RIP listicles: Resurrecting quality content in the wake of Buzzfeed’s fall
BuzzFeed’s growth story is a crash course in digital disruption, but growth alone isn't enough to remain sustainable, writes Caroline Catteral, founder of content and communications agency Keep Left.
For almost a decade now, eight big red letters have ruled our news feeds. But has the virality behind BuzzFeed’s infamous startup success story seen its peak?
Last week, the $2.4 billion company announced it was cutting 15% of their workforce in their biggest reshuffle to date. Eleven out of those 200 roles are currently held by Australian employees. Financial performance lies at the core of this crash, with an impending defamation lawsuit also on the cards.
While we remain hopeful that the digital outlet will find its feet, we must ask ourselves: where would our media landscape be without mass listicles, click-bait quizzes and meme-driven blog posts?
And, should we have to live without them, how can we mould our content strategies to suit the incoming status quo – now and over the next few years?
Other free digital outlets are showing similar cause for concern, with Conde Nast rumoured to be putting up paywalls on all their US titles, and free online news sites taking knocks in all corners.
In the wake of these changes, brands need to be able to bring understanding of their audiences in-house and avoid simply imitating trending media formats – in other words, learn to stand on their own two feet. Here, a renewed focus on what the people want, and how best to give it to them, is imperative.
A few things we learnt from the red giant
BuzzFeed’s growth story is a real crash course in digital disruption, altering their offerings and constantly improving their content for search optimisation and mass engagement. They played into the waiting thumbs of young audiences around the world. What do the people want? Cat GIFs. What are the people going to get? You guessed it. Cat GIFs.
At some level, they helped to invent a new media landscape: the biggest-scale digital model for revenue production they could come up with. And then they kept evolving.
They branched out to feed the outliers, with more sophisticated platforms like the Pulitzer Prize-nominated BuzzFeed News. They saturated the social media space – when Facebook became all about the video, they did too, and very effectively at that. And they partnered with brands to create bespoke native advertising, providing an “authentic” means of talking to millennials when brands didn’t know how to.
Their agility has been remarkable, hinged on a dedication to understanding their audiences’ interests. But with so many shifts in consumer perception, brands can’t just outsource their audiences to the big players.
Know your audience, and how best to speak to them
These days, in a world of increasing automation, algorithms and fake news, consumers are craving the one thing that we won’t likely lose in a hurry: genuine humanity. Authentic stories told by real people that really connect and provide value to the reader are the way forward in a market where consumer trust is hard-won and cut-through is nigh on impossible.
According to Danone CEO Emmanuel Faber, millennial influence is a key driver of this shift: “They want committed brands with authentic products. Natural, simpler, more local and if possible small, as small as you can.”
In fact, a study showed that big brands in the US were losing $22bn market share over only five years owing to the audience’s favour of small companies. And VICE’s new youth survey The Big Shrink surveyed 3,700 16-38 year-olds, finding that avoiding stereotypes and hero-ing credibility and authenticity is the only way forward for media in the 21st century.
So, yes. The “Which Melancholy Vegetable Matches your Personality?” quiz will always be great for a mindless scroll on the morning tram commute (I’m a ‘downcast cabbage’ if anyone is interested). But in a world now over-saturated with this kind of viral celeb-centred content, and fraught with global disaster, readers are beginning to want to know more about real stories and real value closer to home.
Blended, owned content strategies are the future
The news of BuzzFeed’s potential diminishment in the market signals a need for organisations to build blended content strategies, where their owned assets (such as a website, content hub or, god forbid, a database) live at the centre of their publishing priorities.
This is firstly because we clearly can’t rely on the digital media gods (Vice, Vox, Refinery and more) to provide their services in perpetuity, or rely on the fact that their model will be relevant in perpetuity. They are as prone to market weakness as anyone is, and shouldn’t be leant on in place of internal innovation.
But it’s also because a healthy mix of owned and quality earned media will prove more sustainable in the long run, and paint a more holistic view of your brand from the outset. By tapping into your own amplification and distribution channels, you can engage your (well-defined) audiences on a more intimate level amongst their daily highs and lows to truly create resonance and connection – rather than relying on a third party or superficial templated posts.
Owning and creating your own brand of storytelling with authentic, engaging and actually interesting content that caters to the right audiences, is a sure way to weather the digital storm.
Change is inevitable, but real stories last forever.
Caroline Catteral is acting CEO and founder of content and communications agency Keep Left.
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Love this article Caroline, funny and well researched.
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Some valid points here but the reality is that people, especially millennials, don’t really want to hear from brands in their social feeds. The value of a BuzzFeed, Vice, Pedestrian etc is that these publishers already have a relationship with this audience and are helping to introduce the brand to that audience. Making these brands ‘cool’ by association or introduction. Sure if a brand has something interesting to say or has a genuine POV then that’s great but most of the time it’s very forced, self-serving content, which is not cheap to create, doesn’t get any real engagement and is obviously trying to sell or push something. This is especially true when a brand thinks they need to commit to a content calendar and are struggling to create authentic content.
More brands just need to put themselves in the audience’s shoes and ask themselves if they would want to hear from them in that medium. If they were honest, the answer a lot of time would be no.
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By that logic the only marketing channel would be partnerships.
Do you think if you put yourselves in the audience’s shoes and asked “do you want your TV show/radio segment interrupted by ads” “do you want to see outdoor advertising everywhere you go” “do you want your top search results to be ads” etc etc etc the answer would be yes to any of it?
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I know I’m just a survey size of one and my network is limited, but I would disagree that us millennials are completely adverse to seeing advertising in our feeds. I’ve bought products many times online after having their ads placed in my social feeds. And I know my friends have too. It’s all about how relevant your product is to your audience.
There are also offline brands that do a great job at remaining top of mind to their target market through social channels – Boost, for example, has great social content and sentiment towards the brand is positive.
Social advertising can work, there are just a number of points that need to be considered. Here are four of the most important, because that’s all I have time for:
-Is the product is relevant to your audience?
-Is the creative a good fit for this channel? (Stop just cutting your TVCs down to 10secs for Facebook and instead create content specific for each channel. Even better than this would be to create content specific to each ad set, so it’s as personalised as possible.)
-Don’t forget the sales funnel (don’t barge in on my feed with a hard-hitting sales message before I know who you are – it’s rude – introduce yourself first and you will be much more warmly received!)
-Frequency (people are fine with ads, but they’re not fine with seeing ads more often than updates from their friends and family)
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