What Makes a Social Sensation? A Q&A with PlayBuzz

We talk to PlayBuzz about making consistently shareable content, and staying on top of social trends with Spike. 

Despite having only launched 12 months ago, Israeli startup PlayBuzz is already one of the most-shared social publishers on the web.

Their format allows any publisher or individual to create and embed their own PlayBuzz stories. Partners include MTV, Whisper, and the Telegraph. We have noticed PlayBuzz quizzes in particular recording millions of shares on Facebook.

We talked to VP of Content, Shachar Orren, and Marketing Director, Nesya Gilad, about daily workflow, what makes PlayBuzz content so popular on social media, and how they use Spike to stay socially informed.

Can you tell us more about PlayBuzz, and how your stories come about? 

Shachar: Our website launched exactly a year ago. In the beginning, there was no community. We were creating some content of our own. It took about three months, and once the content started spreading, people just discovered us. Users usually get to our website by an item they see on social media. Then they see they can create an item themselves. Then it just happened. Users started coming, and content was being created. Their learning curve was amazing.

We started seeing community items really going viral. What makes PlayBuzz really special is that not even the best, or the biggest and most diversified editorial team would be able to come up with such a variety of content as a UGC-based community can.

No matter how many talented content people you hire, the power of the masses, creating content in areas we never even imagined, that’s what really makes our content stand out.

What does PlayBuzz’s daily workflow look like?

Shachar: What’s special about PlayBuzz is our UGC content. We have an amazing community of users. It has grown and keeps growing.

A major part of our work is curating the content that our community is creating, and identifying the items that will work well with our users. Knowing how to place them and promote them in a way that will get the best exposure.

A big part of our workflow is coming to the office every morning and checking what’s trending, and what’s going on in the world. We look at different websites, we look at Reddit, social networks, and at Spike, to see what’s ‘hot’.

So how does Spike fit into the team’s workflow? How are you using the platform?

Shachar: Even before we started using Spike, we would come in every morning and look at NewsWhip and look at what’s trending. We came to know the categories that were more relevant to our audience. We were checking it every few hours to see what video is trending now, what topic people are talking about.

Once we started using Spike, it really elevated our options. We could find out the trends a hundred times more. For example, the Pre-Viral category I think is really fascinating. I want to see what’s trending – not when it’s already everywhere, and we’re last to join the party.

We always make sure to be on top of what’s happening on social media and Spike.

How is your content team, and the curators, working with the social media team to promote your stories? Is it a very close relationship? 

Shachar: Yeah, definitely. All of the PlayBuzz content, and the formats that we offer, are based on the fact that they’re shareable. We want to enable our users and our partners to create content that people will want to share. So obviously, the social aspect of it is crucial to us. It’s something we keep in mind in everything we do, from the technical side to the content side. Definitely promoting our content on social media is a big aspect of it.

We’ve come to realise, and we’re not the first to find out, that if you create content that’s more personal, that helps your audience learn something new, reassuring, about themselves, something they take pride in, that makes the content shareable. You don’t have to think of the craziest tactics to make people click on your stories, because the item itself has a shareable quality that makes it fly. That’s what we try to aim for. All of our content formats are aiming there. Quizzes or lists, they all have a very personal quality to them, that makes it much more shareable.

Do you use Spike to see how your own stories are trending? And are you keeping an eye on competitors? 

Shachar: We make sure to check what PlayBuzz content is trending now. One of the major things we do is curating the community (UGC) content. So sometimes we log into Spike, and see an item from the community that we didn’t get a chance to look at yet. We already see that it’s starting to get social traffic. So that’s a really interesting way for us to learn more new things about our own content, to see what’s working better

As you may know, PlayBuzz content can be embedded on any other website…The interesting thing is that sometimes we would log into Spike and see what was trending in the topics we were interested in, and all of a sudden, I see a PlayBuzz quiz trending on another website.

As you may know, PlayBuzz content can be embedded on any other website…The interesting thing is that sometimes I would log into Spike and see what was trending in the topics we were interested in, and all of a sudden, I see a PlayBuzz quiz trending on another website.

Nesya: There’s a nice synergy between Spike and the Insights dashboard. The dashboard is great for competitive analysis,. This is how we discovered that many companies, like Bitecharge, embed items from our website, and this is exactly what we’re here for. Playbuzz.com is a network of viral content that anyone can embed and enjoy the user engagement it brings.We call our platform a ‘virality box’, it works like magic. It’s not about growth-hacking, or doing special pyrotechnics with social media, it’s about the platform itself, and it being customised specifically for being shared and viral.

Is there a particular metric that you look at as a measure of success for a post? We recently noticed that PlayBuzz had a huge ratio of shares, as opposed to likes and comments. 

Shachar: Definitely shares are what we constantly think of. It’s not by accident that we have that high ratio. Before the social media age, people would think about getting hits. But today, we know that if a piece of content gets many hits, but not many shares, it’s not going to be as valuable as something that gets fewer hits, but a high share rate.

That’s one of the things that we’re most proud of, that our items get a really high share rate. You saw it on the data that you posted – getting shares is the coveted thing that you want to get from your users. It’s the best show of trust from a reader.

I think that relates to what I said before about content that is personal, that is interesting and that has a certain positive aspect that makes you feel good about yourself, makes you learn something new, that’s what we think is the key to getting the precious click on the share button. That’s what we have as our goal, when we curate or create content.

Nesya: This goes hand-in-hand with our formats. We have extremely smart people here working on new formats and making sure that every button is completely optimised. We do A/B testing, we check the ins and outs of every format, to make sure that we get the highest engagement KPIs.

Shachar: It’s really important for us to find the balance between optimising the shares, and creating the best user experience as well. We have an amazing team of developers that are always working on this, and the results speak for themselves.

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