Beefing up BuzzFeed’s business news

Peter Kafka of Re/code spoke with BuzzFeed business editor Peter Lauria about plans to expand the website’s business news coverage.

Here is an excerpt:

How has that thesis played out? What worked? What didn’t work? 

In the beginning we weren’t sure what the appetite would be among traditional BuzzFeed readers for business news, and among the hardcore business audience for BuzzFeed coverage. The goal was to try to cover stories that would get those two distinct audiences to overlap as much as possible.

What we are discovering is that balancing smart and accessible and trying to appeal to the business neophyte and the business expert is challenging. What has worked best for us is when we really drill down and hyper-target a post to a specific audience.

So, for instance, using the traditional BuzzFeed style to explain short-selling through Mean Girls gifs or explaining compound interest through a quiz, or even crowdsourcing answers to basic questions readers have about the stock market have worked well for the traditional BuzzFeed audience.

Conversely, doing really insider-y posts, like how M&A reporters like to use sex and marriage metaphors or the 8 steps to every hostile takeover rejection letter, have done well with the hardcore business readers who get that we are winking at them with those posts.

It has also been harder than I imagined to convince executives to see the value of the BuzzFeed platform and audience. Many of them still see business news such as the WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, Reuters and CNBC as the top tier to reach investors and the trades as the way to reach their industry peers. They fail to see the value of our audience and reach.

Read more here.