Upworthy co-founder and CEO Ailly Parice share the secrets of the company's rapid development

Absrtact: The Upworthy, established in March this year, is the fastest growing media company in the world. It has only 14 employees and is committed to rapidly disseminating meaningful information and images. In October, Upworthy already had 8.7 million independent user visits (UV), while the first one months were 6 million, August

Upworthy, which was established in March this year, is the fastest growing media company in the world. It has only 14 employees and is committed to rapidly disseminating meaningful information and images. In October, Upworthy already had 8.7 million independent user visits (UV), compared with 6 million in the first one months, 4 million in August and 2.5 million in July. The rapid growth rate has allowed it to get 4 million of dollars in venture capital.

Upworthy co-founder and CEO Ailly Parice (Eli pariser) shared the secrets of the company's rapid development:

1. Don't talk about politics

Before the creation of Upworthy, Parice worked for the MoveOn of political digital magazines. He and Peter Koechley, a former editor-in-chief and Onion, Cochilli that the upcoming U.S. election will bring traffic to its Web site. However, people are not keen to share the political content of Upworthy, so they decide to expand the scope of the site's discussion.

"We thought it was an election year and people would be passionate about politics, but the reality was that it didn't increase the amount of traffic to the site, and not many people were talking about the election."

It is difficult for startups to give up their initial ideas, but only flexibility to survive.

2. Find information from social media instead of websites

Instead of browsing other websites for news, Upworthy's content leader starts to look for news clues on Twitter and Facebook. Finding hot topics is easier than starting a new topic, Parice said, "Our team is constantly looking for news points that are worth digging into, but we're presenting in a different way than traditional articles and blogs, and we're more likely to share them with videos and pictures." ”

3. Focus on Facebook, not Twitter

Twitter is less informative than Facebook, and most people spend a lot of time visiting Facebook every day.

"Facebook is critical to Upworthy. We have more than 600,000 fans on Facebook. We value Facebook more than any other social media. Many social media spend a lot of time and effort on the homepage, and we use the resources on our Facebook community page, and Upworthy's homepage is very general.

4, the News headlines Excellence

Upworthy content owners are looking for news and editing content every day. The site doesn't have much original news, but for each rewritten article, Parice asks the editor to create 25 titles.

"We do this because good headlines can show the essence of the article," he said. If people read headlines and aren't interested in reading, then the article is wasted. We will try to think about "how to get more people to see your stuff", a good headline can give you more readers, which is the difference between reading 1000 and 1 million people.

5. Use a/b test and analysis for content

Upworthy's title is ultimately determined by social media followers. It provides multiple headings for each article for A/b test, and then looks at the rate of hits per share and the share per view.

6. Innovative Advertising methods

There are no banner ads on the Upworthy, but they need to be registered. It uses a different way of advertising. It wants to attract users to the advertiser's registration program, rather than providing irrelevant spam pages.

7, do not deliberately let readers stay on the site

For a site with 7 million months of independent user access, Upworthy's page views are not particularly impressive, as are direct visits.

In September, Upworthy had 6 million independent user visits and 8.5 million page views, averaging less than 2 pages per person. But Parice not worried about it. "We don't deliberately leave our readers on the site," he said. We want them to read, share, subscribe, and then leave. We can find them again. ”

8, the first is not important, the topic is important

Upworthy tried to rob the news when it was released. Since then, Parice knows that preemptive is not the most important.

"We thought the sooner the better, but it turns out that's not the case," he said. We didn't find any advantage in preemptive reporting. In fact, many of our hot news stories have long been spread. The topic of the most important, new and old does not matter. ”

9. Moving is important, but it doesn't mean everything.

Upworthy Mobile Products bring 30% of the traffic, but the big head is still from the web.

Still, Parice said his team spent "a considerable amount of time" figuring out how to improve mobile sites.

10, only write what the masses are willing to understand

Upworthy to publish some interesting and valuable news. So while social media are keen on sharing cat videos, there is absolutely no such upworthy.

"You feel good when you really learn something," says Parice. Our principle is that if 1 million read one of the articles, the world will become better. This is what we really care about and are practicing. Upworthy to spread something important in an intuitive way. ”