BuzzSumo Digital PR Tool Review

BuzzSumo is one of my all-time favorite cool tools.

BuzzSumo indexes the most shared content on the major social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, and YouTube), counts the number of shares on each of those channels per URL, identifies the author of the content, and the inbound links pointing to it.

All those capabilities are not free (well, for a little while they are with a free trial). Pricing starts at $99 a month but if you do a lot of content marketing, content curation, social media marketing or even SEO, it’s well worth the investment.

Here are some of the ways I use the tool.

5 Ways To Use BuzzSumo

1. Identify Trending Content On Social Channels

The screenshot below shows the top trending news content on social during the past 24 hours. Additional preset categories include Sports, Entertainment, Tech, Business, Video, Fashion, Science, Politics, Health, and Marketing. BuzzSumo will add categories for seasonal content (see US Primaries below) and you can add your own custom topic category to track as well.

You can also segment by 12, 8, 4, and 2 hours ago. This is great for identifying topics that are likely to take off soon.

2. Identify Popular Socially-Shared Content By Domain

You can search a domain name in BuzzSumo to find what content on that site is most popular on which social channels. The screenshot below shows what content from a site was the most popular during the past year, with a total shares count as well as that number broken down to the various social sites.

With the domain search you can not only see what kind of content is popular, you can identify the social channels visitors to that site like.

I will use this tool to get an idea of what type of amplification I might be able to expect from a media outlet I may be pitching a client’s story to or how much reach I could expect from an influencer I might want to work with.

3. Identify Popular Socially-Shared Content By Keyword

You can use the keyword search to find popular content by topic.

I share links to content every half hour to my Twitter and LinkedIn channels, so I’m always looking for articles that are relevant to my audience. In addition to marketing, advertising and public relations content, I also share articles related to leadership, management and professional development topics for professional communicators.

The best of those links will often end up in various newsletters. BuzzSumo is a primary tool I use to find those stories. This screenshot shows a keyword search for “leadership development.”

4. Analyze Socially-Shared Content

You can use the content analysis feature of BuzzSumo to gain insight into content being shared on social channels by topic (keyword search) or domain. In this screenshot, you can see that content about leadership development have been shared during the past year on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter but not so much on Pinterest. You can also see that List posts and explanatory articles (What and Why posts) did well.

The content analysis feature will also show you average shares by day of the week, per channel, average share by content length, and top domains.

5. Identify Top Twitter Influencers By Keyword Or Domain

BuzzSumo’s Amplification feature allows you to enter a keyword search to find Twitter influencers related to that topic.

In the screenshot below, you can see the top influencers for leadership development. You can also use a domain name or Twitter handle search to find influencers related to that property.

I employ BuzzSumo for insight for strategic planning, for competitive analysis for clients, for media relations, for social media and content marketing. The list goes on.

BuzzSumo Video Demonstration Webinar

This overview by BuzzSumo is a little dated but it does take you through the key features.