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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
TeleSUR English is unique in today\u2019s media environment.<\/p>\n
Unlike other media news companies wholly or partially funded by foreign governments \u2013 such as BBC and Britain; RT and Russia, 24 and France \u2013 TeleSUR English is avowedly socialist in its political orientation. There are no red flags or five pointed stars in its masthead to indicate this but it is evident in other ways.<\/p>\n
TeleSUR’s main financial supporter\u00a0is Venezuela, ruled by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Additionally\u00a0the non-current event content shared on their social media pages includes quotes and photos from socialists such as Rosa Luxembourg, the Black Panther Party, Patrice Lumumba; people that were sympathetic to socialists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr; and a variety of other socialist related content.<\/p>\n
In their About Me<\/a> section, TeleSUR English claims<\/a> that they want to be \u201cA space and a voice for the construction of a new communications order\u201d centered around the subject of\u00a0 \u201cGlobal South\u201d an allusion to social, political and economic justice.<\/p>\n In December of 2017, a few months after I left a job as a Creative Director at a major marketing firm, I decided to make a case study on TeleSUR English that I would later publish on Medium.<\/p>\n To accomplish this I looked underneath the proverbial hood of this modern iteration of a radical newspaper to see what was doing well and what needed to be changed.<\/p>\n My intent in looking at various key performance indicators I’d previously used in the digital media strategy and marketing realm to compare to Russia’s attempt to influence America.<\/p>\n On first look, what I discovered was disconcerting, but as I continued to research, something more nefarious emerged.<\/p>\n Why? I\u2019m not sure but I imagine that it has to do with fact that I uncovered at TeleSUR English what looks to be corruption and gross incompetence, if not sabotage. <\/strong><\/p>\n How do I know this?<\/p>\n Some of the bad stats were intentionally produced to be misleading as to the level of success of TeleSUR English\u2019s operations. <\/strong><\/p>\n Some of the bad stats were intentionally produced as the person directing operations was either incompetent or is trying to purposely sabotage TeleSUR English\u2019s operations. <\/strong><\/p>\n If someone should write about the history of TeleSUR English they will refer to it as The Lost Half Decade. Why? Because of how badly TeleSUR English has been directed since its inception in the digital realm. How bad is it? Below is an explanation as to why it happened as well as several examples of the criminal-level incompetency that I’ve discovered.<\/p>\n In the description on his LinkedIn account, Pablo Vivanco writes the following:<\/p>\n “With a reduced staff and budget, improved metric outreach by over 2000% in under 12 months\u201d<\/p>\n As impressive a number as 2000% is, anyone that\u2019s done any sort of digital marketing, growth hacking or any kind of content marketing strategy will tell you \u2013 outreach by itself is an entirely meaningless metric. <\/strong><\/p>\n Nobody cares about the numbers of emails sent that are never opened; the number of dofollow links placed on low Domain Authority user-generated webpages; or the links posted on websites that are never read, etc. Google, especially, doesn\u2019t care about these.<\/p>\n While this number can be useful in comparison to something else over time \u2013 for instance outreach numbers in relationship to A\/B testing email headers, only someone that doesn\u2019t have a professional understanding of digital media ecology would self-publicize about such a metric, let alone authorize the spending of tens of thousands of dollars to\u00a0achieve such a metric.<\/strong><\/p>\n Key performance indicators that ought to be monitored to track and map improvement include the following:<\/p>\n Any person wishing to genuinely understand and track the health of TeleSUR English, or any website for that matter, should be looking at these key performance indicators.<\/p>\n Looking at TeleSUR English’s social media footprint, we can see the shape of such mismanagement.<\/p>\n On TeleSUR English\u2019s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube Accounts there is ample evidence that many of the people which are \u201cFollowing\u201d these accounts are not real.<\/p>\n Pablo Vivanco admitted this was true while on the phone with me.<\/p>\n Lacking internal access to their social media accounts and to their internal purchases (to check for \u201cPay for Followers\u201d services) I cannot say for certain what proportion that this is actually is, but I can estimate and what I can say authoritatively<\/a> is that they have zero value.<\/p>\n TwitterAudit suggests that about 80% of TeleSUR English\u2019s followers are real, however based on engagement numbers demographics and the number of people following them that follow over 500 people, I\u2019d say actual people following are about one-half to two thirds of what is actually shown for Twitter. A full report from Twitnomy could easily show me wrong.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n For the number of YouTube views and subscriptions, I would say the percent of people that are fake to real is much higher.