BuzzFeed's classic attack in the new media era: monthly visits 140 million, valued at $200 million

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

I dark Horse Note: After visiting the New York Times, BuzzFeed is already the third largest news site in the United States. BuzzFeed perfect interpretation of the new media in the road, let me review the monthly visit volume 140 million, the value of 200 million U.S. News station is how to be in the new media era.

1. Network media has a unique communication advantage, social networks and search engines can quickly spread content to hundreds of millions of web readers;

2. Lightweight, low threshold, a display of the virus-type content more popular, readers are willing to actively forward such articles;

3. Following the initial scale and impact, the addition of new themes and serious reports can help the site gather new audiences;

4. Advertising can also be spread as much as viral content, but only if it is "not like advertising"-content with enough new ideas, and has to avoid blunt marketing rhetoric.

New Media Operation Benchmark

After visiting the New York Times and leaping to the third largest news site in the United States, BuzzFeed became the benchmark for new media operations. While the quality of its content has been criticized by serious traditional media, critics ' tongues cannot stop the BuzzFeed of traffic-a group of data released in March this year showed that BuzzFeed could attract 140 million visits a month.

Founder Jonah Peretti (Jonahperetti) has once again succeeded. 2005, he and Arianna (Arianna Huffington) and other people started The Huffington Post, the latter by virtue of "distributed" News mining and social news communication model unique. In March 2011, AOL announced a 315 million dollar takeover of the Huffington Post, and in 2012 Columbia University awarded it the Pulitzer Prize, The Huffington Post, with both capital markets and traditional media endorsement.

In 2006, Peretti, who was in the Huffington Post, got a small seed fund from Kenneth Lelles (Kenneth Lehrer) to start brewing new ideas.

A new media to advance the road

BuzzFeed was founded as a pilot project that editors use to test, track, and create viral content that could spread massively across the network. Its first product is instant Messaging tool Buzzbot, the main function is to push the user to send the most popular information links, information priority based on the link to increase the speed of click. Buzzbot will crawl content from hundreds of of collaborative blogs and then sift through articles that might be popular, and finally refine the most popular content based on the number of readers sharing it. In addition to these, Buzzbot can also search for new links to spread to other sites.

After the US online acquisition of the Huffington Post in 2011, Peretti began to fully develop BuzzFeed. In December, BuzzFeed hired top American political writer Ben (Ben Smith) as the new editor of the website. After taking office, Smith launched a political and technology channel, recruiting more journalists and writing in-depth original news. Soon thereafter, BuzzFeed also launched sports and women's sections, beginning to cover more subjects.

At the end of 2012, Peretti in an interview with Business Insider, BuzzFeed began to re-emphasize the importance of manual editing. The rise of social networks has allowed BuzzFeed to come out of search engine optimization. The way people consume content has changed quietly, and sharing has become more important than search--and it's clear that manual editors know more about what the public likes to share than machines.

The adjusted BuzzFeed began to focus more on social media, where they were stationed on mainstream social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, and the content was all about social sharing----------------------------------- Full of social networking friends.

Two. All by "sharing" as the first

1. Website structure: Waterfall flow and ubiquitous sharing button

Like most new media Web sites, BuzzFeed also places hot news and headlines on the top of the site, and the main page is divided into 3 parts, from left to right, all news, "BuzzFeed News" after the initial refinement, and the most popular news of the week. The website's subscription channels as well as advertising and recruitment information are equally distributed at the very right end.

The left and middle content mimics Pinterest's waterfall streaming, and the page continues to brush out new content. In addition, after the new content is released, BuzzFeed will also, like social networking, be alerted at the top of the left column of the site and the title bar of the browser.

The composition of a single article is similar to social media Mashable. Both media believe that communication is the core of the media's competitiveness, so BuzzFeed also places the social networking button in a prominent position on the site.

As an important part of BuzzFeed, images are also added to the sharing function. When the mouse moves to the picture, the left side of the picture will automatically pop up Facebook and other social network sharing buttons, users can click to share.

In order to better display content, BuzzFeed part of the photos also added interactive elements. For example, a reflection of the changes in the face of drug users to join the interactive plug-ins, the mouse on the picture sliding around, you can show drug addicts before and after the face. It is more impact eyeball than the simple stitching picture.

2. Mobile page structure: share first

To cater to the increasingly visible trend of movement, BuzzFeed's mobile pages are optimized for handheld devices, such as the Google + button on the desktop, which is replaced with WhatsApp on the mobile page. WhatsApp can be easily understood as the American version of "micro-letter", which was bought by Facebook 19 billion dollars this February.

If the mobile phone pre-installed WhatsApp, click on BuzzFeed Mobile page WhatsApp share icon, the page will automatically jump to the phone on the WhatsApp application, and friends of the dialogue bubble will automatically add to share the introduction of the article and links.

Also in order to encourage sharing, the BuzzFeed mobile page's bottom bar also joins Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and email sharing buttons. 4 buttons do not scroll up and down the page, they remain in the bottom of the page.

3. Content features: Curiosity, fun, viral transmission

BuzzFeed the most well-known is a large number of suitable for the rapid spread of social networks of viral content, Meng Pet, rankings, star gossip, anecdotes ... Almost all-encompassing.

