buzzfeed, distributedlessons weve learned (so far)

My name is Summer Anne Burton and I grew up on the internet.

The internet used to be pretty synonymous with the world wide web, and mostly made of links.BuzzFeed in 2006

But for most people, the internet now looks more like this:75% of traffic comes from mobile.of BuzzFeeds traffic comes from social referrals.60%

For BuzzFeed, social media is no longer just a source for traffic or brand building.

Its a place where our work is published directly, reaching people where they already are.

Some lessons we learned (so far)

You can do 10x more if you adapt across platforms

GIF: Imgur (3.4 million views)Twitter (400k impressions)Tumblr (205k engagements)Looped video: Facebook (18 million views)Instagram (21k engagements)Video with added sound:Vine (4.2 million loops)

And that includes formatting for those platforms

Pinterest: +24k pinsFacebook: 100 mm views 2 mm shares

Instagram

Things spread further than you could imagine when you think about distribution creatively

Facebook: 57 mm views 900k shares

Capture the moment by trying a lot of moments

5.1 million Facebook video views2.1 million Vine loopsOver 1 million Twitter impressions10k engagements on Instagram

Patience with testing and learning will pay dividends eventually

45 minutes of live-streamed videoOver 800k simultaneous live viewers10 million total views so far

Sharing is becoming even more personalWe focus primarily on engagement, and the way that we see most people engaging is through one-to-one sharing.

That means content about human relationships what most people have on the mind when theyre on social media platforms always overperforms.

Quality matters, but if you want organic reach it isnt enough by itself

150k people reached6.6k total likes, comments, + shares47 million people reached2.3 million total likes, comments, + sharesComics done by the same artist and posted to the same page, two weeks apart.

To recapSocial is now publishing

ADAPT!

Think of distribution as a creative art

Try a lot of variations on a theme

Test & learn!

Sharing is communication

Quality matters, but isnt enough by itself