What Is Buzzsumo?
Buzzsumo is a content search engine that helps you find the most “virally successful” content. Let’s say you have a website about natural health, and you want to know what types of content work well with your prospective audience – how would you go about finding this?
One option would be to go through content on competing sites, Facebook pages etc and manually checking social share counts.
But imagine how tedious and time-consuming that would be! Even a VA would find this to be absolute torture.
There must be a better way. And Buzzsumo is that better way. Or at least it claims to be.
How Does Buzzsumo Work
At the most basic level, Buzzsumo works like this. You log in to your account, and then you make a search for a topic.
For example, “natural health”.
The app then works its magic and sets out to find a list of content related to natural health with the highest number of social shares (I’m talking Facebook likes, Tweets etc).
There are some more advanced features available – I’ll go into more detail shortly – but for now suffice it to say that the core focus of Buzzsumo is on finding top performing viral content for any niche or keyword, so that you can take inspiration and create something even better!
The whole idea is that you get a data-driven feel of what content is performing, so that you can make a better/fresher/more-engaging version that will hopefully perform even better.
Buzzsumo Pricing
Rather than type out the Buzzsumo pricing structure (as it’s quite complicated) I’ve just posted a screenshot below. Bear in mind the prices as shown are broken down per month but paid monthly. You have to add on another 20% for proper month-to-month pricing:
What I Like:
- Super easy to use. Buzzsumo is seriously one of the easiest applications I’ve ever used. You just load it up, enter the topic you’re interested in, and then get to view a range of leading content for your inspiration. It can’t be any easier than that!
- Good results. This app does seem to return very accurate results, even on some obscure searches.
- Great interface. Buzzsumo has a fantastic interface and user experience. It’s so clean and efficient, and makes the application a joy to use.
- Excellent features
What I Don’t Like:
- High price. Plans start at $99 per month, and that is quite a high price for any startup or budding Internet entrepreneur. I suggest that a better option for low-volume users might be to offer a credit-based system. E.g. $5 gets you one credit, which equals one search.
- Limited free trial. By limited, I don’t mean in terms of time. 30 days to try Buzzsumo without paying is very fair indeed (and I love that you don’t need to input any credit card details). However, not allowing data export on the free trial feels a bit cheapskate of the vendor.
Conclusion
If you’re in to producing viral or link-bait type content, then Buzzsumo really is worth your attention. It’s hard to say if it’s worth staying a member long-term, as the price is quite high. But it’s certainly worth joining for a month or two so you can build up a big database of top-performing content in your niche or for your keywords of choice.
The only thing I don’t like about Buzzsumo is the price. Everything else is spot-on and totally fit for purpose.
Considering that you can get a decent free trial (albeit without export options) I highly recommend you at least take up the free option and see how you get on.