Are you considering getting a Buzzsumo subscription Or simply interested in knowing what Buzzsumo is all about and how it can help your content marketing and business? If you, we have you covered as I’ll be examining all about Buzzsumo, it features, how you can use it and if truly it is worth the hype and money.
Content is the king. That’s what we know, and experts, including Google itself, have said…
No matter what number of backlinks and what authorities you have for your website, none of the on-page and off-page SEO strategies will work if the content is not good.
According to Backlinko, Google gives top priority to the content quality, and then any other factors for ranking. So, if the content is not good, you will probably be wasting all your efforts and money.
Most young digital marketers think it’s easy to rank a page by scoring authority and relevant backlinks from authority websites. Well, without any doubt, backlinks are the backbone of websites. But, content is the soul of websites.
So, first, you should make sure that you have high quality, relevant and trend-following content and then jump on to build the backlinks.
You must write and publish contents that are of high quality and are relevant to the topic, subject, or keyword you want to target.
Furthermore, finding new content ideas is really difficult. Well, there are thousands of content opportunities and ideas. Still, to explore them, you need a tool or software that can explore those content opportunities for you and gives you all the necessary and relevant insights.
That’s where the tool called “Buzzsumo” comes into the picture. Here’s a detailed introduction to Buzzsumo content marketing and researching tools.
What Is Buzzsumo?
Buzzsumo is one of the best and trending content marketing, monitoring, and research tools designed to help digital marketers and website owners find the relevant and trending content ideas and get all the necessary insights. It was founded in 2014 by Steve Rayson.
Buzzsumo was designed and launched to help content marketers in every possible way. From finding ideas to knowing the audience’s reactions and getting the SERP insights to crafting a top-notch quality, up-to-date, and relevant content, Buzzsumo has made everything possible under one roof.
Buzzsumo is trusted by many marketers, brands, and agencies all around the world. Buzzsumo offers features that are very essential for the content you put out on the internet. Without tools like Buzzsumo, your content might not reach the right audience.
Furthermore, there were only a few SEO and content marketing tools available when Buzzsumo was launched. It was the first of its kind. Well, now we have plenty of Buzzsumo look-alike tools and platforms available in the market. Some of those tools are expensive with some new features, and some are affordable with basic features.
So, considering that there are alternatives available, this Buzzsumo review post will explain what makes BuzzSumo stand out from the crowd and the best option even in 2020/2021.
How Buzzsumo Works?
In order to publish content that offers the best value for the time to your audience and the best info of their interest, you must know what’s trending and what’s popular. However, finding and understanding the trend manually is very difficult.
It could take several days to explore social sites and SERP websites to understand what’s trending. It would then take a few days to come up with the killer content relevant to trend and user search. By the time you follow this process, your competitor may already publish similar content on the web and beat you.
That’s what Buzzsumo does in one click with its deep-search engine and advanced algorithm….
Buzzsumo has its own algorithm that scans every content (related to your keyword, topic, and niche) on the web. The process takes only a few seconds and shows results with all the helpful insights.
Buzzsumo tool is not limited to content marketing and research only. Buzzsumo also has functionalities to track down top social media influencers, backlink research, and a lot more.
All you need to do is enter your content keyword or topic in the Buzzsumo search tab and hit enter. Buzzsumo engine will then deep-search the entire web, including websites, social platforms, and forums, and explore every piece of content.
In the end, you will get the easy to read, understand, and follow results on the search board. All you need to do now is understand the already popular content and come up with some unique ideas and strategies to offer more value to readers. That’s all.
That’s how the Buzzsumo works and helps you publish content that offers all the relevant information and the best value for the reader’s time.
Best Features Of Buzzsumo And How To Use Them
Buzzsumo has got more than 50 features that come in handy when researching and exploring content on the web. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to cover all the Buzzsumo features in one post. So, here we are going to discuss only the best and most-demanded features of Buzzsumo.
Also, please note that we are focusing mainly on the WEB content exploration and Monitoring feature of Buzzsumo in this review post. The process of using Buzzsumo for Youtube, Backlinks, and other purposes are almost the same.
Let’s start exploring everything about Buzzsumo’s WEB content exploration and Monitoring feature without doing any further ado.
#1 The Ultimate Content Analyzer
One of the best features of Buzzsumo is its advanced content analyzer. Thanks to this feature, you can find not only the popular and trending content but also Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit engagement insights.
You get access to around 5 billion articles for your research, one of the largest databases for social engagement data available in the world. The data is not just collections of months but years. You can research trends from the past five years for more in-depth analysis. To tackle your competition out there, you can search content domain wise as well.
