What startup news gets the most attention?

If you are a startup that is looking for some PR, it might help to understand which type of startup news announcements tend to get the most attention. You might be shocked to find out that the startup news that gets the most attention isn’t always about the latest and greatest idea. It isn’t even about the startup that landed the most recent funding round either.

Of course, that all depends on how you define things. In this instance, I am defining attention as those startup news articles that get the most shares across social media. Of course, there is the chance that people are sharing certain articles, without really reading them, because they like supporting the author. Or maybe they just like the title and think it will impart some attention to their own social media account.

I began thinking about this subject after listening to an episode of The Marketing Companion podcast, where my friend Mark Schaefer and his co-host, Tom Webster, interviewed Steve Rayson from BuzzSumo. BuzzSumo is an online tool that helps the user discover which content is most popular by topic or website. After listening to the interview, I decided to see what ranked high for the keyword “startups”. The results were shocking to me. As I mentioned earlier, the top startup news wasn’t about a particular startup idea or a company that had raised millions of dollars.

Instead, over the past year, the top five startup articles that have received the most shares were:

• Black History Month — Breaking Into Startups with over 52k shares
• SD Squared’s new cloud billing platform for startups with over 38k shares
• Nick DeWilde — Program Director at Tradecraft with over 32k shares
• Things Startups Need to Know about Pitney Bowe’s Accelerator with over 32k shares
• Shawn Drost — Founder of Hack Rector with nearly 32k shares

What was interesting to me in these findings were two things. First, three out of the top five articles were published on the Breaking Into Startups website. Get this…I had never heard of that site. For someone that has a site aimed at startups, it is probably time I learned more about them as a competitor. Second, the number of shares was split pretty evenly between Facebook and Twitter. Shares from other sites like LinkedIn were non-existent. Which tells me that the two platforms to release your startup news on are Facebook and Twitter. It also appears that once an article got a significant number of shares on one platform that is where the vast majority of shares ended up coming from.

So, how does this help your startup with getting more publicity? Understanding the type of headlines and stories that appear to get the most attention can help you in crafting your public message to the world. Something else to consider is the use of tools, like BuzzSumo, in researching and planning out your content. By the way, I am not being paid to say this…

What are some other tools you use to help in crafting your startup news?