17 or 23 or 57 Things Marketers Can Learn from Getting Mocked by Buzzfeed

2 minute read

Upland Admin

Kapost Senior Community & Content Manager Andrew J. Coate (@andrewjcoate) contributed to this post.

If there’s one constant in marketing these days, it’s that it’s ever-changing—and we’re always looking to learn new ways to keep up. But as the recent Buzzfeed post “17 Things Marketers Should Be Learning From, According To The Internet” points out, the places marketers seek these lessons can be, well, a bit of a stretch.

But hey, we’re marketers too, so here’s what we learned from getting mocked on Buzzfeed.

I'm Learnding

Yep.

 

1. You have to be willing to make fun of yourself.

 

2. Most of the people who tweet Buzzfeed are horny robots.

 

3. 17 should be your go-to list post number.

 

4. Or is it 23?

23listpost.png

 

5. Or 57?

 

6. Ah, who cares.

Buzzfeed numbers

This comes from an RJMetrics analysis of Buzzfeed’s post titles.

 

7. Luke Bailey is just trying not to f*ck everything up…

 

8. …probably because he’s on the T-Swift beat and that’s huge business.

 

9. But seriously, though.

There’s a hard truth in Luke’s post. Sure, we all know list posts work, and that posts drawing insights from “surprising” places work—but that doesn’t mean we should keep writing them. Looking through the pages of Google results for the phrase “what marketers can learn from,” some of them seem like they were written just because the author was out of ideas, or simply needed a little bit of extra traffic.

We’re just as guilty. And this Buzzfeed post forces all marketers to question the true, lasting value of these posts to a given target audience. Maybe instead of pulling lessons from #teens, millennials, or sock puppets, pull from the successes and failures of your industry, your competitors, or even from your own work.

Learn from your mistakes

Now, we’re not saying don’t write posts like this, but before you do, question what your readers will actually learn from them and how that will actually impact your business.

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