---
title: "The secret weapon behind BuzzFeed popularity"
description: "Learn how A/B testing is helping BuzzFeed double their number of visitors and how to apply the same strategy to grow the audience of your WordPress site"
url: https://neliosoftware.com/blog/secret-weapon-behind-buzzfeed-popularity/
date: 2015-01-19
modified: 2021-03-04
author: "Jordi Cabot"
image: https://neliosoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/BuzzFeed-1.jpg
categories: ["Online Marketing"]
tags: ["Opinion"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# The secret weapon behind BuzzFeed popularity

Latest issue of [Wired](http://www.wired.com/) features an article on [How a new breed of media startups is waging a war for your attention](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/new-media-2/) covering the strategies that new media companies like [Circa News](http://cir.ca/), [Gawker](http://gawker.com/), [First Look](https://firstlook.org/) or [BuzzFeed](http://www.buzzfeed.com/) use to get your attention and reading time.

I found the BuzzFeed part of the story especially interesting given that BuzzFeed publisher, Dao Nguyen, who has overseen its skyrocketing growth the past few years, claims to follow a technology-oriented approach (instead of a marketing-driven one) to grow their audience:

> Nguyen sees BuzzFeed as a technology company as much as a media company, and that means investing in data and software. “When media companies think of growth, they tend to think of it as a marketing function,” Nguyen says. “We talk about growth as a technology function—building tools and products, and making changes in your platform. That’s more lasting than a marketing campaign. Marketing campaigns end after you run out of money.”

And if you continue reading, the story later unveils what’s the main optimization techology they are using at BuzzFeed:

> BuzzFeed also has tools like a headline optimizer. It can take a few different headline and thumbnail image configurations and test them in real time as a story goes live, then spit back the one that is most effective.

Sounds familiar right? It turns out, BuzzFeed’s secret weapon to make sure their articles look engaging is [split testing headlines](https://neliosoftware.com/testing/experiments/headlines/). Note that they explicitly mention that the optimizer is not just a simple title test but same as our concept of headline A/B testing where you are can test any combination of title, excerpt and thumbnail at the same time [(more on this](https://neliosoftware.com/blog/publishers-increase-the-readers-of-your-posts/)). It’s not just a different text that can be the key to make your visitors click, it can be a different thumbnail or a better title + thumbnail combination or a more radical title and excerpt variant or ….

[![Screenshot of Alternative Information of a Headline Experiment](https://neliosoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/AlternativeHeadlineInfo1-1024x528.png)![Screenshot of Alternative Information of a Headline Experiment](https://neliosoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/AlternativeHeadlineInfo1-1024x528.png)](https://neliosoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/AlternativeHeadlineInfo1-e1417705720460.png)*Creating a Headline Experiment*

So, you want to be the next BuzzFeed and more than double your visitors (up to 175 million unique visitors in October)? Well I don’t have all the key ingredients to get there but at least one of them is clear: [start A/B testing all your WordPress headlines!](https://neliosoftware.com/testing/pricing/)