<\/p>\n Given the ratios of ratings of videos, to engagement via comments, to view numbers I\u2019d say that it is likely half of the views and subscriptions aren\u2019t real.<\/p>\n There\u2019s fewer means for determining false engagement levels on Facebook outside the app itself, so I decided to try an experiment.<\/p>\n After reviewing a number of posts people, I noticed a number of recurring names.<\/p>\n Given many of these people\u2019s profiles were almost entirely not in English, I was surprised. I understand that it’s normal in many places for English to be a 2nd, 3rd or even 4th language – but there was just zero indication other than a TeleSUR English link that it was within there repertoire. As such I decided to send friend requests and message ten people to see how many responded. Out of the ten, only one did.<\/p>\n Now does this mean only one in ten of their followers are real? Certainly not.<\/p>\n What it does mean that someone at TeleSUR English has been paying for follower services, which ought to be categorized as an improper allocation of tax resources.<\/strong><\/p>\n Interesting to note: What happened shortly after I tried this experiment? Facebook took down the TeleSUR English Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n ***Update 2\/11\/18***<\/strong><\/p>\n Because of the above section, I’ve since been accused that I want to “destroy” TeleSUR English. This is simply not true, I simply do not believe that paying for fake followers is a defensible strategy.<\/p>\n Furthermore, I’ve since learned from an internal source that the\u00a0unpublishing of the TeleSUR English Facebook page was an accident on their part. That they’ve not commented on this, to me, is totally irresponsible and a further example of their willingness to distort the truth for their own narrative gain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n TeleSUR English has now been in existence for over four years and as a result of their choosing a director primarily for ideological rather than professional reasons, TeleSUR English pursued a number of content ideation, production and digital media strategies that are not considered best practices by YouTube<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, and Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n One example of TeleSUR English not following best practices is with its abundance of high production videos that are simply too long.<\/p>\n YouTube and Facebook videos which are most often shared are five minutes and under. While longer format content certainly fulfills a need, TeleSUR English ignores all data-based advice by not repurposing what they\u2019ve already produced into short and succinct segments that are more readily sharable and digestible.<\/p>\n That the above video has only 38 views is both a testament to its length and the bizarre name \u201cBirds of the Apocalypse\u201d that means a person looking for information on \u201cVulture Funds\u201d will have great difficulty finding it.<\/p>\n Additionally there are the technical mistakes which sometimes require viewers to tell the TeleSUR English staff that the video\u00a0they are live-streaming is sideways.<\/p>\n Such mistakes happen naturally, it’s only human. However it seems that TeleSUR English has such an abundance of them as the person directing the enterprise simply doesn’t know how to optimize their digital media presence.<\/p>\n The strategy which TeleSUR English followed was to take a route that allowed for the wrong kind of data to be presented in fair light rather quickly \u2013 “outreach”. Outreach in this instance means putting over a million links on low domain authority websites that has their content generated by users.<\/p>\n Not only does this not constitute an effective strategy, but changes on the content platform could remove all of that effort with a terms of service change or a coterie of committed, computer literature people could remove all of those links.<\/p>\n It\u2019s understandable WHY someone would want to do this \u2013 currently some of the top referring pages to TeleSUR English are from Wikipedia, however this doesn\u2019t justify this as a strategy but instead as a reason why to change strategy.<\/p>\n Any government funded institution that spends money on a back-linking strategy that involves people placing hundreds of thousands of links on Wikipedia, Pinterest and GooglePlus is guilty of gross incompetence and misuse of public funds. <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The above screenshot capture is one of the numerous examples that illustrate the website was not properly designed.<\/p>\n Difficulty browsing frequently causes viewers to leave the page and I imagine that their bounce rate is exceptionally high.<\/p>\n After all, what sort of credibility can you grant to an enterprise that doesn’t know how to properly put the pieces together that allows for the dissemination of content?<\/p>\n Many of the pages on TeleSUR English lack titles or anchor text. This is a basic and important component of websites. That it’s not there means that there is no Quality Assurance or Editorial staff that knows to include these before publication. That so much of their web content has been posted without this indicated a lack of competency on the work the Director oversees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The brief report I sent to Pablo Vivanco mentioned how in the You\u2019re the Reporter<\/a>\u00a0subheading of TeleSUR English there were only five articles and that the last one published was over a year old.