In the past, I’ve written about InkyBee, another tool to build up a media list for a product launch or crowdfunding campaign.
I recently stumbled across a tool called BuzzSumo, and after using it for a while, have been recommending it to all my consulting clients. I’d like to think of Buzzsumo as a light-weight version of Inkybee that is also FREE (for the moment). Check out my in-depth review of the tool below.
Using BuzzSumo, you can input keywords, phrases, or terms, and discover content that is going viral on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. You can then use that information to create a media list of the blogs and news sites that are writing about those key phrases.
To give you an example, I’ve inputted the term “3d printing” and included a screenshot below of what the tool came up with.
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On the left, you can filter the results by content type (infographic, article, guest post, interview, etc) and date (past 24 hours, week, month, etc).
On the right, you can see how many shares each piece of content received and also filter the content by number of shares on a particular network or total overall shares.
This information is amazing if you’re trying to create a media list of blogs or news sites to approach. You can see which ones have the biggest clout in niche industries and also discover ones that might not have been on your radar.
Finally, you can export this entire list to CSV and it is automatically segmented by the header titles!
What’s even more helpful is that you can click on “View Shares” for a particular PR hit and get a list of all the people on a particular network that shared that link. You can then follow people, as I described in my previous post to build up your social media profile. The screenshot below shows you what the “View Shares” functionality looks like.
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With the click of a button, you can follow people who tweeted a particular link or view every other link they’ve shared on a social network. I’ll dive more into the data on this page in the next section.
Finding Influencers in a Niche
By clicking on the “influencers” tab, you can also input keywords and then discover influencers in a particular industry. I’ve put in the term “3d printing” again for the search.
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On the lefthand side, you can filter influencers by type (blogger, influencer, company, journalist, etc). On the right, you can filter the influencers (and their websites) by average number of retweets, their reply ratio, retweet ratio, and the page/domain authority for their website.
Domain authority is basically a prediction for how well a website will show up in search engine rankings. The higher the better.
You can use this information to not only decide which websites/blogs are worth getting featured on for a niche, but also which users are most likely to retweet you if you tweet at them.
Remember, you can export all of this information to CSV or an excel doc with the click of a button and within seconds, have a media list for your product launch or crowdfunding campaign.
Conclusion
While BuzzSumo an amazing tool, I think it should definitely be combined with other research methods to discover blogs, news sites, and social media influencers in your niche.
Overall, I think BuzzSumo is a great light-weight tool that could be paired well with a more comprehensive PR/Marketing software CRM like InkyBee. It’s also free, though I’m not sure how long it will remain that way, so use it while you can!
I’d love to hear what you think of BuzzSumo via a comment below! Will you try it out for your campaign?
