The success of Upworthy.com and learnings for digital corporate communicators

Have you ever seen articles such as these in your Facebook newsfeed?

Then you’ve been in contact with Upworthy.com,the most shared website on Facebook

The numbers

87 million unique visitors per month

The 100 most popular articles have been shared380 million times

Companies pay big money to be there

Native advertising on Upworthy by Dove.

Even CNN tried to copy Upworthy…

…but failed.

Your typical Upworthy article

A very descriptive headline

Short text

Engaging video

Like this one for example

4 recipes for success from Upworthy

Focus on headlines

Focus on curation

Positive and inspiring

A/B testing

Focus on headlines

Editors write up to 25 different headlines per article.

Focus on curation

Most time is spent on finding the right stories. Only the best are ”Upworthy”. Editors only curate 5-7 stories per week.

Positive and inspiring subjects

Statistics show that people like to read about and share positive and inspiring subjects.

A/B testing

Different headlines are tested frequently on small segments, before going wide.

3 questions Upworthy answer before publishing

Is the content substantive, engaging, and entertaining?

If 1 million people saw it, would the world be a better place?

Does the content actually deliver on the promise of the headline?

The concept works

• Swedish website Hyllat.se copied the Upworthy concept and got 1 million visitors per week in only a month.

• Making it a top 20 website in Sweden

So what can corporate communicators learn?

Headline for our next word from the CEO?

”This Bank Boss Has Your Money And What He Says About His Company Will Completely Blow Your Mind.”

Or this headline for our investment story?

”You Would Be Crazy Not To Take a Good Look at This Company For Your Next Investment and Here are The Intriguing Stats to Prove it”

No.

But we can be better at this

Let the headlines speak for themselves

A/B testing

Curate better content

Focus on shareable content