Developing social media for news outlets in 2025: training class by Mediabaza Cherkasy

Combine news with viral content and information about the media outlet and the team, respond to Meta updates and focus on your posts' SEO – these are the tips for social media development shared by Daria Kotelnikova, former chief of digital department at Gvara Media, during an online class from Mediabaza Cherkasy.

Daria Kotelnikova says that getting traffic on Facebook will be more difficult for media outlets in 2025. After all, the platform is becoming less and less friendly to external links. This means it is best to alternate content that leads directly to the website and posts with no links.

Daria Kotelnikova. Photo by Daria Kotelnikova

To grow on Facebook, a media outlet should also consider the following factors:

• Focus on interactions: getting as many interactions with your content as possible within the first hour of posting is key for promotion.
• Build communities: media professionals should continue to share their posts to groups. After all, the Facebook algorithm will help develop communities in 2025.
• Post Reels: the platform will promote short videos and pages that post them.
• Prioritize content that has a longer “life”: Facebook users sometimes see posts in their feeds that could have been published days or even weeks ago. The longer your content lives, the better.
• Consider the age of your audience: communicate with your audience in a language they understand.

“Violation of Meta's policies is something that all Ukrainian media struggle with. It should be noted that there is no specific list of words and things that always get banned. But the first things Meta takes down is hate speech and obscene language. If you really need to use them, you can replace some letters with symbols or English letters. However, keep in mind that Facebook analyzes not just individual words, but entire sentences as well. So it is better to simply refrain from this,” notes Darya Kotelnikova.

Moreover, the coach advises not to post sensitive content or blur such photos and videos and to ban bots that post dubious advertising, spam, or links in comments.

Screenshot from the class presentation. Photo by Daria Kotelnikova

What's new on Instagram

• Emphasis on "Saves": in 2025 the platform will promote posts that the audience has been saving most.
• Political content is back in the feed: while the algorithm used to suppress such content before, now users will be able to choose whether they want to see it.
• You can get rid of bots and inactive followers: starting 2025, Instagram will consider pages with many bots as suspicious.
• Identical hashtags under every post will be viewed as spam: media outlets should make sure that the hashtags under their posts are different.
• SEO for Instagram posts is key to visibility on Google: in order for posts to appear in the search results, you need to use more keywords and fill in photo descriptions.

"Communities (channels) are also gaining popularity on Instagram. Ukrainian media are not using this feature yet. But it is a good tool for direct communication. You can share the behind-the-scenes life of your media outlet, tease new posts and communicate with the audience," shares Daria.

What media content to post on Instagram

• Repackaged material: carousels, emotional quotes, explainers.
• Reels: these videos should be short, but interesting and emotional. What matters is to get the viewer hooked in the first seconds.
• Memes: respond to viral news, post situational posts.
• Helpful content: any content that helps subscribers make a choice, find something, understand something, etc.
• SEO content: create selections and posts for popular Google queries.

“The main question you should be asking yourself at the end of the day is: would you share such content? Honestly admit it to yourself. This is very important,” concludes Daria Kotelnikova.

Anastasia Neboha, SMM at Mediabaza Cherkasy