<\/p>\n This must have struck a nerve, as a few days later the content therein was deleted while the header remained.<\/p>\n What a telling symbol of the Director of TeleSUR English\u2019s technical incompetence: he can\u2019t even properly delegate the deletion of the entire section \u2013 only the content within the section!<\/p>\n Beyond just a symbol of incompetence, what else does this say about Pablo Vivanco\u2019s directorship of TeleSUR English\u00a0that after multiple years he still hasn\u2019t been able to come up with a means for attracting, retaining and developing talent that wants to write from the perspective TeleSUR English wishes to promote.<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the Austrian School\u2019s criticisms<\/a> of the socialist mode of workplace administration and management is what they see as the tendency for innovation to be lost in production. Why? Those which meekly follow \u201cthe Party Line\u201d would take up such a position rather than those that are most meritorious.<\/p>\n While I think that most of this school of thought to be ahistorical and metaphysical – this could explain the reason why TeleSUR, let alone TeleSUR English, doesn’t make it into the top 100 Latin American Newspapers Web Rankings.<\/a><\/p>\n Certain personality types, after all, prefer to keep power to themselves and act as a barrier for those that might be better equipped to direct. These are the kind of people that insulate themselves with a coterie of sycophants rather than surround themselves with the type of talent that is continuously striving for excellence.<\/p>\n Now admittedly I do not know much of the history of the people involved in TeleSUR English other than what I\u2019ve been able to piece together from forums and blogs on the internet, but the story which emerged seems to confirm that the Hayek’s concerns have been actualized at TeleSUR English.<\/p>\n There are numerous (1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a>) accounts of TeleSUR English’s difficult working environment and the person who oversees it’s Director, Oscar Perez, has had his fare share of controversy as well.<\/p>\n In 2017 Orlando Perez was fired from El Telegrafo<\/a> as part of a political change up. \u00a0Shortly thereafter he\u00a0fled Quito, Ecuador for Miami, Florida<\/a> following his assault on his former girlfriend<\/a>. After he decided to stop evading arrest and returned to Quito, he held a press conference to explain everything and has since\u00a0maintained his innocence<\/a>, but in a highly politicized context wherein working for a leftist state-media publication is seen a mar on one’s resume,\u00a0this doesn’t really matter.<\/p>\n In an environment where attracting and retaining talent is already hard, appearance matters and it’s no logical leap to say that talented women may be shy of wanting to work in an environment they are concerned about male aggression.<\/p>\n Besides this consideration, there Orlando Perez’s proclaimed political purity and orthodoxy that takes on a sinister tone when it comes to how he views his opponents. After\u00a0translating several of his articles and interviews (1<\/a>, 2<\/a>), I noticed an overlap in our political views. However where he uses abelist language to refer to the \u201cthe autistic left<\/a>\u201d I refer to this group as politically aloof hedonism<\/a>\u00a0as I see no reason to insult and alienate potential allies as well as those with mental impairments.<\/p>\n En toto, considering that TeleSUR English states that they want to be\u00a0\u201cA space and a voice for the construction of a new communications order\u201d centered around the subject of\u00a0 \u201cGlobal South\u201d an allusion to social, political and economic justice – it makes me wonder why they would have someone directing the decision-making process considering that clearly alienates so many potential allies and talent.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not being a reporter with numerous articles by and about him, learning about Pablo Vivanco has been more difficult. From what I can tell his experience in digital media starts with him at TeleSUR English and besides the above, which shows that he has directed operations as if it were still the early 1990s and without a thought to the important nuances which make up effective digital strategy, there is little else worth noting.<\/p>\n I admit this is total conjecture, but it certainly seems to me likely that Orlando Perez would want to cover up the extent of Pablo Vivanco\u2019s ability to formulate and enact a digital media strategy based upon the current best practices shared by the social media outlets that TeleSUR English uses.<\/p>\n In the wake of his domestic assault case, this would likely become another reason those in power would want to distance themselves from him and thus he needs it swept under the rug.<\/p>\n ***Update 2\/11\/18***<\/strong><\/p>\n I’ve received confirmation from a source inside TeleSUR English that confirms my above speculations about Orlando’s insulting, overbearing demeanor. I’ll quote this in an second article in the event I get more feedback.