Buzzsumo: Trend analysis and competitive content intelligence

What is Buzzsumo?

BuzzSumo is a marketing and content research tool, launched in 2014 by Steve Rayson.

It is designed to assist digital marketers and website owners in discovering and analyzing trending content.

• Main Objective : Find trending content ideas and provide critical insights.
• Key Features : Analysis of audience reactions, information on SERPs, creation of relevant content.
• Users : Used by marketers, brands, and agencies around the world.
• Innovation : First tool of its kind at launch, inspired many similar tools.
• Variety on the Market : A wide range of competing tools, from expensive options to affordable alternatives.

BuzzSumo has established itself as a comprehensive solution for creating and distributing online content, tailored to the varied needs of digital marketing professionals.

Features

BuzzSumo, with its vast range of over 50 features, is positioned as an essential tool for research and analysis of content on the web.

It provides a comprehensive overview of trends, social commitments, and more. Here's a detailed look at some of BuzzSumo's most popular and useful features.

1. Content analyzer

BuzzSumo introduces an advanced content analyzer that goes beyond simply identifying popular and trending content.

• Engagement Analysis : Detailed engagement information on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit.
• Extensive database : Access to around 5 billion articles for analyses over several years.

The content analyzer is ideal for fine-tuning content marketing strategies. However, the massive amount of data requires in-depth analysis to derive relevant insights.

2. Content Analysis Report

BuzzSumo's content analysis report provides valuable information for competitive research.

• Downloadable reports : Available in PDF, easy to share.
• Multidimensional analysis : Eight different sections covering all aspects of trending content.

The reports are easy to understand and offer a wealth of information. However, data complexity requires some skill in content analysis.

3. Alert function

This feature ensures constant monitoring of trends and brand mentions.

• Instant alerts : Get notifications about viral trends and brand mentions.
• Influencer monitoring : Follow posts from influencers and competitors directly in your inbox.

This feature is essential for staying up to date, but may require time to filter and act on relevant alerts.

4. Discovering Ideas

BuzzSumo's “Discover” feature makes it easy to find trending topics and relevant keywords.

• Trend Exploring : Identify hot topics in your niche.
• Search for keywords and questions : Find trending keywords and questions to guide your content.

This feature is an asset for generating content ideas, although it requires extensive exploration to find truly unique topics.

5. Finding Influencers

BuzzSumo makes it easy to find relevant influencers and authors in your field.

• Identifying influencers : Find influencers with authentic commitments.
• Multilingual filtering : Search for influencers and authors in different languages.

This feature is perfect for influencer marketing, but selecting the right influencers requires careful evaluation.

6. Projects

The “Projects” section of BuzzSumo allows personalized management and monitoring of your content.

• Content Organization : Download the URLs of your site for more structured management.
• Automation and Follow-up : Track the social performance of your content compared to your competitors.

This feature provides a personalized experience, but may require time to set up and analyze data.

7. Backlink tracking

Backlink tracking is a key feature of BuzzSumo, allowing users to track and analyze incoming links to their site.

• Inbound Link Analysis : Find out who links your content and how that affects your SEO.
• Identifying Backlink Opportunities : Identify potential sources of quality backlinks to improve your link strategy.

This function is essential for an effective backlinking strategy, although it requires in-depth analysis to identify the most relevant opportunities.

8. Content Search by Domain

BuzzSumo also makes it possible to search for content specific to a given domain, offering insight into competitors' content strategies.

• Competitive analysis : Review the content and engagement of competing sites.
• Optimization strategies : Adapt your content according to trends observed among competitors.

This function is ideal for competitive intelligence, but requires a strategic understanding of the content and the market.

9. Looking for questions

BuzzSumo offers a question search function, allowing you to discover frequent user questions on specific topics.

• Identifying Popular Questions : Find out what questions your target audience asks the most.
• Content Optimization : Create content that answers your audience's questions directly.

This feature is perfect for targeting content to the real needs of users, although it requires analysis to determine the most relevant questions.

Conclusion

In short, BuzzSumo offers a complete suite of tools for content research, engagement analysis, backlink tracking, and much more. Each feature makes a unique contribution to a successful content marketing strategy, although in-depth digital marketing expertise is required to maximize the use of the platform.

