(Nieman Lab) — Jostling for readers for your listicle on Facebook? Aim for the number “10” in your headline.
Trying to promote a story on Twitter? Emotion-based appeals popular on Facebook don’t translate to Twitter.
Findings from a BuzzSumo trigram analysis of 100 million headlines published between March and May of this year confirms a lot about the clickbait-y, competitive publishing environment of social media.
The analysis reveals nothing particularly surprising, for instance, about the headline phrases that generated the most likes, shares, and comments: “Will make you” was by far the most successful phrase, and emotion-based appeals like “melt your heart” and “make you cry” also do well. (Also, we reported that 10 was the most common number for a BuzzFeed list way back in 2013.)
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