Buzzsumo is not just limited to content search but also gives you insights on backlinks that work great for your target audience. You can also export them to an excel sheet for ease of use. New links are added in real-time, and you get notified as well so that you can stay at the top of your game.
Understanding each aspect of the trending content, including social share and links, is really helpful. This can help you come up with a better content marketing strategy than your competitor.
Publishing content that actually attracts readers is not easy. But, when you know what they are actually finding meaningful for them, you can produce highly relevant content.
Furthermore, it’s not only about publishing the new content. You can also use the data from Buzzsumo to promote your existing content (if it’s already a good quality content) using the list of sharers for each social platform.
The next good thing about Buzzsumo’s content analyzer is its “Filters.” Yes – there are some handy filters that make the entire process much easier. Here they are:
Country: This filter can help you find a particular country-based trending and relevant content ideas.
Date: The web is flooded with both new and old contents. So, to sort them and find fresh content opportunities and ideas, you can use this filter. Buzzsumo is capable of filtering the results published in the last 24 hours and up to 5 years.
Language: Buzzsumo supports multiple language filtration. You can choose the one based on your research needs.
Content-type: You can use this filter to find the right content type (how-to’s, what’s, etc.) that matches your article purpose and website niche.
Domain Filters: You can use these to include and exclude particular domains from the Buzzsumo search results.
B2B Publishers: If you want to see B2B publishers’ results only, simply tick the box to use this filter.
Publisher size: Filter the contents based on publisher size (large and small publishers)
Word Count: To filter contents based on their length, you can use this filter. You have options to filter content with “any length, less than 700 words, and more than 2000 words.” Also, please note that content with word count less than 750 words is called thin contents, and those with word count more than 2000 words are called in-depth contents.
Dominant Reaction: It’s the newest feature that allows users to filter content based on the audience’s reaction. There are five filters available under Dominant reaction: Angry, Sad, Haha, Wow, And Love. You can choose the one based on your research purpose.
#2 The Content Analysis Report
The content analysis report provided by Buzzsumo is super handy and helps a lot in doing competitor research. This report is downloadable in pdf format and can be shared with your colleagues as well.
The final analysis report is divided into eight different sections to give better insight. The sections are named “Engagement & content over time,” “Average engagement by network and content-type,” “Total engagement by day published,” “Average engagement by content-length,” “Reactions” Top domains,” and two others.
Average Engagement By Network And Content-Type For Best Headphones Topic
Total Engagement By Day Best Headphones Topic Published
Average Engagement By Content-Length For Best Headphones Topic
Reactions For Best Headphones Topic
Top Domains For Best Headphones Topic
These eight report sections cover each aspect of the trending content on the web. Above, I’ve attached a few screenshots of the content analysis report sections (for best headphones topic) to give you a better idea of it.
Overall, reports are easy to read and understand. Once you know these aspects of trending web content, it will become easier to produce useful and engaging content or promote your already published content on the web.
#3 The Alert Feature | Buzzsumo Monitoring
This feature of Buzzsumo is again an essential one. With this feature, you get notified whenever something is going viral and trending. Not only that, but you can also set it to alert you whenever there is a new topic or product in your niche. It will also help you engage your audience super quickly since it notifies you whenever someone mentions your business/brand.
Influencers post at least 6-7 posts every day, and to follow each one of them on a daily basis can be quite tricky. With the monitoring feature of Buzzsumo, you can keep track of the posts influencers are putting up, journalists are sharing, other blogs related to your domain are publishing, right in your inbox, without having to open multiple apps/tabs to keep a track.
This feature also allows you to keep a tab on your content’s organic growth and will help you strategize better with the links that actually work in your niche.
If you want to maintain your brand or business reputation on the web, this feature is implemented for you. This impressive feature is available under Buzzsumo’s Monitoring section. Buzzsumo’s alert feature can help you track down the following:
- Brand mentions
- Content
- Backlinks
- Competitors
- Keywords
- Authors
To create an alert, choose a type, fill in all the details, and that’s all. Buzzsumo’s Monitoring feature is convenient, especially in keeping an eye on competitors’ activities. It’s more like spying on their actions and maintaining everything for your website or brand at best to beat them at every level.
#4 “Discover” The Ideas
The fourth fantastic feature Buzzsumo has got for you is “Discover.” When you search for topics or ideas on Buzzsumo, it shows you all the content related to it and what’s trending in the same area and what’s not. There are four functions that Discover performs.
A. Trending: This one shows all the trending topics on the web irrespective of your niche.
B. Keywords: This one helps in finding new and trending keywords for your content.
C. Topic: If you already have a topic in mind, this feature can help you identify what contents, what tones, what websites, and why they perform well on SERP.
D) Questions: Here, you can find all the trending and new questions people want answers for. This feature can help you understand your audience better.
