Buzzfeed: Curate content audiences are looking for
Last week, we were very excited to host our second ruckus makers event with our special guest Elamin Abdelmahmoud, the Social Media Editor from Buzzfeed Canada.
As Buzzfeed secures their spot as the king of content, many brands are left wondering how they do it. The quick answer, they develop sharable content tailored for each social media platform. Roughly, 75 per cent of Buzzfeed’s content is consumed outside its own website so they understand that’s it’s important to tailor and develop content for platforms. “Don’t even bother building a website,” says Elamin. By leaning into the benefits of Facebook video, Buzzfeed’s 8-month-old Tasty channel has grown to an average of 360 million users a month.
Recently, Buzzfeed even experimented with Facebook Live, attracting more than 800,000 live viewers to watch their editorial team make a watermelon explode with rubber bands (spoiler it takes longer than you’d think!)
And get this, Buzzfeed has been able to get this giant audience reach with no paid media.
Ready for a content makeover? Take a read of our major takeaways from the event:
• Curate conversations: Before creating a piece of content Elamin and team are listening to what’s most important for their audiences and develop content tailored to them. If you know there is a huge audience looking forward to Beyonce’s Lemonade soundtrack you should have content ready for this release. For brands, this could implemented by creating content around consumer seasonal behaviours, policy changes or cultural events etc.
• Brand voice: Understand how you want to be perceived as a brand and speak in all of your content in that voice. For Elamin, that’s writing in the voice as a sixteen-year-old girl. Once you’ve defined that voice, make sure you’re being authentic and don’t be afraid to be a little playful. Elamin loves @DennyDiner’s content – they’re all about that breakie voice.
• Metrics: For Buzzfeed, they’re data-driven company and are very focused on how shareable their content is. They have even defined their own social measurement around this called ‘”Social Lift.” For brands, you should always been reviewing what you’ve done in the past and keep learning and tweaking from successful campaigns. For agencies, it’s important for us to educate our clients on the metrics and how they differ from traditional advertising metrics.
If you weren’t able to make it out, take a look at our video recap:
Or the evening’s activity on Twitter here:
Katie Boland is a Senior Consultant at ruckus Digital.
katie@ruckusdigital.ca