What it takes for beauty brands to grab the attention of BuzzFeed, what kind of posts perform best (and when they fall flat), diversity as a priority, the choice to use real people instead of models, a new lifestyle platform, and the journey from social work to BuzzFeed…

In this classic prior episode, Essence Gant, former Senior Beauty Editor for BuzzFeed  (an Internet media and news company based in New York with a focus on digital media), now Director of Ad Studio at Prose, joined Regina Gwynn, Abby Wallach, and April Franzino to share:

• Making sure all diverse voices are heard in beauty narrative
• Diversity as a priority from the beginning has been part of success
• Videos a big part of communication—don’t really use models—they use each other
• Real beauty, real people, real talk
• Trying to be funny
• Anything that they really love and lives up the hype—performs well
• Stories vs. tips doing well, products do well, consumer audience
• The journey from social work to buzzfeed
• Launched womens lifestyle platform in March
• “As Is”
• More thoughtful conversation about beauty
• What gets attention with products to cover
• Whats special about brand, sticks out from the rest
• Why BuzzFeed will cover super indie brands
• The impact of giving attention to small brands, and how it can transform their business
• When content falls flat
• Depends on what’s going on in world at moment, timing
• You know beauty when you seeit, finding beauty at Afropunk
• Instagram is pretty, and insane nails from Cardi B’s nail artist
• Why reflection is so important to success