Channel on Zen for business: main trends and features

Until recently, the Yandex Zen channel was a unique blog platform from the browser of the same name. A huge number of articles, video content, stories, and galleries were published here daily. Thus, in 2021, the number of blogs on this platform reached half a million. In addition, the content here was ranked by search engines, and publication cards could be seen on the most popular sites. But in 2022, the situation changed dramatically. And all because the platform moved from Yandex to the internal ecosystem of the social network VKontakte. The name also changed, in particular, the first part was removed from it, leaving only the second. As a result, today the platform sounds like Zen.

Many users reacted extremely negatively to such changes. Business representatives abandoned their successful channels. It is impossible to say for sure today whether they made the right or wrong decision, since there really is a lot of ambiguous things here.

Within the framework of this review, we will try to understand this issue in more detail, in particular, we will consider the prospects of blogging on the Zen platform. We will highlight a number of tasks for which this channel is still worth using. We will tell you where to get suitable content and what publication formats should be used in this case. Here are some additional recommendations that will allow you to work with Zen as efficiently as possible, attracting as many users to your business as possible.

What attracts business representatives to Zen?

Every business representative thinks about such a question as scaling: user audience, sales indicators, profitability. It is clear that the greater the audience coverage you can ensure, the more potential customers will see your products, services, place an order, and you, as a result, will receive more profit. The highlight of the Zen platform, which effectively distinguishes it from other platforms, can rightfully be called the fact that the content here itself finds its readers. The fact is that to find an audience, Zen is guided by the history of user visits to the activities that they entered both inside and outside the site. It also provides a forecast of recommendations using special filtering based on the assessments of other representatives of the user audience. And this means that if you manage to prepare really high-quality and useful material, the site itself will recommend it for reading to a huge number of people.

Among other advantages that business representatives running a channel on Zen will be able to appreciate in practice, we highlight:

• The ability to receive official earnings for self-employed people, individual entrepreneurs, and individuals. That is, almost everyone can work here and earn money.
• The presence of useful reports that provide those topics that are of greatest interest to the user audience. That is, by analyzing them, you can select material within a specific niche that will definitely interest readers. But we want to warn you right away that you should not forget about expertise. If you chase a popular topic that you don’t understand yourself, the effect of such work will be zero: neither the platform nor the users will appreciate the material.
• The ability to post different types of content. We will talk about this in more detail later, but for now we will only note that these can be articles, posts, videos, stories, quite similar to those that are now very common and popular on Instagram. This means that you can easily choose the format of presentation that will allow you to convey your information to the user audience as widely and clearly as possible.
• The presence of internal statistics showing such parameters as the number of impressions of the publication in the feed, the number of likes and comments it received, the percentage of people who read it to the end, the number of subscriptions and other conversion actions, etc. All this information will allow you to adjust the content so that it best meets the needs of the user audience and causes a positive feedback from them.
• Intuitive monetization. Everything is transparent and easy to control here. As soon as you manage to collect 10,000 minutes of views within one week, you can connect monetization through your personal account. It is impossible to say exactly how quickly you will reach this figure, since everything depends on the usefulness of your material and the interest it will generate among the audience.
• The presence of a number of affiliate programs, including those to support newcomers. In the latter case, Zen takes on the responsibilities of a curator, providing additional impressions for each publication. The platform also relies on supporting high-quality and unique content, such as that containing expert-class information.
• Ease of use with the advertising account. There is a special mechanism here, quite similar to targeted advertising. Moreover, the platform's algorithm itself selects those readers who may be interested in your material.
• Simple and convenient search for potential clients. The platform is focused on the portrait of the target audience of a particular business, takes into account the interests and age of people, their needs. That is, if you create expert materials on such topics, the platform will show it to interested people. This means that the return on them will be higher.
• As an option, you can attach a link to the same Instagram, Facebook, Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, the official website directly in the channel header. If any of the users are interested in your material, they will follow these links to get a more detailed acquaintance with your company, the goods and services provided. Do not forget to add the CTA button in the articles for the same subscription in social networks so that interested subscribers can follow it.
• The ability to link your blog on Zen to the official website of your company using RSS. It works quite simply. The feed will display publication cards. Interested people can simply click on them and end up on your site. That is, this way you get absolutely free organic traffic.
• A chance to increase the recognition of your brand, company. It will be enough to name your channel the same as the store or brand, write popular articles, shoot videos that will interest people. Moreover, in the material, you should not advertise your business too much. Unobtrusive mentions will be enough so as not to alienate users, but at the same time to develop a strong association with your brand. It gives excellent results in the long term.
• Search engines index the content presented on the Zen platform. This means that if the user enters a particular request and it corresponds to the material that you have presented on the platform, the search engine will definitely display it in the results. That is, search crawlers index the content presented on the site without problems.

