Brandwatch Bulletin: What Works on Reddit and YouTube

BuzzSumo takes over to show us the data.

Welcome back to another Friday bulletin, except today there’s a twist. We’re being taken over by BuzzSumo’s Monthly Buzz newsletter. We’ll let Louise Linehan explain all.

Let’s get to it.

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Welcome to The Monthly Buzz takeover!

You probably don’t know me yet, but I’m the Content Manager for the world’s greatest content marketing tool, BuzzSumo.

Our friends at Brandwatch have kindly let us hijack this bulletin to bring you our data insights and content finds of the month. If you enjoy reading, you can subscribe here.

Before I get to the juicy content marketing data, I wanted to share one of my favorite reads of the month with you: “Verticalizing your content” from Steve Toth. This is an awesome short read on an instantly actionable SEO strategy that is proven to boost traffic and awareness. If you’re responsible for content or SEO, it’s essential reading!

And, if you haven’t read it yet, check out BuzzSumo’s updated research on what it takes to write the best headlines, based on an analysis of 100m posts, which also went live this month.

Insight of the month #1: More vids, less likes

We tapped into BuzzSumo’s mammoth index of 8bn pieces of content to study the growth of YouTube videos over the last five years, which equated to:

513m YouTube videos
50bn engagements

Within that sea of data we found that, while video creation on YouTube has grown by 981%, engagement has climbed by a comparatively modest 185%.

Interest is still on the up for now, but will video overload eventually lead to dwindling engagement?

Insight of the month #2: Reddit engagement is exploding

Inspired by our YouTube findings, we were interested to see what the story was on Reddit. Going back to the BuzzSumo index, we studied:

28m Reddit posts
18bn engagements

Reddit saw exponential growth in engagement, with uplift of 1842%.

So, while YouTube is seeing a boom in content, Reddit is seeing a big-bang-level explosion in engagement.

Could Reddit be your next untapped content opportunity?

Insight of the month #3: YouTube vs Reddit

Average engagements

YouTube: 97
Reddit: 650

Average backlinks

YouTube: 1
Reddit: 2

As it stands, the average YouTube video receives 97 engagements and a single backlink.

By comparison, Reddit posts receive 650 average engagements, and two backlinks.

Reddit offers a clear advantage in the way of engagement, but it’s not an either-or choice.

Creating content for both channels will open your brand up to new, hyper-engaged audiences.

Insight of the month #4: Interviews are right for Reddit

If you’re planning on making the most of these channels, you need to know what kinds of content to create to pique your audience’s interest.

We sliced and diced a casual 68bn engagements across Reddit and YouTube, to determine which specific types of content receive the highest average engagement.

Of course, content types will differ depending on things like your sector or niche (which you can definitely explore more with BuzzSumo), but if you’re keen to learn from the vast majority of engagement, we’ve got the answers.

It seems Redditors have a big appetite for interviews, while video explainers featuring ‘Why’ led headlines are favored on YouTube.

The top 5 most-shared blogs this month

Every month, we analyze thousands of marketing articles in BuzzSumo to find the most shared headlines. Here are the top five from this month:

Google: 2 reasons why content gets removed from search results

What would cause Google to remove content from search results? Here are the two reasons.

To comply with the law
To protect users

Read the article.

In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

In 2019, Rand Fishkin did a study which showed that half of all searches on Google end in zero clicks. Flash forward two years, and that figure has increased to almost two thirds. Google has since issued their own response to this study.

Read Rand’s article.

Google postpones page experience update roll out

Google was due to roll out a page experience update in May, but has pushed it back to mid-June to help us catch-up. The update is all about ranking websites based on the quality of user experience they provide, including page load time, mobile-friendliness, HTTPS status, the presence of intrusive ads, and whether content jumps around as the page loads.

Read the article.

Google: No Benefit to An Artificially Flat URL Structure

An artificially flat URL structure is one where it looks like every page is one click away from the home page, when in reality they may be several levels deep. Google has confirmed that the number of slashes in a URL is by no means an indicator of how important a page is, or how likely it is to surface the page in search results.

Read the article.

LinkedIn video strategy: Getting more exposure on LinkedIn

Video content on LinkedIn is few and far between. In fact, content on LinkedIn is thin, period. 740 million members use the platform, but less than 2% post content on a weekly basis. This guide shows you how to build an effective LinkedIn strategy, based on three types of video: live video streams, macro-content, and micro-content.

Read the article.

Only the awesome ones make it past here

That concludes the Monthly Buzz takeover! Thanks for reading to the bottom and soaking up the data. I hope you found it interesting – if so, you can subscribe here for monthly installments.

If you’re a Brandwatch customer and not yet using BuzzSumo, you can find your own top trends and content with a 30-day free trial via my.Brandwatch.com.

Don’t use Brandwatch? Get your free trial of BuzzSumo here.

PS Missed the previous Monthly Buzz installments? Check out our archive here.

Cheers,

Louise

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