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By: Jillian Roth, Kayla Miller, Hannah Rovito “Which Spanish Accent is Sexiest? Celebrity Edition feat. CNCO” was the highest trending topic on the Pero Like BuzzFeed Facebook page over the past three months. When the video was originally posted, during the week of August 19th, 2018, Pero Like reached 479,101 Facebook video views; However, the […]

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The LGBT News Trend in Buzzfeed News

Buzzfeed News is a Facebook page dedicated to reporting news to the general public, especially Buzzfeed fans. The page launched in 2013 and has more than 2 million likes and more than 3 million followers.

In the past three months, the greatest trending topic on Buzzfeed News’ page was a video episode from Queer Vision, a FB Watch show by Buzzfeed LGBT.

Confused yet?? Let us break it down for you.

Queer Vision Original Post

“Nathan Mathis Is Fighting For Rights His Daughter Never Had” was posted on July 31, 2018. The video originally aired on Queer Vision, a Facebook watch show that falls under the BuzzFeed LGBT Facebook page. The show puts emphasis on trending news and culture pieces about the LGBTQ+ community.

The Buzzfeed News Facebook page shared this particular episode of Queer Vision, and received massive interaction.

Buzzfeed LGBT was founded in 2012. Their mission is to inform people about queer news. It has more than 850 thousand likes, and more than 870 followers. It’s interesting to note that this Facebook page existed prior to that of Buzzfeed News. This goes to show the importance/relevance of LGBT News to the Buzzfeed audience, and helps begin to explain why the post was so viral, which will we get more into later.

What’s the post about? 

Presented in a documentary style, “Nathan Mathis Is Fighting For Rights His Daughter Never Had” is a video that tells the story of Nathan Mathis, whose daughter committed suicide. Mathis made it his life goal to fight for the LGBT rights his daughter never had. The video was produced after the story of Mathis blew up and was featured on talk shows like The View and The Ellen Show. The video discusses the mental health toll of loved ones following suicide and Mathis’s goal to spread awareness.

The Format

Buzzfeed News Re-Post

The  video is subtitled word for word in BuzzFeed’s clean Proxima Nova typeface. This is optimized for the Facebook user’s feed because the video will autoplay and viewers will be able to understand the video even if they aren’t listening with sound. This use of subtitles hooks viewers, especially because the video opens with Nathan Mathis using bold words like “pervert” and “gay”.

The thumbnail is also optimized for the platform with a split screen showing a young Patti Sue and her aged father. When touching on the topic of suicide, showing a childhood photo of the deceased tugs right at a viewer’s emotional heart strings. This is also used in contrast to her older, worn father. Her father is also typed as a “southern dad” in the video description and Nathan Mathis’s photo in this thumbnail captures that image.

The run time for the entire video is 4:02, which is optimized for the Facebook platform. As Emma Tyler, Senior Social Media Strategist at BuzzFeed, explained to the NH BuzzFeed class, videos hoping to make money off things like midroll ads only make money if they are over 3 minutes. This video is is long enough to qualify for ad money but not too long that viewers click off the video early.

Finally, the narrative format of this video was also important to its success. Tyler also told the class that the most successful stories often have a strong beginning, middle and end to push viewers through the entire run time, especially if they are read-along style. The narrative format of this video grabs the attention of viewers and keeps them emotionally invested in Nathan Mathis.

Breaking Down The Virality

Buzzfeed News Interactions

As BuzzFeed News was only established as a separate brand July 2018, we chose to look at over-performing posts from the last three months (Ha, 2018). Through our CrowdTangle search, we identified the Nathan Mathis video, posted on the BuzzFeed News Facebook page on July 31st, as the top performer (CrowdTangle, 2018).

Sharing was the top interaction Facebook users had with this post and accounted for its impressive virality of almost 16M views. However if we measured virality through Facebook reactions and comments, this post would perform the same as, if not significantly less than others in the same time frame (CrowdTangle, 2018).

