Buzzfeed, Upworthy and the humble blogs of this world are the new content kings.
Many blogs have more readers and eyeball traffic than traditional and national magazines. Newspapers like the New York Times, The Guardian and even the super blogs such as the Huffington Post and Mashable are under upstart threat.
Buzzfeed received 154 million unique visitors globally and 100.9 million in the US from August 24, 2014 to September 24,2014.
Upworthy which only started in March 2012, is a fast starter and has been described by Fast Company as the fastest growing media company in history with 28.4 million unique visitors in the last month in the US and 43 million globally.
So if you want to take the art of blogging and content marketing seriously you will need to think like a publisher, not like an amateur or hobbyist.
Don’t expect home runs every time
We want all our content to succeed every time. But that doesn’t happen and it isn’t realistic. Upworthy have published a Slideshare presentation that reveals that 56% of their posts don’t break 10,000 views and also reveal that only 0.3% of their articles reach the top level of over 1,000,000 views.
Write multiple headlines for each article
Former ad executive, David Ogilvy was famous for having written over 100 headlines for one advertisement. Upworthy have taken this practice and woven it into their editorial process. Their first step and instruction to all their content creators.
Stack images in content
Buzzfeed has perfected the art of stacking images in articles. Here is one of their most popular articles of all time with more than 15 million views. This tactic is very effective because you are giving your article the best chance to resonate with your audience so it “has” to be shared. If it was just one or two images it wouldn’t have received that level of viral traffic.
For more tips, click here.
