Ranking the Top 10 Media Publishers in March

by Jack Weinstein

Tasty’s meteoric rise continued in March as the as the producer of video recipes experienced the most month-to-month growth among media publishers.

The BuzzFeed-owned publisher generated 49.1 million total social actions (likes, comments, shares, retweets and dislikes) on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That’s 30% more engagement than it generated in February. Tasty ranked second to publishing behemoth National Geographic, which generated 104.3 million actions in March. Sports publisher Bleacher Report took the third spot.

Overall, publishers generated 1.5 billion actions in March—49% on Instagram, 46% on Facebook, and 4% on Twitter. That represents a 1% increase compared with February.

Publishers captured 22% of all social media actions during the month.

Tasty Tops Facebook

Tasty generated the most engagement among publishers on Facebook, where it generated 98.6% of its total actions for the month. Tasty also produced six of the most-engaged Facebook posts in March led by its Sparkling Strawberry Kiwi Sangria video, which generated more than 2.6 million Facebook actions and 80 million views.



The video was the second-most engaged Facebook post among publishers. The Huffington Post published the top content among all brands in March. Its lap elephants video generated nearly 2.9 million actions and 89 million views. Speaking of HuffPost, it generated the second highest month-to-month growth among publishers at 25%.

Tasty also generated the most actions per Facebook post with more than 411,000.

Bleacher Report Rules Twitter

Bleacher Report tweeted an average of 44 times a day in March, but it wasn’t even close to the most tweets posted by a publisher during the month. That distinction belongs to HuffPost, which tweeted an average of 104 times per day.

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But Bleacher Report more than doubled the average actions per tweet than any other publisher to generate 4.3 million actions on the platform, most in the category.

Bleacher Report posted nine of the top 20 tweets in the category, mostly with the funnier moments of the day’s sports news. Take its top tweet for example.

Bleacher Report posted a 15-second video of Baylor forward Taurean Prince giving a very literal and sarcastic answer to a question about how his team was outrebounded by the shorter Yale squad during the NCAA Tournament.

Spin Magazine posted the most-engaged tweet in the publishing category, a photo and link to a story about the debut solo album from former One Direction member Zayn Malik.

Instagram: the Perfect Platform for Nat Geo

When it comes to generating engagement on Instagram among publishers or anyone, really, no one does it better than Nat Geo.

The iconic publisher, which also topped our ranking of Q1 2016 Top 25 Brands , generated 104.2 million actions in March, 94% from Instagram. It generated an average of 361,000 actions per Instagram post, 425% more than the average of the Top 10 publishers.

Nat Geo posts some of the most breathtaking pictures on social whether they feature wildlife , interesting places or scenes from nature . But Nat Geo posts aren’t just photos. They educate and tell stories. Each post includes a long caption describing the image, giving its audience a bit more information about how the world works.

Its top March Instagram post may not be its best photo. But the story from photographer Aaron Huey about a pack of wolves moving through Denali National Park to find new hunting grounds is fascinating.



Which publishers do you interact with on social? Let us know in the comments section.

Want to learn how to create the type of content that your audiences engages with and amplifies on behalf of your brand? Tune in to What Makes Content Shareable, our next webinar April 26 at 3 p.m. EST.