BuzzSumo: Can It Help You? [Pricing, Features, Review]

7/15/2023

BuzzSumo: Can It Help You? [Pricing, Features, Review]

Are you a blogger, journalist, or content creator? Consistently producing articles and posts that drive engagement is critical. However, in today's landscape, audience interests can shift rapidly. Finding effective topics can be hard. BuzzSumo is a digital platform that can help. Identify topics that are trending with your target audience and get ideas for creating content that will resonate. Below, I cover the BuzzSumo pricing and features, and provide my overall review. See if the platform is right for you.

What is BuzzSumo?

BuzzSumo is a web-based software that lets users identify trending topics within niches. It provides engagement analytics on around 8 billion pieces of content, spanning articles, photos, and videos. BuzzSumo also offers information on journalists and social media influencers.

BuzzSumo pricing and free trial

BuzzSumo offers a 30-day free trial. If you're considering using the platform, I highly recommend the free trial. You don't need to put down a credit card. To start, just click the button and visit the BuzzSumo site:

Try BuzzSumo Free

After the free trial, you can continue using BuzzSumo for a monthly subscription fee, which you can pay annually for a 20% discount. You can select from five plans. Here's the price for each (if paid annually), the included features, and the number of user accounts permitted:

Basic is $95/month. Access the Content Ideas Generator, monitoring, and a Chrome extension. One account is allowed on this plan.

Content Creation is $199/month. Get the Basic features, plus analysis tools for content, questions, and backlinks. Create accounts for up to five users.

PR & Comms is also $199/month. Get the Basic features, plus a journalist database, coverage reports, and a Slack integration. Make accounts for up to five users.

Suite is $249/month. Access every feature in the previously mentioned plans, plus YouTube analytics, an advanced Chrome extension, and article uploads. Create accounts for up to 10 users.

Enterprise is $999/month. Get all the capabilities from the Suite plan, in addition to an RSS feed and granular location search. Create accounts for up to 30 users.

BuzzSumo features

BuzzSumo has an extensive list of features. Below, I've included screenshots and summaries.

BuzzSumo Discover

The BuzzSumo Discover section has five features:

Content Ideas Generator
Keyword Tool
Question Analyzer
Trending Feeds
Topic Explorer

Content Ideas Generator

Enter any topic (ex, "movie releases") and BuzzSumo will surface popular pieces of content about the topic. See engagement signals, like how many times an article was shared on social networks, how many backlinks it's received, and more.

You can see the types of formats that are popular for content about the topic. For article posts, you can also see word-count statistics.

The Content Ideas Generator tool also provides data for the social networks and days of the week that receive the most engagement for content about the topic.

Keyword Tool

Enter a keyword people would search for on Google and BuzzSumo will show you the search volume per month, the cost per click (CPC) if you were to run an SEM advertising campaign for the keyword, and the number of articles published containing the keyword.

Question Analyzer

Enter a topic and get a list of popular questions people online are asking in relation to the topic.

Trending Feeds

Input a topic and see content about the topic that's trending online.

Topic Explorer

Input a topic and receive BuzzSumo's suggestions for pieces of content you can create about the topic, based on high expected engagements.

Do any of the BuzzSumo Discover tools seem like they can help you? Then visit the website and start your free trial:

Try BuzzSumo Free

BuzzSumo Outreach

The BuzzSumo Outreach area has two features:

Media Database
Media Lists

Media Database

BuzzSumo maintains a database of journalists. You can search for an individual, or anyone who matches certain criteria, for instance, journalists who write for a specific media outlet.

For each journalist, BuzzSumo provides a biography, links to written articles, links to social media profiles, and an email address.

Media Lists

You can add journalists from BuzzSumo's media database to a list, enabling quick access to their profiles for you and any colleagues part of your account.

BuzzSumo Content

The BuzzSumo Content area has four features:

Content Analyzer
YouTube Analyzer
Facebook Page Analyzer
Backlink Analyzer

Content Analyzer

Enter a topic and receive a list of pieces of content created about the topic, ranked by engagement count. You can filter the results by date range. For example, view popular content that was created in the last week.

