practically no channels left on which I would be comfortable to be. Wherever it was normal, I either already worked, or did not even want to start. I realized that I needed to move on, because behind my back was a family, children and an apartment. So I headed the online media about education and upbringing "Mel".

"The publication grew, and I went with it": about work in "Mela" and management

Why was the position of editor-in-chief offered to you?

- I saw a vacancy, sent a resume to it, and then absolute magic happened. I still don't understand where the investors found at least one reason to believe in me and start cooperation. At that time, I had no experience in digital media - I just had a funny Twitter account, and I was also smart and quick-witted. I was hired in July 2015, and the project started two months later. From that moment on, a rather large chapter in my life began, which I am very proud of.

Did the topic of education and upbringing really excite you?

- I, of course, came up with some beautiful legends, why all this interests me incredibly, but in fact then I thought only about finding a job. Headquarters seemed unexpected, but at the same time an excellent opportunity to restart a career and try yourself in something new. During one of the first discussions on the project, the investor said: "Well, he's a good guy, but you don't understand anything about education." It was absolutely true, so at the beginning of my work, I was getting my head around as a media manager, and at the same time I tried to close the gaps in my knowledge of the subject.

At first, I was exclusively the editor-in-chief and was responsible for the texts, and then I also started working on the product: I thought about what the site should be in terms of interface and services, and also added custom blogs to the concept.

After a while, I was appointed project manager. We developed rapidly: the publication grew, and I went with it. It was the first experience in my life when for almost three years I worked with focus on one thing.

At the Faculty of Journalism, they do not teach how to manage personnel and be a leader. How did you learn the basics of team leadership?

- This was not my first experience of managing a small team: before that I directed a couple of programs on television, two sports newsrooms and one socio-political on the O2TV channel. Despite this, I got quite a few bumps at Mela. I had to seriously work on my own temperament, habits and style of communication with subordinates. I became patient, began to treat people with greater understanding, learned to delegate and not scold employees when I demand the impossible from them.

For three years, "Mel" has become a large, cool and recognizable media, where they talked about children and parents in a human way: not "a year-old is a ray of light", but in the case and language that we are used to in Afisha, Meduza and Sports.ru.

Why did you leave Mel?

- We grew powerfully and rapidly, not noticing contradictions, difficulties and banal fatigue. After the first stage of the team's development ended, the publication found itself in a situation where it could not move on as effectively. We decided that we needed to rebuild the team, revise our plans for the future, and realized that it was better to do this in a different leadership configuration.

I cannot say that it was an easy decision, because Mel is a project that I am infinitely proud of, as well as a team that I still love. It was incredibly difficult to say goodbye to all this. Probably, a month after leaving I just came to my senses and collected my thoughts. After a while, I honestly asked myself the question: "Nikitos, who do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?" In all honesty, I was not ready to say that at the age of 40 I see myself as the head of the Mel website. Probably, this parting in one form or another would still have happened.

“It’s more and more difficult to touch a person now”: about working at Yandex and good stories

How did you end up in Yandex Zen?

- I crossed paths with the team during my work at Mela: they called me to lead the quarterly Zen Friday events. When I left the editorial office and started looking for work again, I turned to my acquaintances at Zen and asked whom I should talk to about working in the giant Russian Internet corporation. They told me that I was already talking with the right people - so I got a job in the company.

Now you are in charge of storytelling at Yandex Zen. What exactly are you doing?

“Zen” is becoming more and more consolidated in the status of not only an algorithmic tape, but also a content platform, so my experience turned out to be useful. Now we have about 18,000 authors, and we are working to increase their number and tell their interesting stories in Zen.

In addition, I was involved in launching Nirvana, a priority ranking program for quality content creators. Authors, brands and media who respect their readers, invest in their own image and production, thanks to our system, they appear in feeds much more often than others. Now "Nirvana" works perfectly and does not require constant attention, so most of my work is aimed at developing commercial content in "Zen". We want advertisers to be able to meet their business challenges with content. Our main goal now is to learn how to create native advertising that can be put on the conveyor and which will bring measurable benefits to the client.

Recently, the guys from the MTS / Media channel wrote a text about an application that allows you to watch 20 MTS TV channels for free, and we promoted it in users' feeds, offering to immediately go to the store and download the product. The advertising campaign lasted less than two weeks and showed excellent results: more than a million people saw the branded message, and 12 thousand of them installed the app for 20 rubles.

Not everyone understands how the system works. Why do some publications end up in users' feeds and collect millions of views from Zen, while others do not?

“Zen” takes into account a huge number of factors in its ranking. First of all, our algorithms try to understand which topics and formats are really interesting to the user. We evaluate many factors: the history of a channel and its subscribers, the attractiveness of a particular headline and cover, the percentage of readings and time spent viewing the publication, as well as likes, comments, and other signals of reader interest.

We even have a philosophy of healthy IQEA content, which stands for “interesting, quality, expectable and autocentric”. The last two points are especially important. If out of 10 times we miss at least once, the user will definitely remember our miss and ask what kind of nonsense we showed him. Therefore, only those materials that a person expects to see should appear in the feed.

In addition, it is important for us to create conditions in which even the most non-standard author can find his audience. For example, he writes in Zen about plumbing, plumbing and sewerage. His blog is read by about half a million people a month.

What is the secret of successful stories, and how do you learn to tell them?

- There are two types of cheaters: some have left television and claim they have no regrets, while others say they know exactly how to tell and write stories.

