As a marketing technologist, one of my favorite things is to test out new technologies.
BuzzSumo found its way to me about 6 months ago, and since then, I use it almost daily. Why? It’s the best content analytics and curation tool that I’ve ever come across.
It’s helpful for community managers who are looking for great content to share, and it also comes in handy for content creators who are looking to discover which content is resonating among certain audiences.
BuzzSumo Brings The Sumo Spirit, Hakkeyoi, Into Content Marketing & Content Analytics
Literally translated as, “put some spirit into it,” hakkeyoi is a phrase you’ll hear referees and fans shouting at any sumo wrestling match. BuzzSumo is that spirit for content marketing — but, thank goodness, no scantily clad large men are required. (Of course, if that’s how you like to rock your content marketing from the couch, more power to you.)
With BuzzSumo, you can easily see what content is trending across the web for a given topic. You can also learn which content is performing well on any given website. Additionally, you can discover who the big influencers are in your industry. It’s like magic!
All you have to do is type in your keyword, phrase, or URL into the search box, and you have organized, readable data in seconds.
The data is sortable and exportable, enabling you to easily do additional analysis on it. BuzzSumo also has tons of add-ons so you can customize your experience — and you don’t have to be a techie to figure out what the heck the reports are really saying.
Content Curation & Inspiration
With BuzzSumo, you can find out which links are most shared on major social media platforms for a given keyword or phrase. In the screenshot below, I searched the phrase “marketing technology” to discover popular content on that topic.
Find the top shared articles for any keyword. Here, “marketing technology” is searched. [CLICK TO ENLARGE]
At a stalemate? Facing down some serious writer’s block? Discovering what content is getting the most traction on social media can supply you with leads on topics that relate to your business — and allow you to spot trends before they get played out. You might even be able to spot a viral firestorm before others do, so you can get yourself a sweet slice of that pie.
Piggybacking onto trending content is one of the fastest and easiest ways to up your own rank ethically. After all, we all need a little inspiration. Why not let BuzzSumo give you the coaching, hacks and tips you need to succeed?
Which pieces of content from MarketingLand.com were shared the most in the last six months [CLICK TO ENLARGE]
Discover The Content Influencers & Follow The Leader
Just as you can find popular content for a given topic, you can also pinpoint the key influencers in your field. It’s nice to know that John Doe is a major influencer when it comes to “farming,” but who’s the big yokozuna of “organic black plums in northern California”? That’s a pretty niche request, but if that’s your field, you need to get down to the nitty gritty.
The screenshot below shows a list of influencers that BuzzSumo has surfaced for the term “marketing technology.” I have it sorted by follower count, but you can sort it in whatever way makes the most sense to you — relevance, domain authority, average retweets, etc.
Top influencers for the topic of “marketing technology.” [CLICK TO ENLARGE]
Furthermore, once you’ve identified an influential organization or individual, you can learn exactly what content they’re sharing. This could help you find relevant content to share on your own networks or serve as inspiration for content you plan to create.
You can also see other pieces of content that your influencers have shared.
Content Analysis
For additional inspiration, you can do some analysis on top words used in the most successful headlines. I love this aspect of BuzzSumo. In fact, I’ve built a process that enables me to create infographics based on any topic from data that I’ve pulled from BuzzSumo. And that’s no B.S.
What are the top words used in all of BuzzFeed’s most shared articles in the last six months?
These are the most frequently used words on BuzzFeed headlines in the last 6 months. Image Credit: Travis Wright
What are the words used most frequently in posts about marketing, analytics or big data? Boom. I used this data to make the infographic for the MarTech conference.
The most frequently used words in headlines in articles about analytics, marketing, social media and big data. This graphic was used for the MarTech Conference in Boston, August 2014. Image Credit: Travis Wright
What about the most used words and categories on the most shared Reddit posts of the past six months?
The most used words in the most shared Reddit posts in the past 6 months. Image Credit: Travis Wright
BuzzSumo allows you to analyze the similarities of the top shared pieces of content out there, but you don’t have to do that analysis all by yourself.
In this excellent Noah Kagan post about BuzzSumo, Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us, the company lays out their data-backed findings on answers to the following questions:
What types of emotions did the most popular articles invoke?
What type of posts typically receive a lot of shares? (lists? infographics?)
Did readers love to share short form or long form content? What’s the ideal length?
Does trust play a major role on whether someone will share an article?
What’s the effect of having just one image in a post vs. no images?
What’s the effect of having just one influencer sharing your article vs. zero?
How do we make people share our post days and even weeks after it’s been published?
What’s the best day of the week to publish an article?
Is BuzzSumo Too Good To Be True?
If it sounds too good to be true; it probably is — or maybe it’s just BuzzSumo. There aren’t any rules which say that writing relevant content has to be hard. You’re not going to get extra SEO points just because you spent all day perusing social media by yourself to figure out the most popular links.
There are very real tools at your fingertips to make life and business easier. If you’re not using them, you won’t be crowned a martyr at the end of the day. You’ll just be doing a lot more work for worse results.
BuzzSumo can be one of your secret weapons, your champion eager to get into the ring. Find out what it can do for you and stop being a banzuke-gai — that’s “outsider to the life of Sumo” for newbies on the roster.
All word clouds created by the author, Travis Wright, via an internal content visualization tool.
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