COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Called the “fastest growing media site of all time,” Upworthy.com has surged to more than 12-million monthly visitors every month, and it’s been in business for less than two years. One reason: “Joyful funerals.”
The site is built around video content related to social good and the theme, “Things that matter, pass it on.”
Sara Critchfield speaking to CO-OP's THINK Conference.
How has it done it? According to Sara Critchfield, founding editorial director of Upworthy.com, it has attracted so many eyeballs by constantly testing and re-testing variations of its messaging and packaging to see what works, and what it can learn from that to apply to future content.
Critchfield used as her example of how Upworthy.com presents content a video from Zach Sobiech, who while dying of a rare form of terminal cancer became a “rock star” when his song “Clouds” became the #1 song on iTunes, ahead of numerous established stars. The video of Sobiech’s story has been viewed more than 17-million times. The video can be found here
Critchfield used Upworthy.com’s handling of the video to make four points
* Think divergently to ask better questions. “What is divergent thinking?,” asked Critchfield. “It’s the process of being able to think laterally, being able to slice a question in multiple ways, being able to see lots of solutions to a problem.”
Critchfield noted that young children do especially well in divergent thinking, but then lose that skill as they start going to school. “Our educational system is rapidly deteriorating our ability to be divergent thinkers. It doesn’t mean it’s lost, just that this way of training our brains has deteriorated.”
In the case of the Sobiech video, Upworthy.com used 134 different combinations of headlines and presentation, beginning with headlines such as “This Kid Just Died. What he Just Did is Amazing.” But the headline the drew the most views was this: “This Kid Just Died, What he left behind is Wondtacular.”
* There’s more going on there. “When something goes viral, then the media reports on the media. And the story we told was the numbers, because everyone loves the numbers. But there is a story behind that story, and that story didn’t get told, because often its hard for those of us who love numbers to talk about stories,” said Critchfield. “Credit union membership has skyrocketed, but what does it mean? There is a story behind the data.”
“Successful social media stories don’t start with the keyboard, they start with the heart,” continued Critchfield. “Social media isn’t about the media, it’s about the social.”
Critchfield said she has spent a lot of time figuring out what data does well and what humans do well. “What data does really well is tell you which headline gets more clicks,” she said. “What computers can’t do is understand why cancer sucks.”
* Leave the 1950s Behind. “Don’t forget to use your emotions as data,” Critchfield advised. She said that point has stuck with her since a grad school professor, Dr. Kenwyn Smith, changed her life when he made that statement to her. She said it was important to her that the observation was made by a man, since there has been a “feminization of emotion and a masculinization of logic. I really feel we use 90% of logic at work and 10% emotion. By deemphasizing one part of ourselves and overemphasizing another, we are out of whack at work. I think this is particularly pertinent to credit unions. Finances are emotional by definition."
* Embrace Data, but stay human. “You have to have data, or you end up with the tyranny of subjectivity,” Critchfield said, “but without emotion voices are not included. Using your emotions as data is so worth it.”
One practice at Upworthy.com that the company has embraced and which has paid dividends, said Critchfield, is “joyful funerals,” where employees come together, acknowledge ideas that haven’t worked, regardless of how popular, acknowledge the effort and then bury them.