<\/p>\n The reason that I\u2019ve decided to write and publish this assessment is simple: It\u2019s what an honest citizen with professional abilities and integrity would do in the situation \u2013 call out incompetence and corruption to help ensure the optimum function of a government institution.<\/p>\n TeleSUR encourages greater transparency in all governmental affairs, no surprise as it was in part founded to counter the lies of corporate media that had a major role in the 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez Frias.<\/p>\n Ecuador has given asylum to Julian Assange and the governments of all TeleSUR contributors initially a defended Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. While U.S. politicians called these people traitors, seditionists and said that they should be killed without trial \u2013 the voices representing The South defended their actions as a service to the world. People have a right, they said, to know the extent of surveillance and espionage that everyday people and various businesses were subject to.<\/p>\n TeleSUR English, however, does not themselves abide by such values as transparency that the governments paying its bill claims to promote. Instead, it replicates an elite-est strand of authoritarian socialism that lies to it’s readers and tells itself it’s doing “good work”.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TeleSUR English is unique in today\u2019s media environment. Unlike other media news companies wholly or partially funded by foreign governments \u2013 such as BBC and Britain; RT and Russia, 24 and France \u2013 TeleSUR English is avowedly socialist in its political orientation. There are no red flags or five pointed stars in its masthead to … Continue reading “TeleSUR English: Surface Level Website Analysis”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[86,96,90,98,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-process","category-ecuador","category-marketing","category-telesur-english","category-venezuela"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8e7kf-13j","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4049"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4678,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions\/4678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why I Decided to Review TeleSUR English\u2019s Digital Footprint<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Why What I Discovered on Reviewing TeleSUR English Required A Public Report<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Future Historians Will Refer to The First 5 Years of TeleSUR English\u2019s Wasted Money and Opportunities as it\u2019s Lost Half-Decade<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Worthless Metrics Promoted as Meaningful<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Pablo-Vivanco.png?resize=840%2C570&ssl=1\")
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<\/p>\n\n
False Followers on All Social Media<\/strong><\/h3>\n
False Followers on Twitter<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-02-05-at-2.05.31-PM.png?resize=300%2C85&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nFalse Followers on YouTube<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Featured-Box.png?resize=840%2C347&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nFalse Followers on Facebook<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/TeleSUR-English-Fake-Followers.png?resize=840%2C380&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nOther Examples of Corruption<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Wasted-Opportunity.gif?resize=500%2C167&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nExamples of Best Practices Not Being Followed<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-09-at-11.32.01-AM.png?resize=840%2C575&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/telesur-sideways.png?resize=239%2C300&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nWrong Backlinking Strategy<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/image014.png?resize=840%2C430&ssl=1\")
\nA well-executed back-linking strategy is an incredibly powerful means for establishing a higher Domain Authority and drawing in readers. However from the above view from Ahrefs<\/a> we can see that this was not the case.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/image011.png?resize=468%2C393&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nTerrible User Experience Encourages Visitors to Bounce<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-07-at-3.25.59-PM.png?resize=840%2C526&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nWrong Content Management Strategy<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/image018.png?resize=840%2C532&ssl=1\")
No One Is The Reporter<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-08-at-1.48.14-PM.png?resize=264%2C156&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-19-at-1.09.45-PM.png?resize=280%2C149&ssl=1\")
Orlando Perez and Pablo Vivanco: TeleSUR English’s Corrupt Leaders<\/strong><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/629503868.jpg?resize=242%2C161&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arielsheen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/foto_pablo_telesur.jpg?resize=426%2C235&ssl=1\")
Why Speaking Up and Out is More Important Than \u201cKeeping it Professional\u201d in This Instance<\/strong><\/h5>\n