As you can see, Zen provides quite a lot of opportunities for business development. It will be useful for bloggers and many companies supplying goods or services to the market. The main condition here is to create content that will be interesting and informative for the target audience, answer questions that are relevant to them.

But, despite all these advantages, many business representatives after Zen moved from Yandex to the VKontakte environment stopped paying enough attention to the development of their channels. And the main reason here is that now the paid promotion mechanism, which used to attract thousands of potential clients, alas, has stopped working. Let's try to figure out now whether it is so critical. Let's compare what was "Before" and what we got "After" such a transition.

How the paid promotion mechanism worked before Zen moved to VK

Even at the stage when Zen “proudly” sounded like Yandex Zen, representatives of various businesses actively created their channels here, invested effort, time and money in their introduction and promotion. In order to increase the reach of the user audience, attract as many subscribers as possible, it was possible to launch directly paid advertising through the corresponding tool on the platform. Despite the fact that attracting users was, as it were, paid, the rates of transitions and full reading of the material were very high. And this suited both business representatives and the platform itself.

If you analyze several channels that worked with paid promotion, you can say with confidence that the user audience was attracted in this way very, very actively. On the graph you can see that in a year of using Advertising in Yandex Zen one of the channels increased its audience of subscribers from 0 to 40,000.

And here is the next graph showing how many subscribers in terms of organic traffic came to this channel after disabling advertising in Zen. As you can see, there are changes, but they are quite insignificant: only within half a thousand new subscribers. Unfortunately, for most businesses, such growth rates are very, very low.

That is, these graphs allow you to clearly see how much the channel development rates have worsened, in particular the number of new subscribers from organic traffic, after Zen lost its paid promotion mechanism, becoming part of the VKontakte system. That is, now there is no longer an opportunity to show your publications to a wide user audience. In parallel with this, key indicators have also worsened, including reading the material to the end. Seeing such a picture, brands did not find any other solution than to simply abandon their channels and leave the Zen platform.

Unfortunately, many business representatives made a similar decision. Of all the channels that actively worked with this platform during the existence of Yandex Zen and published an average of 10 publications per month, about 15% have maintained such activity today. Of the remaining 25%, they reduced the frequency of publications by about half (about 5 materials per month). The rest began to post about 1-2 publications per month, or even completely stopped working on their own channels.

But is everything so sad: how are things now

Similar problems were observed on Zen until about the fall of last year, that is, until the moment when the platform launched a new advertising tool - Promo. In its operating principle and essence in general, it is quite similar to the previous solution, that is, Advertising in Yandex Zen. However, some fundamental differences have appeared here, which, according to many experts, will play a very important role in the subsequent development of the platform.

Now all advertising, including paid promotion on the channel, works through the personal account of business representatives, but not on the platform, but in VK Advertising. As a result, an article or other material will be displayed both in the feed of existing channel subscribers and for many other representatives of the user audience based on what targeting settings were made at the time of launch. At the same time, payment can be charged for different activities on the part of users:

1. Per clicks. This option is worth choosing for those who prioritize ensuring stable user transitions to a particular article.
2. Per impressions. This method can be used by business representatives who would like to increase their audience reach and increase brand awareness in the market.

That is, it turns out that the user sees the card of your material, clicks on it and immediately goes to your channel on the Zen platform. Moreover, at the end of the article, you can use additional tools that will transfer your reader to the main site of your company or to other publications on your channel. That is, you yourself choose the mechanism that will best meet the goals and objectives that you set for yourself. If you are betting on sales, then you need to use the scroll-to-site tool, and if today you are faced with the task of increasing the number of subscribers on the Zen channel, then you should use the scroll-to-channel button.