Pricing

Here is a clear and concise overview of BuzzSumo's pricing plans, offering various options based on user needs.

1. Content Creation ($199/month)

For : Marketers and marketing agencies

Included :

• 1 user
• Unlimited searches
• 2 alerts
• Features: Content Analyzer, Trending Feeds, Question Analyzer

2. PR & Comms ($299/month)

For : Communication and public relations agencies

• Included :
• 5 users
• Unlimited searches
• 5 alerts
• Content Creation Features, Plus Media Database & Outreach, Coverage Reports, Slack Integration

3. Suite ($499/month)

For : Marketing teams from major brands and agencies

Included :

• 10 users
• Unlimited searches
• 10 alerts
• PR & Comms features, plus YouTube Analyzer, Advanced Chrome Extension, Article Uploads

4. Enterprise ($999/month)

For : Major brands and agencies

Included :

• 30 users
• Unlimited searches
• 50 alerts
• All Suite Plan Features, Plus RSS Feed, Granular Location Search, Early Access To New Features

In summary, BuzzSumo's pricing plans are designed to meet the needs of various users, ranging from creating content to managing public relations and communications, to comprehensive offerings for large businesses. Each plan offers growing features and user numbers, allowing teams of all sizes to take advantage of BuzzSumo's powerful tools for their content and marketing strategies.

Alternatives to BuzzSumo

Here are three alternatives to BuzzSumo, each with its own specificities and advantages.

These tools offer various functionalities for content research, SEO analysis, and digital marketing.

1. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool offered by Google, allowing you to analyze current trends on the search engine.

Features

• Trend Analysis : See how popular search terms are over time.
• Keyword Comparison : Compare multiple terms to identify emerging trends.

Pricing

• Gratuit : Full access to all features at no cost.

Google Trends is a great tool for understanding user interests and behaviors, but it lacks advanced features like influencer research or backlink analysis.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO analytics platform, often compared to BuzzSumo for its content research features.

Features

• Content Search : Discover the most effective content in your niche.
• Backlink analysis : Study the link profiles of your competitors.
• Position Tracking : Track the ranking of your keywords in the SERPs.
• Site Audit : Identify your site's SEO issues.

Pricing

• Lite : $99/month, suitable for individuals and small teams.
• Standard : $179/month, for SEO professionals.
• Advanced : $399/month, designed for large teams and agencies.

Ahrefs is more expensive than BuzzSumo, especially for agencies, but offers a wider range of SEO features.

3. Feedly

Feedly is a content curation application, using Google alerts to provide a service for monitoring and searching for articles, posts, and blogs.

Features

• Content Curation : Organize and follow a variety of sources of information.
• Sharing and Reading Articles : Share and read content relevant to your field.

Pricing

• Gratuit : Basic features at no cost.
• Pro : Starting at $6/month, for advanced features.

Feedly is a convenient alternative for finding and managing content, although it doesn't have advanced features like finding influencers.

In conclusion, each tool offers distinct advantages. Google Trends is great for understanding current trends for free, Ahrefs excels at SEO analysis and content research, while Feedly is useful for content curation and management. The choice will depend on your specific needs in terms of content research, SEO analysis, and marketing strategy.

Final Verdict

In the end, Buzzsumo has a lot of advantages over its disadvantages. Also, this tool is an amalgam of numerous tools that you should use separately otherwise. Using several different free tools is too tiring and would be a real waste.

Another feature of Buzzsumo is its API. You can create and build your own internal reporting tools. You can also create dashboards and visualizations for better impact on your stakeholders.

As we know, content is king! But did you know that thousands of articles are published every minute on the web? So what does it take to get your content to the top? How do you make your content more visible to your audience? Since the competition is very strong, you should always be one step ahead of your competitors. That's where Buzzsumo will help you get the audience and reach you need.

In my opinion, Buzzsumo is a perfect tool for consolidating all your content-related concerns in one place. The price is also similar to other existing solutions.

You can choose wisely depending on whether or not it meets your requirements and the features offered by Buzzsumo.