• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, September 3, 2015

Business Insider is growing fast, building up its sales team and testing new ways of distributing its content, including a new initiative for publishing to social networks called “Insider.”

The publisher is using these social channels to develop and test content, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

BI’s Insider Facebook publishing channel features video content posted directly to the social network, as well as whole articles (including images) that appear as status updates. It should be noted this program does not fall under the aegis of Facebook’s Instant Articles, although BI could be there soon as well.

On Twitter, Insider has mostly favored video content. BI Insider is also publishing on Instagram and Tumblr and is exploring partnerships with other social platforms. WSJ also reports that a new Insider Web site is planned for sometime next year, and the company is using the social media channels to help set the editorial direction and tone for the launch.

Earlier this week, MediaPost’s Joe Mandese reported that BI had brought in Sheila Buckley, a longtime Time Inc. and Weather Channel sales executive with strong ties to both big agencies and marketers, to serve as senior vice president of sales. Before joining BI, Buckley more recently held top positions running sales at startups like Vibrant Media and Criteo.

BI currently claims to have over 80 million global monthly unique visitors, including about 45 million in the U.S. alone.

On the business side, programmatic supplies about 30% of the company’s total advertising revenues, while revenues at its in-house native and creative services content studio is up 155% year over year.