If you take into account the fact that regular subscribers to the channel are mainly people who read your material to the end, then such a solution can be called quite effective for developing your community on the platform.

The effectiveness of the Promo tool on Zen has already been proven in practice. In particular, pay attention to another graph, which shows the results of the practical application of the new solution. So, literally in six months, the number of subscribers on one of the channels has almost doubled.

In addition, higher rates have also been observed in reading materials to the end. The example from the same channel, the graph of which is given above, shows an increase in reading from 0 to 20 thousand per month.

Is it worth launching a channel on Zen?

We note right away that each of you makes the decision on the possibility of launching your own channel on the Zen platform or resuming work on an existing profile independently, focusing on the specifics of your own business, individual preferences, desire and ability to spend time and effort on its management. But what we can say with confidence is that the fears of many that Zen does not work today and has lost its former functionality are clearly wrong. That is, if you want to give a new start to the development of your business, if you want to get another platform to attract a user audience, do not neglect the opportunities that this service offers you.

In this case, you will have to go through the standard path, which involves constant work with the platform, preparation and publication of material that can interest the user audience. That is, you need to turn this very channel into a full-fledged blog of your business, which will be available to a huge number of user audiences.

But do not think that all this will be easy and simple to implement. You will have to spend a lot of time and even money on this. And the main expense item in this case is content. It must be constantly coming to the channel. Moreover, this must be professional-level material. You must understand that modern Zen is no longer the solution that was before. That is, it is no longer a banal platform for publishing content. After the transition to the ownership of VKontakte, it received quite a lot of functionality directly from the social network itself. And this means that you can now use Zen as a platform for communicating with the audience, attracting their attention, familiarizing yourself with new products and services that your business is launching on the market.

Today, you will no longer be able to organize a large-scale community here that is loyal to your business, but this platform will cope wonderfully with such tasks as familiarizing yourself with a new product, covering any news, including a description of promotional offers. Moreover, the presence of a paid Prom solves the problem of attracting new subscribers and even business clients. So, as you can see, not everything is as sad as it might seem at first glance.

Now the question is different, where to get suitable content for your channel and what publication formats should you choose for this.

Options for finding content for channels on Zen

One of the most significant advantages of the Zen platform today is that it allows you to use material already published on other sites, including social networks. That is, there are no special requirements for uniqueness here. Therefore, you can take the content that you previously posted on your official website or business profile on a social network and publish it on your channel without modifications, or make minor changes, maximally adjusting it to the presentation format that currently exists on the platform. This is the solution that will significantly reduce the costs of creating materials for publications. As we have already said above, this is one of the most expensive items when working with a personal channel.

Along with your content presented on other platforms, you will be able to post even third-party publications in Zen, such as influencer texts, thereby creating native advertising. In practice, this solution will look like this:

1. You find a blogger who is ready to prepare material, include native advertising of your business in it.
2. The opinion leader prepares this material and posts it on his pages in the same social networks.
3. The content is rotated, attracts the attention of users, the rate of reading to the end increases.
4. You connect the Promo tool, after which your material will become available to the widest possible user audience.
5. You copy this material, if necessary, make small adjustments to it for Zen formats and launch it on your channel.

Now we repeat the steps related to scrolling the content, increasing the quality indicators of user activity, in particular reading to the end, likes, comments.

Thanks to the fact that you get already warmed up material from the leaders on your channel opinions, you will be able to squeeze the most out of it. And practice shows that it all really works. That is, your worst fears associated with the need to constantly prepare content directly for the channel on Zen, along with spending quite impressive amounts of money, fortunately, will not come true in practice. You will be able to use both your content created for other resources and bloggers' publications and launch them. By connecting the Promo tool, you will be able to increase user activity several times.

What publication formats are available on Zen today?

