what-buzzfeed-can-teach-us-about-content-marketing

What Buzzfeed can teach us about blogging

Buzzfeed gets more than 200 million unique users per month who view more than 7 million pages. The Buzzfeed global team produces more than 700 pieces of content daily and most of their referral traffic comes from social media. They know content.

Here’s what Buzzfeed can teach us about content marketing:

buzzfeed

Create different types of content 

While Buzzfeed is famous for listicles and quizzes, they also offer a wide variety of content types. Don’t limit yourself to articles with an image, try out video, add in GIFs, create memes, infographics, quizzes and listicles that will help tell your story effectively.

create different types of content

Create shareable content

While you may create good content, is it shareable? You’d never search for the article below, but you would share this on social media. Social media can be a big driver of traffic if you create shareable content. 75% of all traffic to Buzzfeed comes from social media. 

shareable content

 And just in case you want to read the Buzzfeed article, click here. 

Check what your content will look like on different platforms and devices before publishing it

Most of Buzzfeed’s traffic comes from mobile. (Last year Google said that search from mobile surpassed search from desktop) If the content doesn’t look great on mobile it won’t be shared. Most of your traffic will come from mobile too, so always create content for mobile first.

Content creators usually create content via desktop (although this isn’t the case with Instagram and Snapchat).  Your article may look great on desktop, but on mobile it may be too text heavy, the hyperlinks too small or the slider doesn’t work.

what a website looks like on mobile
To see what content will look like on mobile on desktop, simply click the minimize button

A/B split test your content

a) The one thing you need to know about blogging

b) What bloggers don’t want you to know

Most readers use the headline to determine whether they’ll read an article or not. Play around with different types of headlines and see which version does best.

Use this handy headline formula sheet to come up with ideas. 

Did you know: Buzzfeed will send out different versions of an article, and after 4 hours which ever one has gained the most traction, becomes the article.

Always track and monitor content and change accordingly

data driven

Become data driven and remember that stats don’t lie. Buzzfeed International VP Scott Lamb, says, the early performance of a post is usually an indication of how the post will perform.

Facebook’s algorithm uses engagement as a key ranking factor, and if people aren’t sharing, commenting or reacting to your post, then it means that the post won’t show up in their newsfeed.

If a post is doing well organically, put all you have behind it

If a post is doing well organically, then focus on that post. This is because it is a given that people like this content and boosting it via social media advertising, influencer engagement or other methods will amplify the results.

This means other posts will get less attention, but that’s okay. One viral success is potentially worth more than many moderately successful ones – Scott Lamb, Buzzfeed International VP

Tip: Only boost Facebook posts that do well organically. You will spend less and your engagement rate will be higher.

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