BuzzFeed’s global operations are successful because the brand works to capitalize on different cultural markets and present content in multiple languages. International teams use bots to keep each other informed about the latest news and translate it to match with cultural topicality, BuzzFeed chief of European growth Luke Lewis said.
Building a global media business isn’t as simple as just translating popular articles into different languages. It’s about grasping where, how and why stories resonate, and on which platforms. That’s why BuzzFeed has programmed its Slack, the internal messaging platform, to automatically trigger alerts to its editors once one of its regional stories or videos goes viral.
That makes it easier for its editors across different countries to spot what content is taking off in a particular country. They can then move fast to capitalize on the popularity and cultural topicality of the content by adapting it to different languages, styles and formats.
“Fundamentally, BuzzFeed can mean different things in different markets,” said Lewis. “And we have to be relaxed about that.”
Digiday (11/2)
