Monday, February 16, 2015

Black History Month Brings Out Best & Worst Content

It's the best of times, it's the worst of times. So here is a tale of two pieces of content. It's up to you, fine readers, to determine which one's a best practice and which one's a worst practice.



Match the Quote to the Black History Hero Who Said It
BuzzFeed quizzes can be a polarizing piece of content. Let's face it, we work hard to get our content shared into ubiquity. Yet BuzzFeed can drop a quiz telling you which meat you are and it's passed around like a 100% off coupon code.

But asking readers to match quotes to the hero from black history that said it? This is a wonderful example of edutainment. And it's focused on a topic we could all stand to learn more about. It could only be smarter if a BuzzFeed staffer wrote it. But props to the community member that did.

Black Author's Book Teaser Will Make Your Kids a Slave to Reading
The individual that alerted us to this news release wonders how it was even allowed to go out over the wire. And I must wonder the same exact thing.

We've talked about forcing a connection between your topic and a timely event before. But this example is worse than that. We'll just let the headline speak for itself and simply note that book marketing is hard. But that's no excuse for poor taste.


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6 comments:

  1. Franchise PR Agency8:51 AM

    Buzzfeed catches flack for the quality of their quizzes but they do get lots of engagement, and often good engagement! That's what a good marketing or PR agency needs to get, too, with its content.

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  2. Anonymous8:58 AM

    Sometimes BuzzFeed and create quality content, or content that is just purely for entertainment purposes, but it's quizzes like this that lead me to question their validity.

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  3. Noelle Langenkamp1:35 AM

    I believe it would be huge to get PR writing, specifically Black History Month, as widespread as Buzz Feed quizzes. Although a lot of those quizzes are guilty pleasures for some, they can also be fairly enlightening at times. If PR could target those readers I believe it would really benefit the industry as well as the message being pushed to the public..

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  4. Carl6:58 AM

    Great article. Enjoyed reading. Thanks

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  5. Unknown2:15 AM

    Interesting blog thanks for sharing with us.

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  6. Claire11:01 PM

    This is a really insightful and important article for media curators to consider! Talking about Black History Month in more contexts would benefit the industry, our publics and education on social issues. Writers should be informed on all levels of the topic in order to present it appropriately

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