After the Olympics put Brazil front-and-center, we analyze the top publishers and content trends of the country.
Previously, we looked at the top news sites in Mexico and best practices for LatAm publishers. With the first ever South American Olympics just finished up in Brazil, plus Brazil’s heavy use of social media, we thought this would be a great time to analyze Brazilian publishers.
We looked at which sites see the most engagement on Facebook and the content trends for both content published on sites’ domains as well as natively to Facebook.
A solid 72.6 percent of internet users in Brazil are on Facebook, so let’s dive into what they’re consuming on social media.
Who are the Top Publishers?
Looking at links published by Brazilian sites in July, we found that all-inclusive news sites like Globo, UOL, Abril, Catraca Livre, and Estadao took the lead in Facebook engagements. Other news sites like R7 and Terra also featured high up.
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This article from Globo’s G1 was the most engaging story from a Brazilian news publisher in July. It drove over 245,000 engagements on Facebook.Â
Global publishers’ focus on LatAm has clearly paid off as well. Huffington Post’s Brazilian site, BrasilPost figured into the top publishers, as well as InfoMoney, a financial news site that is associated with Bloomberg.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given soccer’s popularity in Brazil, Esporte Interativo was also in the top publications.
Other more focused sites like Hypeness (art/culture), Legião dos Heróis (nerd culture), Sensacionalista (satire), AdoroCinema (film news), and Pragmatismo Politico (politics) also made our top list. Take a free trial of Spike to find the biggest publishers now, region by region.
What are the Biggest Content Trends?
When we looked at the top 50 news articles, we saw that human interest pieces and health/science pieces took the lead by a long shot.
Cultural articles, social issue stories, and political articles also featured predominantly. Travel and the Rio Olympics were also written about several times.
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This story about a hospital using Pokémon Go to get kids interacting with another is one of the many ‘feel-good’ human interest articles that saw big engagement in July.
Other stories in the top engaging articles were about crime, education, travel, nationalism, editorial pieces, and celebrities. We can see how these content trends manifest in the top ten articles.Â
Many of the top ten articles were feel-good human interest stories. Several pertained to health or science, and one each had to do with politics and the Rio Olympics.
According to Maia McCann, Content Director of LittleThings, positive stories are inherently sharable: “Positivity has a halo effect—not only are people comfortable and more likely to share positive content on their social networks, but it also leaves them with a good feeling and has them coming back for more.”
Top Native Facebook Trends
What about the top native publishers? Changing our scope to the Facebook pages of Brazilian publishers categorized as news, we saw some overlaps and some key differences.
Catraca Livre, UOL, Globo, R7, and Abril’s Exame and VEJA figured into the top ten Brazilian news Facebook pages, as they did in our assessment of domains.
Here, they were also joined by more BuzzFeed-like publishers such as Quebrando o Tabu and cultural publishers like BrasileirÃssimos.
Quebrando o Tabu saw the majority of the top performing Facebook posts. Quebrando o Tabu, or, Breaking the Taboo, seeks to spark debate about Brazil and the world through their Facebook content.
Their Facebook posts made up nine out of the ten most engaging native posts for Brazilian news publishers in July.
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This video they captioned in Portuguese about drove over 5.7 million views, 73,000 likes/reactions, 141,000 shares, and 1,600 comments. The video sparked a healthy debate on the Facebook page in the comments.
Surprisingly, though not one of the very top performing publishers, Yahoo Noticias was responsible for the second top performing post, and three others in the top 25.
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This post was one of Yahoo! Noticias’s top native videos for July. Their top performing content follows the trend of feel-good human interest stories we saw with domain publishers.
Both of these posts were video. We’ve seen a marked increase in engagement for Facebook video. Looking at the top 25 native Facebook posts, 44 percent were video, 32 percent were external links, and 24 percent were photo posts.
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Catraca Livre is partnering with Shotfilmes to produce compelling recipe videos that are similar to BuzzFeed Tasty’s viral videos. This video drove over 85,000 engagements in July.
Surprisingly, we saw that some of these videos were on the longer side. Out of the top ten videos of July, three were over three minutes long. Factoring out those three videos, the average length of the other top seven videos was 37 seconds.
What Brazilian Publishers Should Know
With over 72 percent of Brazilian internet users active on Facebook, it benefits publishers to make sure their stories strike a chord on social media.
While all-inclusive news publishers drove the most engagement, we saw that human interest and health/science stories were getting the biggest amounts of likes, shares, and comments.
Video is becoming increasingly important for these publishers as well, showing Facebook’s focus on video is applicable globally. Brazilian publishers can take a page from global publishers of viral video as Catraca Livre has with their recipe videos and Noticas Yahoo! is doing with their short positive videos.
As social media continues to evolve, we’ll continue to watch how different cultures influence platforms, trends, and topics.
