I’ve looked at the biggest stories on metro.co.uk in the last 3 months. There are 11 with over 0.5 million page views.
- 4 (of the top 7) are heartwarming: the South African NekNomination
- 4 (of the top 10) are weird: the woman hiding in a man’s closet for a year
- 3 (including the top 2) are funny: the Dad laughing at kids slipping on ice
- 2 (9th and 10th most popular) are gross (as well as weird): the guy who had sex with his girlfriends dog
The results are similar for the most shared stories… 11 stories have over 10,000 shares. 5 are heartwarming, 4 are funny, 2 are weird.
Hmm… we should start tracking our tags so that we can get some better data 🙂
Views and shares aren’t the end of the story though. I think that less popular articles can also make a big difference to our conversion funnel… i haven’t managed to measure it yet though!
Amazing what catches peoples attention.