In short, Discover is all about exploring the ideas and finding what’s currently trending on the web-based on your location and business/product/blog niche.
#5 Hunt For Influencers
We all know who influencers are, right? As the name suggests, they are the people who have a lot of followers, engagements, etc. on social media. Most people relate to the content influencers put out. As of now, influencer marketing is one of the best ways to source the audience towards your content/business.
With this feature of Buzzsumo, you can search millions of profiles on which has genuine engagements and not just spam accounts or fake followers. You can also get insights on which influencer is working with your competitor and what they are sharing, etc. This will make it easy for you to plan and make strategies that will outperform with your competition, putting you ahead in the game.
This feature works not just for finding influencers on Twitter or other social media platforms but also to find authors and bloggers that are popular in your domain. You can also filter based on language to find the most engaging author or publisher in that specified language.
If you want to find influencers who are rocking in your niche, this feature is for you. If you want to find some relevant influencers for your product and service promotions, this feature can help you find them in just one click.
This Buzzsumo feature is divided into three sections, namely: Twitter, Youtube, And Authors. Select the right feature section, enter your business/blog/product niche keyword, and that’s all.
Overall, Buzzsumo is not just making content marketing more manageable, but also the product and service promotions.
#6 Buzzsumo Projects
To get the personalized project experience, you can upload all your website URLs in the project section. This can help you organize your product more appropriately and track down all your social performance.
Once the URLs are uploaded under project sections, Buzzsumo will automate all the tasks. You can login to the Buzzsumo Project dashboard and check how all your contents are performing against your competitors.
What Are The Alternatives?
Well, there are a few other tools you could use if you are looking for more options to explore from.
Google trends: Google has the answer to every question. As the name suggests, Google trends tool is a free alternative to the content search feature of Buzzsumo. Apart from that, you do not get other features like influencer finder, monitoring, etc.
Ahrefs: Well, many would say that this tool is very similar to Buzzsumo, and it is true. They both offer similar features. But the only difference is that when it comes to agency pricing, Buzzsumo is a lot cheaper than Ahrefs.
Feedly: This is powered by Google alerts and is free to use for searching, sharing, and reading articles, posts, blogs, etc. Feedly is a good tool to search for content, but it does not have other features of Buzzsumo, such as influencer search, etc.
Is Buzzsumo Really Good Or Just A Buzz?
Let us take a look at some pros and cons of Buzzsumo to get a better understanding of the tool.
Pros:
- Easy to use and filter based on location, language, domain.
- A lot of customization options are available as per your requirements. Also, the filtering makes it easier to get a closer look at what people want to read, see, or buy from your niche.
- A lot of ideas to choose from in case you run out of content
- Constant monitoring and updates on what’s hot in your domain
- Keeps you updated on your competition and helps you strategize better to win
- Data export can be done quickly into excel sheets.
- Huge database to search from and research on
Cons:
- The influencer search and the insights are only mostly limited to Twitter, which can be a drawback since many users use various other social media platforms.
- If you are just a beginner, this tool might be expensive, and the starting subscription package can be limiting.
Should You Get Buzzsumo Subscription?
If you have made this far in this article, you might be wondering about the pricing and whether or not you should go for the subscription. It is free for the first 30 days of your subscription, and you can cancel it at any time. So, there’s nothing wrong with giving Buzzsumo a shot. If you don’t like the tool, you can always cancel your subscription within the 30 days trial period.
Here are the various pricing tiers and the features offered by Buzzsumo.
**All the pricing tier comes with unlimited monthly searches.
| Plan / Pricing | Pro/$99 P.M | PLUS/$179 P.M | Large/$299 P.M | Enterprise/$499 P.M |
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So the above mentioned are the pricing models of Buzzsumo. You can choose the subscription that best suits you and your needs.
Final verdict
In the end, Buzzsumo has many pros compared to its cons. Also, this tool is an amalgamation of many tools that you would have to use separately otherwise. Using many different free tools is too tiring and would be a mess.
Another bonus feature of Buzzsumo is their APIs. You can create and build your own internal reporting tools. You can also build dashboards and visualizations for a better impact on your stakeholders.
As we know, content is king! But did you know that there are thousands of articles posted every minute on the web? So, what does it take to get your content to the top? How would you make your content more visible to your audience? Since the competition is so high, you always need to stay one step ahead of your competitors. That is where Buzzsumo will help you get the right audience and outreach you need.
According to me, Buzzsumo is a perfect tool for getting all your content related worries sorted in one space. The pricing is also similar to other alternatives out there.
You can choose wisely depending on whether or not it matches the requirements you have and the features that Buzzsumo provides.