YouTube Analyzer

Input a topic and get a list of YouTube videos created on the topic, ranked by views.

Facebook Page Analyzer

Connect your Facebook business page to BuzzSumo to access data insights on your organic and paid posts.

Backlink Analyzer

Input a domain or URL (ex, max.com) and see a list of web pages that link to the domain/URL, ranked by engagement count.

After learning about BuzzSumo's features so far, do any seem of interest to you? If so, definitely register for the 30-day free trial:

Try BuzzSumo Free

BuzzSumo Influencers

The BuzzSumo Influencers feature lets you find influencers on four major social networks:

Twitter
TikTok
Facebook
YouTube

You can enter a topic and find influencers who post content about the topic. BuzzSumo's Twitter integration offers more extensive search options. Search for influencers by location, activity levels, and type.

After you perform a search, BuzzSumo will give you a list of high-reach influencers matching your criteria. For each, you can view follower/subscriber counts, plus statistics relevant to the associated platform, ex, total video views for YouTube. Click a link to visit an influencer's page on a network.

BuzzSumo Monitoring

You can set up alerts to let BuzzSumo proactively notify you about certain types of online activity. You have the option to receive these alerts within the platform only, or via email too. You can get a daily digest email with all alerts from a day, or get an email right away whenever an alert is triggered.

Alerts can be set up for online activity related to:

Brands
Competitors
Backlinks
Content
Keywords
Authors/Journalists

BuzzSumo alternatives

BuzzSumo is a unique platform because it offers various distinct tools in one place. Other software systems provide features that cross over with BuzzSumo's, however, they tend to focus on just one area.

For instance, various SEO tools exist for analyzing backlinks, however, the leading SEO platforms don't also offer journalist databases.

As an alternative to BuzzSumo, you can buy software subscriptions for a handful of specialized tools. However, if you'd benefit from more than one BuzzSumo feature, and you like the convenience of a singular login, BuzzSumo may be the better choice, even if the cost is slightly higher.

Certain things BuzzSumo does can be accomplished without software, for free. For example, if you want to find high-reach TikTok influencers for a certain topic, you can perform searches directly on TikTok and manually create a list of accounts that fit your criteria.

Though BuzzSumo isn't free (after the trial at least), it allows you to accomplish many important actions faster. This increase in speed can be well worth the price.

BuzzSumo review

I recommend BuzzSumo for journalists, bloggers, and content creators who don't mind paying a bit of money to save a lot of time. BuzzSumo can drastically cut down the amount of hours you spend researching within your niche, freeing up more time for article writing or video creation.

In my opinion, these are the most effective uses of the platform:

Journalist outreach. Are you a journalist who wants to write for a certain media outlet? Or a blogger hoping to have an outlet link to your content? A good way in the door would be to contact a relevant writer at the outlet. With BuzzSumo, you can learn about journalists, get their email addresses, and send them pitches.

Influencer partnerships. Are you looking to expand the reach of your content via influencer partnerships? BuzzSumo lets you easily find social media users who already have massive, highly engaged audiences within your vertical. With just a click, you can visit these influencers' pages and send them messages about partnering.

Alerts. Instead of spending hours combing the web for updates relevant to your niche, you can set up email alerts, allowing BuzzSumo to proactively notify you of key developments.

Topic choice. If you write about a topic many people have already expressed interest in, your article on that topic has a good chance of generating a lot of engagement. This chance goes up even more if people have expressed interest in the topic recently. BuzzSumo lets you easily identify topics with high engagement counts, and filter your results over short, recent periods, down to just 24 hours.

Additional software tools

If you're interested in BuzzSumo, you may want to use software to streamline other aspects of content creation and promotion. Click the links to check out articles I wrote about software tools that can help you with:

Start the BuzzSumo free trial

Finally, if you haven't yet, be sure to start your free trial.

This post contains affiliate links.

0 Comments