Buzzfeed News Shares, Comments, and Interactions

Sources:

Ha, A. (2018, July 18). BuzzFeed launches a new website for its real journalism. Retrieved October 27, 2018, from https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/18/buzzfeed-news/

Contributors:

Hailey Rene, Josie Hannum, Stefanie Grafstein,  Ariel Rabinowitz

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CrowdTangle Analysis BuzzFeed As/Is

  When using CrowdTangle to analyze the BuzzFeed As/Is Facebook page, we noticed that “make-up” was a consistent viral topic. The make-up related content was either the at the top of the spikes or the second highest reaching post. Post One – August 12, 2018 “Violently blend like you’re ashamed of your face” View post […]

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BuzzFeed- Trending Topics: Nifty Facebook Video

Trending Topic Project: Buzzfeed’s “Nifty” Facebook Video on Revamping a Basic Table

The “overperforming” post chosen for analysis was “Nifty’s” “7 Creative Ways to Transform a Basic Table” (2018), that spiked nearly a month ago. The six-minute video includes do-it-yourself, or D.I.Y., tutorials for how to transform an ordinary end table into 1) a table with a built-in projector, 2) a table with a built-in mini-garden in the middle, 3) a handmade toy kitchen, 4) an end table with a stained wood top, 5) a table with built-in water and food bowls for pets, 6) a stool and 7) a stacked bar with wheels on the bottom (Nifty, 2018). 

View post on imgur.com

According to the social media analytics database, CrowdTangle, this video was one of the highest spiking videos on the Nifty Facebook page from early September 2018 to late October 2018 (2018).

View post on imgur.com

The table transformation video received 1,478, 528 post views and 14, 951, 795 total views (CrowdTangle, 2018). Additionally, the table transformation video received 10,111 reactions, 828 comments and 4,813 shares (CrowdTangle, 2018). 

View post on imgur.com

In terms of why “Nifty’s” “7 Creative Ways to Transform a Basic Table” (Nifty, 2018) overperformed this fall, there are several reasons which could illustrate its high performance. Particularly, Buzzfeed’s audience, the importance of D.I.Y. culture and the real estate market are all reasons that could explain the virality of the table transformation video. Buzzfeed’s audience across their various channels are over 50% millennial and over 50% of the overall audience demographic self-identifies as women (Sternberg, 2013). Likewise, Buzzfeed’s “Nifty” channel specifically targets those interested in arts and crafts for the home. One reason this particular type of Nifty video may have performed well, is due to its publishing date, September 10, 2018, being during the middle of the “high season”, May- September, for apartment rentals (Schreck, 2013), as well as college students beginning school and needing cheap alternatives for decorating their dorms/ apartments.

Additionally, various Buzzfeed channels utilize the short-form video style for content delivery that can conveniently be viewed on one’s mobile device, which over 30% of Buzzfeed’s audience uses for visiting their sites (Sternberg, 2013). The combination of using short-form videos on the Nifty Facebook channel is advantageous in order to give the audience what they want. Similarly, using short-form videos on Nifty’s Facebook channel is advantageous because it taps into the popularity of D.I.Y. tutorials, especially as millennials are currently dominating the $29 billion crafting industry (Fromm). Therefore, a D.I.Y. short-form tutorial on how to ‘jazz-up’ a basic end table using an arts and crafts themed Facebook channel with one of the largest millennial audiences went viral because it had all the necessary components for virality. 

In summation, the “Nifty” Facebook video, “7 Creative Ways to Transform a Basic Table” (Nifty, 2018) was analyzed because it overperformed on the channel within the last three months. The video likely overperformed, or spiked, because it taps into a niche market who is overwhelmingly millennial and interested in D.I.Y. projects for furnishing homes. Likewise, this video’s success during this season may be due to the rush of people who are moving to new homes in order to take advantage of the real estate market during the fall. In conclusion, the success of “7 Creative Ways to Transform a Basic Table” indicates a desire to take basic household items and easily transform them according to the various ideas for home décor that millennials have. 

 

                 

References

CrowdTangle. (2018). [Graph illustration for video views for Nifty September 2018 to October 2018]. CrowdTangle Intelligence: Page Report: Nifty. Retrieved on October 24, 2018 from, https://apps.crowdtangle.com/syracusejournalismfb/reporting/intelligence?accountType=facebook_page&accounts=690729&breakdownType=postType&comparisonType=none&graphType=video_views&interval=week&platform=facebook&postType=all&reportTimeframe=6months&videoViewBreakdownType=ownedVideoViews&videoViewType=total_views

Fromm, J. (n.d.) Generation y has become generation diy. Retrieved from http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2013/12/generation-y-has-become-generation-diy/

Nifty. (2018). 7 creative ways to transform a basic table. [Video]. Nifty. Retrieved on October 24, 2018 from, https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeednifty/posts/2201002250154495

Schreck, N. (2013). The Best Time to Move for Renters. Retrieved from

https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2013/09/11/the-best-time-to-move-for-renters

Sternberg, J. (2013). 13 interesting facts brands should know about BuzzFeed. Retrieved from https://digiday.com/media/13-interesting-facts-brands-should-know-about-buzzfeed/

 

By, N’dea Drayton & Alexandria Haynes

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