The article is suitable for anyone who wants to enter the Russian market with their goods and services through social media. This is the first article on Russian social media and messengers. Follow my articles on LinkedIn and videos on my YouTube channel.
VKontakte has set new records for audience and activity: 53.6 million daily viewers in Russia and 1.1 billion video views per day
Over the last year, VKontakte has launched hundreds of product and technology upgrades and significantly improved its recommendation algorithms. This allowed the social media to grow its audience and increase their engagement and activity on the platform. In March 2023, the daily audience of VKontakte in Russia grew to 53.6 million (+12% year-on-year), which was a new record for the audience.
One of the growth drivers at the beginning of the year was VK Clips. In January, the service drastically improved the quality of its recommendations, which increased the amount of time a user spent watching clips (time spent) by 30% and the number of views by 17%. In total, views of VK Clips in February increased 2.5 times compared to last year, and time spent increased 3.2 times. Thanks to product and technology updates, VK Clips reached a peak of 1.1 billion views per day for the first time.
Feed, one of the key products of VKontakte, continues to grow rapidly this year thanks to the development of recommendations. In January and February 2023, the number of views increased by 46% year-over-year. Other user interaction services are also growing. During the first two months of 2023 the number of comments on the site increased by 43% year-on-year, while the number of requests for friend requests increased by 40% year-on-year.
By actively engaging with communities and improving referral algorithms, VKontakte authors were able to significantly increase their earnings on the social media. Communities which used official monetization tools (affiliate program, video monetization, VK Donut) earned a record 4 billion rubles in 2022. Also in 2022, the income of content creators with the help of VK Donut increased 2.9 times, to 440 million rubles. The number of publishers also increased as a whole – in December 2022 the number of active author publishers reached 2 million (+13% year-on-year).
Thanks to the product and technological improvements, VKontakte shows growth in all major areas and the social media is used every month by 86% of the entire audience of the Runet. According to VKontakte press service.
Conclusion
This is the first part of my article about Russian social media and messengers, and I will share with you more opportunities to start doing business with Russia from now on. If you already have a Vkontakte account, then subscribe to my profile.
If you want to learn how to start selling your products and services in the Russian market on the social media VKontakte? Connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter, subscribe to my YouTube channel – Let’s do Business with Russia. See other export/import services with Russia here.