General Assembly LA hosted a fireside chat with BuzzFeed’s VP of International Scott Lamb.
With content marketing becoming one of the most influential marketing tools as of late, I was intrigued to see what a VP from one of the most successful content websites had to say.
The chat started off with irony as Lamb’s first piece of advice was to “never ever use the word viral at all, it’s horrible.” With BuzzFeed being a website built around viral content, I’ll admit, I was confused. But, he had a point — “viral” has become a cliché buzz word that is often misused. For example, if Kim Kardashian tweets a photo, and gets 7.2K retweets, that doesn’t mean it’s a viral photo. She has 20 million followers, she should probably be getting more retweets than that.
Instead, virality consists of content that is posted by anyone (non-celebrities), and is exponentially shared and interacted with. Lamb offered the three main reasons why people share content:
- Timeliness: Sharing as a way to make yourself appear relevant “Hey we were just talking about this!”
- Identity: Sharing as a way to confirm your identity “OMG this is totes me!”
- Emotional connection: Sharing in the form of a gift to another person “I wanted you to feel how I felt!”
Lamb further explained that emotional connection is the reason why social media has become so “incredibly popular.” An example he used was the virality of BuzzFeed’s “35 Pictures That Prove The World Isn’t Such A Bad Place” article. People were sharing that particular piece because not only did it reach themselves emotionally, but they then wanted to share that emotion with the people in their social circle.
For determining what type of content you should post, Lamb recommended testing various forms/types of content, and using analytics to determine your niche. This is part of BuzzFeed’s viral generation process.
Overall, Lamb provided tons of useful information on the origin/future of BuzzFeed, as well as the importance of content creation and social media. Shout out to General Assembly LA for hosting the chat!
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