I would start from the fact that people consume content based on three basic motives. The first of them is curiosity, which is inherent in us by nature. Mobile Internet allows you to satisfy it 24 hours a day.

The second is practical use. We love to consume useful content or what pretends to be. It is unlikely that a person, after reading the material about nine exercises that will bring him into good physical shape, will immediately run to practice. But he will get the feeling that he has learned something useful.

The last motive is emotion. We have become very stale in a huge information flow, so it is more and more difficult to touch a person now. When content evokes strong emotion - anger, joy, envy, nostalgia, or disgust - we want to consume it further. We look at the one that crashed into a tree and came to the hospital with a snag in his chest, close the material and exclaim: "Oh horror!" And after two minutes, we open this tab again, because the story evokes a strong emotion.

Any good story should have at least one of three motives. If you manage to combine two - the text will turn out incredible, and if all three - just the greatest.

Tell us about the team that makes Yandex. Zen

- In Zen, I became a part of the commercial team. If in the old-school editorial office a journalist and a front-end developer practically never intersect, then in Yandex the system is more flexible. All decisions in the company are made by a large number of people who learn from each other, communicate, and sometimes argue.

The working day of a Yandex employee is highly structured, because in addition to personal tasks, you also have a large number of appointments made in advance. In Zen, every action depends on the joint work of a huge number of people, so an idea born in one part of the team can eventually be realized in a completely different one. Yandex is a complex organism, but I really like that, despite its great structure, the company retains the spirit of creativity, freedom and development.

We are almost constantly looking for someone to join the team because we are growing fast. Most often, people with a technical background are needed. In any case, vacancies can always be looked at.

What does your workplace look like?

- In fact, I am monstrously unpretentious. My workplace consists only of a table on which I put my computer, and a few old pieces of paper that I just forgot to throw away. We are talking with you on the last day before we move to a new office. Today there was a revival: colleagues were packing their things in boxes, but I didn’t collect anything. I don't think I will notice any changes at all. Everything I work with is in the computer, and everything that can distract me is in the same place.

I love that the office has walls on which you can draw with markers - I don't know if there was anything more useful than that. We also have a lot of negotiations, because an important part of Yandex's corporate culture is discussion, conversation about the product and understanding what we are doing.

My working day looks something like this: I come in, take out my computer, start doing something, and then periodically move from one meeting room to another, where I discuss important issues and draw with markers on the walls. At lunchtime, I go to the kitchen, eat some delicious afternoon tea, and return to my place. And sometimes I stay to do tasks right there, because you can always have coffee and something to eat.

How many tasks are in your diary now?

- I write down cases of very different levels, so they accumulate insanely many. For example, 33 problems are awaiting solution right now. This is, of course, an indicator of wild personal inefficiency. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that I shamelessly procrastinate, transferring the same problem for the 17th time, although I understand that it still needs to be solved.

From time to time I try some applications to organize myself, but after a couple of days I realize that I spend too much time trying to force myself to follow some rules. The best motivator for me remains personal responsibility: I have to do something, because I simply cannot not do it.

What do you do in your free time?

- I do not have a rare or pronounced hobby: I do not go fishing and do not collect marble crocodiles. I think if it was possible to formulate the main thing that I miss in life, then I would definitely add a couple of hours to communicate with my family, because growing children are so cool! Sometimes it's a shame that your child will never be four again, he will not remain as small and cool. You can, of course, constantly reproduce four-year-old children, but this life hack has reasonable limits.

Our main family love is travel. Together with the children, we visited Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Spain and many more countries. Recently we drove through the cities of the Golden Ring of Russia - everything is covered in snow, very beautiful. One of these days, for the first time in a long time, my wife and I will fly to rest without children. In the near future, our family will grow, so we decided that we need to use the last chance to hit the road somewhere together.

Life hacking from Nikita Belogolovtsev

Books

In general, the question of books is always perplexing. Perhaps because there is always a temptation to answer as pathetically as possible. Or maybe because I read much less than I should.

I, like many now, sin in that I often talk about native advertising, although I do not know enough about the most common. Therefore, with a delay of several years I read "Ogilvy on Advertising", which I advise you - you can even without delay.

For a long time I gathered my courage, and then I read "Jerusalem" by Simon Montefiore. A monumental yet incredibly addictive book. I reread the description of the storming of the city by the troops of Titus three times.

I think the Bible is monstrously underestimated in terms of universal storytelling. The most published - and by a gigantic margin - book in the history of mankind. That's why it makes sense to pay attention to it.

Films and series

I have a rather pop and chaotic taste here. I really love classic westerns - I watched them many times in different sequences. I also remember almost all the episodes of "House". And yes, he probably inspires me.

I watched almost all American sports movies: The Man Who Changed Everything, Coach Carter, Remembering the Titans and other films. This is my personal pain that Russian sports cinema is … the way it is, in general.

Lectures and podcasts

With lectures and podcasts, I somehow did not work out. But I can recommend one not very popular project in which I was lucky to participate. He called "". Leading Russian scientists came there, and as far as I could, I helped their story become an infotainment, not a lecture. True, I looked now that there were two hours of each lecture, but inside it was incredibly interesting for me.

Telegram channels

From the point of view of professional reading, Telegram helps a lot, because now everything useful can be kept in one place. After a personal sweep at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, he left the following channels:

• "" - a classic from Sasha Amzin.

• "" - it makes sense to read at least because of the name Rodislav.

• "" - everything that you wanted to know, but hesitated to ask about China (and many more interesting things!).

• "" - everything that you wanted to know, but hesitated to ask about Facebook (and many more interesting things!).