What’s this about BuzzSumo and content marketing? Buzz what?
If you are anything like me, the sheer scope of digital content marketing is difficult to properly contrive. After all, elements anywhere and everywhere from SEO and social media marketing to email campaigns and proper data gathering and utilization all have to do with content marketing. Therefore, it’s no wonder it’s easier to list what is confusing about content marketing than define what makes sense.
Suffice it to say, unless you happen to have an advanced degree in content marketing within the digital arena (which I don’t think exists–yet) and/or the combined brain power of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, you could use some guidance when it comes to mastering the art of content marketing in the digital sphere. Thankfully, the following is a fairly simple-to-absorb look at one supremely useful tool in the MarTech arena: BuzzSumo.
Read on to learn more about this helpful tool and why you should be using it now to take your content marketing strategy up a notch.
What is BuzzSumo?
According to an article on iMPACT, which you can read for yourself here, BuzzSumo is a vital tool for the modern-day marketer that will in essence take your content marketing strategy from “good” to “great.” Corny, I know, but hey, it’s true. BuzzSumo accomplishes this modern day feat by helping cut through the clutter within the content arena. This exert from the article explains it better than I can:
“For the modern-day marketer, it’s essential that we understand just how we can strategically and effectively push our content through all the clutter and in front of our target audience.”
It goes on to explain it isn’t always easy to recognize the right path through the forest of content marketing, even when it’s directly in front of our face. It would be great if we had some sort of tool to help us do so, wouldn’t it? Say, a compass of sorts for the digital content arena that we could tap into via Captain Jack Sparrow and check our bearings periodically. Only instead of guiding the Black Pearl, we could direct our content strategy.
Well, thankfully, we do have such a tool at our disposable, which you may have guessed by now is called BuzzSumo.
What BuzzSumo Won’t Do
BuzzSumo isn’t magic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do all the work for you and leave you to venture about the world on great adventures. If you find a tool that will, please share it with me!
What BuzzSumo Will Do
BuzzSumo will help you work smarter. It will give you information that will help you determine if your current content strategy is working, if it’s not working so well, and what influencers are currently involved.
So, What is BuzzSumo Again?
You might be saying, “Wait didn’t you say this is an easy-to-absorb article on BuzzSumo, I still don’t know what it does.” Okay, my apologies. BuzzSumo, put most simply, is a tool that helps you ensure you are creating content that resonates with your audience. You know, it’s not boring to them. The following is a breakdown of just how it accomplishes this:
Why You Should be Using BuzzSumo Now: What BuzzSumo Does
- It Tells You What is Shared on Social Media: With this tool, you can look back anywhere from a few days or weeks in time to months ago. You will instantly learn what topics have been shared on the most visited social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. There is no need to guess, you will KNOW. You simply search using a keyword, and instantly you are given a list of popular topics shared on social media platforms pertaining to that word.
- It Helps You Find Influencers Who Will Share Your Message: Writing great content, on-topic is wonderful, but still not enough for success. In order to truly succeed in content marketing, you have to get your phenomenal content in front of enough eyeballs to ensure it is shared and spread around. This happens when influencers are involved. BuzzSumo gives you access to the influencers who share any given topic. Through this knowledge, you can reach out to them, asking them to link to your content, which will instantly give it validity, ask them to publish it for you on their blog, or ask them to give a quote you can use within your content.
- It Helps You Properly Analyze Data: This is where the nerd mind of Bill Gates seamlessly melds with the out-of-the box thinking of Steve Jobs, the data. BuzzSumo helps you analyze content data, allowing you to track whether or not you are meeting marketing objectives. These data metrics will also help you determine what content is performing well and what isn’t, so you know what changes you need to make.
- It Helps You Pick Engaging Topics: BuzzSumo also gives you the ability to track a topic you want to write about. By looking at current topics, you can see what people are talking about. You might find they have been talking about the topic you want to cover and it’s a great idea to get started on the subject. However, you might notice it is slow, you know cricket sounds around the topic. If this is the case, you can decide if you want to chance running the piece anyway and hope for the best or change your topic to one that’s got a little more action at the moment.
Content marketing is an essential element of any well developed content marketing strategy. Admittedly, there are many ways to improve this area of your business. However, one you should not be too quick to dismiss is BuzzSumo for all the reasons listed above and many more.
Brandie P‘s career as a freelance writer spans several years and encompasses an abundance of niche specialties. Before beginning her writing career, she was an office manager and worked in the medical field. Her experience in these two fields have come in handy when writing topics pertaining to these fields.