The modern Zen platform allows you to post 4 different publication formats on channels. This can be:

1. A full-fledged article. There are no volume restrictions here. That is, you can write as much as you need to fully disclose the topic. Such articles can be supplemented with images that improve visual perception. In the feed, it will be displayed as a card with a cover, on which the title will be written, as well as the first lines of the text. This is the format that has remained unchanged since the time when the site belonged to Yandex. And we would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that this is the only possible option today, to which you can connect a paid Promo.
2. Post. This is also a text publication, but in this case its volume is limited to 4096 characters. It is also allowed to post images here, but they will already look like a gallery and consist of a maximum of 10 images.
3. Video. This is a vertical video, the duration of which is limited to 2 minutes. It is worth using this content format if you want to convey accurate information as quickly as possible, such as the opening of an offline representative office of your business or a new outlet, the launch of promotional campaigns or any other event.
4. Video. This is already a horizontal video, the duration of which can range from 5 seconds to 8 hours. That is, these can be full-fledged reviews of a particular product, useful practical recommendations, and much more. Users will be able to view such content directly in the feed.

That is, videos and clips are what you can use as entertainment content. But you should understand that today there is no opportunity to implement the promotion of such material in Zen. That is, there is no particular point in preparing materials specifically for this platform. But if you already have ready-made videos or clips, as an option, posted on social networks, you can easily post them on your channel on Zen. Users who are attracted by your text material will see such content and will be able to watch it if they want to.

But you should also understand that you won't be able to promote posts through Promo. But you can create them quite easily and quickly, spending a minimum of time and money on it. It is optimal to use such publications as coverage of certain news, prepare announcements about a giveaway, and create reposts. Their launch will be especially effective on channels where there is already a user audience. This way you will be able to reach the maximum number of interested people.

But still, it is a full-fledged article that is a universal solution for Zen, as they say, for all occasions. This is what will help you tell your readers in as much detail as possible about your products, provide certain practical recommendations, launch a selection of ready-made cases and perform many other works that will contribute to the performance of target actions by your audience. That is why you, as business representatives, when working with the Zen platform should first of all focus on text content: created directly by you or by bloggers with whom you cooperate.

Let's sum it up

Statistics show that the updated Zen is visited daily by over 31 million users. This is a truly large audience, including representatives of different ages, professions, interests, geolocations. If a person initially visits such a site, then he is set to read voluminous, informative materials that carry some value for them. But along with this, users also very well like materials that require no more than 5 minutes to read. On average, these are articles with a volume of about 4-5 thousand characters. This is quite enough for you to be able to tell in detail about your product, its features, the specifics of the business and present other data that will help users perform target actions. Experience shows that people positively perceive certain life stories in which advertising is unobtrusively integrated.

After the Promo tool appeared on Zen, you can safely resume work with paid promotion, attracting as much user audience as possible. In order for your work to be as effective as possible, we recommend using the following tips:

1. Focus on quality content. We have already said that Zen always personally assessed the usefulness of the material, focused on the reviews left by other readers and, based on such recommendations, offered it to other users for reading. That is, you should not chase quantity. It will be much more effective to release one publication a week, but a really cool one, than to fill your channel with dozens of posts a day that do not carry a useful load. When creating a publication, evaluate your own marketing goals, do not skimp on the budget — the material will be seen by those who may well become your regular customers.
2. Don't stop at one format. Yes, it is the texts that imply paid promotion, but along with them, you can also use a number of other publications, the same videos, videos in order to diversify the feed a little, enliven it, show the user audience your versatility and originality. Moreover, by tracking the analytics for each publication, you will be able to understand which solutions give the best results, and which ones you can refuse with a clear conscience.
3. Connect mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service to work https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy. This is the solution that will significantly simplify your work with the site, in particular, it will help to collect useful and interesting materials, form a portrait of the target audience, get acquainted with the solutions that competitors use in practice through automatic data collection. And with the help of mobile proxies you will provide yourself with stable access to the site regardless of what country in the world and region you are in at the moment. You can not be afraid of any unauthorized access, maintain your privacy, which will be useful when working on the Internet in general. At the same time, you are offered attractive tariffs and the opportunity to purchase mobile proxies for any period of time, starting from 1 day and up to 1 year, 24-hour technical support services, free two-hour testing, as well as many additional tools that will simplify your work on the network, will allow you to avoid a number of problems and restrictions.

By following these recommendations, you can increase the efficiency of your work with the Zen platform and get maximum efficiency from the interaction of your channel and business as a whole.

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