BuzzSumo – Content Marketing Supertool

BuzzSumo is more than just a content discovery tool. It does that, sure, but it does so much more that, for many people who are deeply involved with Content Marketing, Buzzsumo has become an invaluable resource. Just take a look at this screenshot for the search term “UK Music Festivals” :-

As you can see, the first article, published in the Guardian, about Azealia Banks’ “racist rant” achieved 7.9K Facebook shares but much less on other channels with only 3 shares on Twitter. The 7.9K Facebook shares are tempting however so you might  take advantage by curating the article and posting on an appropriate site or, more likely in my case, trigger an idea for an article, possibly along the lines of “Things you don’t expect to hear at a music festival.”

BuzzSumo doesn’t stop there however. Clicking on the “view backlinks” button lets you see the domains that are linked to this article. This is useful to those who seek to build lists of possible sites that might also link to their’s if a similar piece of content were published there. This is borderline OK as an activity that Google would just, grudgingly, approve of since the link is not “paid for” and it is from a site that is relevant to the content in question. Useful, but use with care.

In the same way you can also view the details of those who have shared the article with their own followers. Again, this is your chance to build a list of people to follow and who may well follow you in return or share some of your content if appropriate.

Those of you looking for guest post opportunities should take note of BuzzSumo’s excellent filtering capabilities. By selecting only those posts that were guest posts you can easily find sites that accept guest posts on that subject and offer to write for them yourself – another source of legitimate backlinks IF everything is done properly and the content is relevant to the sites. It goes without saying that no money must change hands in such a situation.

This really is a tool for both the content curator and the content creator. At $99 per month for the “Pro” plan, ($79 if you pay annually) it is good value if you have a need for it but a bit steep if you don’t.

So why is the BuzzSumo Content Marketing tool held in such high esteem?

The main reason, in my opinion after having used BuzzSumo for a while now, is the way in which it not only finds content relevant to your search criteria but it tells you so much about it that you really need if you are to be a successful Content Marketer. The audience building and list building tools are probably the best I’ve seen and if I were a professional Content Marketer or if Content Marketing was a major part of my digital Marketing Strategy, I would do my utmost to try and fund this for myself.

Maybe BuzzSumo should consider a scaled-down plan for freelancers and other smaller concerns who might find $99 a bit high to justify.

Which content is the most popular? Which content has been interacted with the most? – Buzzsumo tells you all of this, making it easy for you to decide which items of content you should curate and use in your own blogs and websites.

It isn’t cheap, but what it does is very valuable so it’s a case of evaluating whether or not the power of Buzzsumo makes sense to you in terms of the likely Return On Investment that you would receive if you used it.

I’ll leave those calculations to you but in terms of its usefulness and functionality – I would definitely recommend that you take a look at BuzzSumo as soon as you can.