Linking depth content with BuzzFeed seems to be the best joke of the year. But the truth is that the original depth content is also an integral part of BuzzFeed. Peretti has not denied the importance of the original news, instead, he will be in the viral content of the recommendation to put the popular depth content, so that they get better spread.

Recently boarded the BuzzFeed recommended bit is a Wyatt Williams (Wyatt Williams) wrote million characters long. The article was published 50 years before the founding of the Civil Rights Act, portraying a chef who resisted the Mississippi State bill.

All kinds of character close-up techniques--details and stories--that are respected in traditional media can be seen in this article. BuzzFeed for long content to give a number of privileges: the general content of the right side of the recommendations, such as the impact of the reading experience elements, in long articles are not seen; page layout is also optimized for long articles--Large portrait images, refined words and dialogues-- It is less refined than traditional print magazines.

Peretti Michael Hau Stins (Michael Hastings) in 2012. Austin, a political bestselling writer, wrote a report in 2010 that directly led to the resignation of McChrystal Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan.

In March 2012, BuzzFeed a political book written by former White House journalist Mark Ambind Marc Ambinder, the Secret Army: exclusive disclosure of the 10 secrets of the US military. Peretti says the reader's focus now covers almost all areas, including serious news and independent reporting. "We've come to realize that as the transition takes place, we need to cover all the news that can be displayed on Facebook and Twitter," he said. This means that we need an editorial team with a fixed source. They can provide information and unexpected news, telling readers stories they don't know. ”

Iii. selling advertisements with originality

BuzzFeed not see the traditional banner ads, the promotional content of advertisers are also processed into the article. BuzzFeed will be prompted with a bright text under the title of the article, but a similar reminder does not affect the creative advertising on the--buzzfeed, which most readers are still willing to share.

An article entitled "10 trips to teach you" lists the benefits of travel: Visitors can relax in a spa in India, exercise field survival skills in the Colorado Highlands, and learn culinary skills in Italy--just the content, which meets the full characteristics of the travel article. But, in fact, it was an advertisement by State Farm, a mutual insurance company, to show that "no matter where you start, farm will always be there for help".

In 2012, former advertising agency executive, Facebook veteran Jeff Greenspan Jeffgreenspan as BuzzFeed's chief creative officer, and his main job was to have advertisers translate their ideas into BuzzFeed-style creative articles, Instead of using simple, outrageous banner ads. In BuzzFeed's view, the latter's spread is not good.

General Electric (GE) is one of the top advertisers in BuzzFeed. They have produced a piece of advertising that uses a remote-controlled aircraft to photograph a GE power plant that is still under construction. After the ad was released, BuzzFeed and GE commissioned an analysis agency Vizu to investigate consumer sentiment changes to GE. One of the bases of the investigation is the source of the ads that consumers watch.

The results show that consumers who share video through social networks give GE a higher rating than consumers who watch ads directly. Paul Marcum, GE's global digital Marketing and project director, said: "We know that friends or community members are more popular with Paul Markum than they do with bidding rankings or inadvertently glimpsed things." ”

BuzzFeed's revenue comes from issuing branded ads. Jon Steinberg, chief operating officer of BuzzFeed, said in 2011 that BuzzFeed's advertising revenue rose by more than a year earlier, and that in 2012, insiders told Business Insider that after avoiding standard media earnings, BuzzFeed's profits were nearly 20 million dollars.

Iv. Rapid Development 3 elements

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti is an expert on the explosive internet phenomenon. In Nike's sweatshop incident in 2001, Peretti used the internet's viral transmission to become a social celebrity, and NBC even sent a special plane to pick him up for a talk show in New York.

In March this year, Peretti a lengthy open letter on the social writing platform medium that the reasons for BuzzFeed's rapid development are 3 factors: technology, scale and diverse talent.

BuzzFeed in the past has established a strong information publishing platform, the current publishing system can achieve lists, quizzes, video, long close-up, short articles, breaking news, photo collection and other multimedia content, but also to carry out statistics, analysis, optimization and testing framework. In addition, BuzzFeed has strong social media influence, multi-platform mobile applications and user-friendly interface design.

In the golden period of paper publishing, millions readers are recognized as the scale of the phenomenon class. But right now, the internet gives good content providers a chance to enjoy the world's demographic dividend. BuzzFeed today's readership is more than the number of readers in the the 1950s times, Life Weekly, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.

The accumulation of platform advantages and readership to help BuzzFeed establish a high threshold, any opponent is difficult to replicate its success in the short term, more and more good editors began to consider joining BuzzFeed. Now BuzzFeed not only recruit in New York, but also in London, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Paris and other overseas cities to build editorial team to expand overseas markets.

Summary: Creativity attracts attention

Digital New media is replacing traditional media, the "content is king" is becoming an outdated topic under the influence of the barrier of content production decreasing and the great communication power of the Internet. In the case of information overflow, how to catch the reader's eyeball becomes the new proposition of the media practitioner.

Young readers growing up under the influence of Internet news are increasingly impatient with lengthy in-depth reports, and easy humor and quirky, quirky content are more likely to attract their attention.

After the initial scale, how to reconcile the content of entertainment and the proportion of serious content, so as to retain more readers? BuzzFeed's practice is worth learning. The new forms of advertising they create are also worth trying, and the world's readers are the same in terms of hating advertising and loving creativity.