Beagles wearing hand-crocheted suits, an army of pugs being led by a corgi, and a snake on a plane. These are the top stories on BuzzFeed, the latest web offering from US technocrat, Jonah Peretti.
Too trashy for you? Well, maybe it’s time to dumb down, because the people running websites with ‘LOL feeds’ and ‘OMG feeds’ could be laughing all the way to the bank. Peretti knows this only too well, from his days as SEO architect for the Huffington Post. So…what’s the most shared link on BuzzFeed right now? The 25 Most Awkward Cat Sleeping Positions.
Watershed PR‘s been looking at this article in the New York Times about how BuzzFeed doubled its number of unique visitors in one year to 10.8 million. What’s the killer formula? Combining content that’s contagious or silly – that people want to share – with the more highbrow stuff that people need to know, like breaking news.
We can back up these findings with our own piece of micro-research. Emily’s been checking the real-time stats on her bit.ly info pages. What gets the most clicks? Why, animal pictures of course – specifically, these wonderful photos of man meets beast at last year’s Dorset County Show.
So, the lesson for today is: ‘sticky’ or ‘clicky’ content is not as important as something that’s easily spreadable. Like butter. Like Lurpack!
