The Monthly Buzz | Covid-19 Content & Newsletter Growth

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⚡ The Monthly Buzz ⚡

BuzzSumo's new monthly newsletter for top trends and content from over the last month

Hey Buzzies,

Welcome to the fourth installment of The Monthly Buzz! If you enjoy reading, get your pals to subscribe here.

Before I get to the juicy content marketing data, I wanted to share one of my favorite reads of the month with you: “Verticalizing your content” from Steve Toth. This is an awesome short read on an instantly actionable SEO strategy that is proven to boost traffic and awareness. If you’re responsible for content or SEO, it’s essential reading!

📈 Trend of the month #1 📉

Journalists wrote about Covid-19 1.5m times last year

Using BuzzSumo’s Journalist Profiles tool and the Content Analyzer, I dug into 75m pieces of content written by 500k+ official journalists, to understand the % share of major news stories over the last five years.

I was interested to see just how much news was left beyond the virus, but intrigue got the better of me and I had to look at the other topics too!

Covid-19 accounts for 11% of all content published by journalists from May 2020 – May 2021, surpassing Donald Trump, the next most saturated news topic, by 9%.

In total, 2.2m pieces of content have been created by journalists around the virus since 2019, while 1.8m stories have been written about Trump since 2016.

Overall, these big news stories accounted for 6% of all journalist content written over the last five years.

📈 Trend of the month #2 📉

Newsletters are kind of a big deal right now

I turned to BuzzSumo’s index of 8bn+ articles to see which content types are seeing the most engagement uplift right now, and I can’t say I was surprised to find this gem…

Over the last five years newsletter content has experienced a mammoth 1,450% uplift in average social engagement.

With the Hustle being recently acquired by Hubspot for a cool $27m, and the growing number of awesome marketing newsletters now indexed on Google, it’s little wonder that newsletters are attracting attention beyond the realms of email.

🏆 Blogs of the month 🏆

The Top 5 Most Shared Blogs This Month

Every month, I’ll be analyzing thousands of marketing articles in BuzzSumo to find the most shared headlines. Here’s the top 5 from this month…

DuckDuckGo Announces Plans to Block Google’s FLoC

Google is developing a new technology called FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). With FLoC, browsing activity can’t be tied to your individual usage, but Google can still serve you personalized ads. DuckDuckGo is anti-tracking in any form, and has implemented measures against Google’s new tracking technology.

Read The Article

How to Create a Funny Viral Video Marketing Campaign

Lingerie brand ThirdLove created a two-minute video which has accumulated over 600,000 views on YouTube, and has aired on national television. In this article, Heidi Zak, CEO of ThirdLove, walks you through her strategic steps for creating a viral-worthy video campaign.

Read The Article

How to Use Website Traffic Analysis for Persona Development

This actionable, step-by-step guide shows you how to harness Google Analytics to inform your company’s persona development. From affinity audiences, to market segment data, you’re bound to find untapped customer insights.

Read The Article

Google Postpones Page Experience Algorithm Update to Mid-June

Google was due to roll out a page experience update in May, but has pushed it back to mid-June to help us catch-up. The update is all about ranking websites based on the quality of user experience they provide, including page load time, mobile-friendliness, HTTPS status, the presence of intrusive ads, and whether content jumps around as the page loads.

Read The Article

How to Use an Audit to Spring Clean Digital Marketing Efforts

There’s no better time than Spring for getting your ducks in a row. This practical guide helps you do just that, with questions you need to ask yourself when auditing your website, social media, email, and paid activities.

Read The Article

Only The Awesome Ones Make It Past Here 😎

That concludes the fourth installment of the Monthly Buzz. Thanks for reading to the bottom and soaking in the top BuzzSumo insights! I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let us know via Twitter or LinkedIn.

If you’re not yet using BuzzSumo, you can find your own top trends and content with a 30 day free trial.

P.S. Missed the previous installments? Check out our archive here

Cheers,

Louise

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