Quick Answer
Use BuzzFeed’s community contributor platform (or similar sites like Medium) to publish viral content that drives traffic back to your own site.
But when I got down to the end of the post, I saw this:
On the one hand – yes it’s a little strange. There’s a very tenuous link between being spontaneous and liking cats, and wanting to see a Bud Light advertisement.
On the other hand, this is contemporary marketing at its best.
And it’s what you should be doing too.
How to do it
If you’re trying to market your books or grow your business, telling everybody about your product rarely works (especially if you try to do it more than once or twice, then it becomes obnoxious). Advertising in specific places can work – especially if they are already in the mindset to buy a book like yours, or searching for your business (if they are, then Google paid advertisements/sponsored search is the way to get in front of them). But most of the time, people don’t give a damn about you or your business or your book. They just want to do whatever they want to do, which probably includes watching stupid cat videos.Rule Number One: find them where they are.
Don’t just blast on Twitter to your followers (they will stop following you). Don’t just post on your Facebook page or on your blog (that nobody is reading). Find out where your ideal clients or readers hang out, what they do for fun, what they enjoy. Start noticing those things you see shared on Facebook all the time, from Buzzfeed or Bored Panda – you know, that silly stuff that catches your attention and gives you a little bit of fun; the stuff you can’t help clicking on. Find sites that are being shared, that get a ton of traffic, then focus on a topic that will engage your target audience.Rule Number Two: don’t talk about yourself.
Bud Light’s efforts would have been wasted if they tried to do something obvious like “16 tasty snacks to enjoy with a cold cup of Bud Light.” Nobody wants content that is marketing a product. Bud Light’s cat post only works because it has nothing to do with Bud Light; it’s only purpose is to be funny and engaging – it works. It’s disarming. It gets people to click and read. Gifs work the best, but you could do any funny list (Cracked.com is a great place for these too). Need to make a gif? Check out this Youtube Video to Gif converter. A successful collection of gifs with a sentence of commentary can get millions of hits. You’re allowed a final question and link to yourself or your site on the bottom of the post. It takes some work, but one great native content article like this will bring you more traffic and visibility a lot of other marketing stuff you could do. Even if you don’t use BuzzFeed – these same principles hold for building your platform. Write blog posts that are useful and entertaining, that are clickable and shareable (not stuff that sells your book or service). Your book or company should be a footnote, not the main event (which means, stop thinking about what you want people to buy and start thinking about what people might enjoy). Write these articles and share them. Put some on your website, then share the link on Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn. Put others on bigger blogs with lots of traffic. No, this isn’t “giving away your writing without getting paid for it” – this is “very cheap, easy and effective marketing that you’re lucky to be able to do”. If million dollar companies are turning to this approach, surely they know what kind of marketing works these days, and what doesn’t. Don’t be an old-school marketer (spammer). Be entertaining and provide value. PS) I’m going to work on a few BuzzFeed posts myself to see how hard they are to pull off, I’ll update this page later.- 10 ways to defeat writer’s block, as told by cats.
- 10 ways to sell more books, as told by funny animals.
Where to Publish Content in 2026
The BuzzFeed playbook still works — the platform just changed. The principle is the same: publish valuable content where people already are, then give them a reason to follow you home. In 2026, that means Medium for long-form nonfiction, LinkedIn for professional expertise, Substack for building a subscriber base, and short-form video for discovery.
The mistake most authors make is trying to be everywhere at once. Pick one platform, master it, build an audience there, then expand. One author with 5,000 engaged Medium followers will outsell another with 500 followers each on 10 different platforms. Depth beats breadth every time.
For a comprehensive look at whether blogging still makes sense as a content strategy, read is blogging dead? — the answer might surprise you. And for free ways to promote your book without a content empire, our free promotion guide covers what actually moves the needle. If you’re building an author platform from scratch, start with a proper author website — that’s the home base everything else points to.
Derek Murphy has a PhD in Literature, is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and has spent over a decade helping authors write, publish, and sell books through Creativindie. When he’s not critiquing manuscripts or building writing tools, he’s probably in a castle somewhere with cats.
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