Since June of 2013 BuzzFeed has allowed the submission of content to their ‘community publishing platform,’ which had the potential to generate huge amounts of traffic. Many brands began putting up content, some of which was very successful. According to a recent policy change, however, brands will no longer be able to use this platform for their organic content marketing strategies.
While BuzzFeed has not officially stated why they are making the change, it can be assumed that it is an attempt to encourage these brands to move to their ‘sponsored post’ platform. This would require brands to pay a fee to post on their site, something many brands will likely do because of the large amount of traffic that the site gets.
Many marketers will be very disappointed in this move since they had been getting hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people viewing their content over the past couple years. Creating engaging content on the site would quickly get it shared across social media, and before you know it, a brand could have over a million people viewing their story. Not a bad return for one article.
The platform will still be available for individuals to post on as it always has been. Some smaller marketers may be able to continue to use it since it is not clear exactly how the policy updates will be enforced.
