Category Archives: Social Media

Social content publisher Buzzfeed opens in Australia. Their new office with 3 writing staff will be creating content for and from Down Under. Which is good news for your social publishing ambitions.  Check their site if you aren’t familiar yet:
http://www.buzzfeed.com . They also do serious politics coverage (like e.g. Vice does as well) and places where they opened earlier, like the UK, have noticed this branching out from pure social and entertainment:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/01/politics-for-the-buzzfeed-generation/

Will have to correct the numbers below, as I am just writing this from memory. They rack up 2-3 million unique browsers in AU already and went from 2 to 10 million uniques and 22 writers in the UK in last year.

Keith Hernandez from BuzzFeed, spoke at our Creative Social Sydney  (http://creativesocialblog.com) last night. Many thanks to Aaron Michie and ZenithOptimedia for putting it on. Here are my main take outs:

• They measure  in ClickThroughRates, engagement (shares, comments, likes) and sentiment (positive, negative). I am sure there are deeper metrics to be analysed and potential actions you would like users to take (beyond reading and sharing)
• Agencies like 1 Trick Pony, Barbarian Group or Mother are now training and employing brand copywriters to write specifically for places like Buzzfeed, tumblr etc.
• Their stories derive their shareability from positivity, identity, the moment and (naturally) humour
• Traffic from LinkedIn is rising (as LI is  aiming to raise their stickiness/return rates)
• When brands go real-time content , they have been building and practicing (like Oreos) for a year (get brand right, approval processes in place, change culture)
• When they covered the Grammys, it felt like a Saturday Night Live ‘writers pitch’ room
• Brands should have a narrative arch over the whole year: VW for example turned the ‘Be Happy’ campaign motto into a SuperBowl ‘Let’s celebrate the loser city’ idea
• And lastly: Our biggest competitor is ‘having a life’, the great outdoors – (originally said by the CEO of Reddit on a panel with Buzzfeed)

Additionally there is a (sold out) IAB event this Friday featuring  Andy Wiedlin, Buzzfeed’s Chief Revenue Officer. Some of our discussion afterwards revolved around the role of an agency in the process, how BuzzFeed’s Top10-lists and quizzes might evolve creatively, the culture you need to build for such a quick publishing model and how ‘Native Advertising’ has become the new ‘viral’ – most don’t quite know what it tis, but everyone wants it in their marketing mix.