BuzzSumo is our top recommended content marketing tool. It’s the tool PR pros use for campaign intelligence—but is it worth the cost?

That’s what we’re here to find out. Below, you’ll find an in-depth BuzzSumo review of everything BuzzSumo has to offer.

We’ll be exploring each of its main features and what you can do with them, sharing what we think are its biggest pros and cons, explaining the different pricing options, and more.

Let’s jump into it!

What is BuzzSumo?

BuzzSumo is a content marketing platform built to provide all the tools content marketers and SEO professionals need in one place.

You can use it to: 

• Discover and brainstorm new topic ideas
• Conduct in-depth content analysis,
• Carry out competitor analysis,
• Sharpen your influencer marketing strategy
• Find new backlink opportunities
• Identify trends
• Monitor your brand mentions
• Plus a whole lot more.

The data-driven insights you draw from BuzzSumo can help you to create top-tier content that ranks higher in the SERPs and generates more engagements on social media.

One of the things that make BuzzSumo stand out from its competitors is the size of its database. 

There are over 8 billion articles, 3 million influencers, and 300 trillion social engagements in its index, with historical data spanning 5 years. Their search app puts all that data at your fingertips.

Summary

Price: 4/5

Very affordable entry-level plan, but advanced features come at a steep price.

Accuracy: 5/5

Data and insights across all tools are highly accurate and reliable.

Features: 5/5

Simply unmatched in terms of breadth and depth of capabilities. The complete content intelligence solution.

BuzzSumo Pros and Cons

Pros

• Robust content discovery - Tools like Trending, Topics, and Questions provide endless inspiration.
• In-depth competitive analysis - Reverse engineer what works for leading competitors.
• Ideal for content marketing and PR - Complete toolkit from ideation to outreach.
• Analyze all content types - Web, social media, video, etc. Go beyond just blogs.
• Deep backlink insights - Compile and analyze backlink profiles.

Cons

• Limited social media coverage - Lacks some platforms like Instagram or TikTok.
• Backlink metrics not comprehensive - Missing key authority/trust metrics.
• Steep learning curve - Can take time to master advanced features.

Key Feature Overview

BuzzSumo provides a robust set of features accessible from the top navigation bar:

• Discover - Content research and idea generation
• Content - In-depth content analysis tools
• Influencers - Influencer identification capabilities
• Monitoring - Alerts for brand mentions
• Projects - Saved data and assets

Let's explore the key capabilities within each section:

Discover - Brainstorming and Planning

The Discover section contains ideation features like:

Trending Content Discovery

See real-time viral content across keywords and topics. Useful for spotting emerging trends and high-performance topics.

• View engagement data like trending score and social shares
• Save trending content to Projects for later use
• Filter by date range, network, country, keywords
• Browse curated news and interest topic feeds

This data powers creating cutting-edge content capitalizing on rising trends before the competition.

Additional Discover Features

• Keywords - Volume and difficulty data for keyword research
• Questions - Popular and high-potential questions to answer
• Headline Analyzer - Optimize headlines for engagement
• Links - Find link-worthy content for outreach

We'll explore more of these essential ideation tools next.

Keyword Research

The Keywords tool provides robust keyword research capabilities:

• Volume, difficulty, and trend data
• Related keywords for expansion
• Number of existing articles optimizing keywords
• SERP analysis showing top-ranked domains
• Rank tracking and estimated traffic for a domain

While similar to other tools, BuzzSumo's data integrates with content performance analytics for superior insights. This powers creating highly optimized, differentiating content.

Content Ideas Generator

This feature provides tailored ideas and strategy based on analyzing existing top content:

• Research high-potential topics with related keywords, questions, and trends
• Identify the optimal format, length, and distribution strategy through data-driven suggestions
• Review case studies of top-performing content to model

Rather than generic ideas, the Content Ideas Generator offers data-backed recommendations for creating standout content. It takes the guesswork out of topic selection and ideation.

Additional Discover Capabilities

We've only scratched the surface of BuzzSumo's expansive content planning and ideation toolkit. More essential features include:

• Headline Analyzer - A/B test and optimize headlines
• Questions - Viral questions and knowledge gaps to answer
• Links - Find link-worthy content for outreach

BuzzSumo consolidates all the discovery, research, and planning tools needed for high-performance content campaigns in one unified platform.

Topic Discovery

The Topics tool generates endless related subtopics and keywords around any seed term through its interactive word cloud.

More popular and highly searched subtopics appear larger. Click any topic to view:

• Related keywords and questions
• Existing high-performance content examples
• Discussion and interest levels over time

This enables digging deeper into any niche to identify promising, untapped angles. You can swiftly brainstorm hundreds of keywords and subtopics to create differentiated content around.

Questions Discovery

The Questions feature reveals common questions people are asking about a keyword across forums and communities like Reddit and Quora.

This provides invaluable insights into:

• Knowledge gaps and pain points to address through content
• FAQ questions to answer on your site
• Ways to refine content to match search intent

Grouping questions by interrogative words makes sorting through volumes of data easy. Transform your content strategy by aligning to actual user questions.

Content Analyzer

This tool lets you research the highest-performing content related to any keyword. Key insights include:

• Total social engagements, links, and backlinks
• Evergreen score showing longevity
• Conversion rate for gated content
• Sort and filter to analyze different types of content

The detailed analysis report provides even more data to reverse engineer what works and create optimized content that stands out.

Analyzing Facebook and YouTube Performance

Let's explore BuzzSumo's social media analytics, starting with:

Facebook Page Analyzer

Enter any Facebook page to view performance insights like:

• Posts ranked by likes, comments, shares, reactions
• Average engagement rates benchmarked
• Trends and optimal posting times based on historical data

These insights help create high-impact Facebook content tailored to your audience. Optimize posting cadence for maximum reach.

YouTube Analyzer

For video marketers, the YouTube Analyzer identifies top videos by:

• Engagement metrics like likes, comments, and views
• Backlinks, embeds, and top referrers
• Channel data for creators

Review high-performing video examples to model length, topics, promotion tactics, and more.

Backlinks

This feature enables comprehensive backlink analysis and tracking:

• Compile a list of all pages linking to a target URL
• Sort by engagement metrics to gauge link quality
• Export CSV for outreach and disavow file generation
• Monitor new backlinks over time

While lacking some authority metrics, these link building insights are invaluable.

Influencer Search

Discover influencers in your niche across key platforms:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Authors/publications

Vet potential partners by followers, content topics, engagement levels, and more. Streamline partnerships that expand content reach.

Alerts

Proactive alerts notify you of brand, keyword, or competitor mentions across the web. Notification options include:

• Email summaries with coverage reports
• Real-time Slack integration
• Charts visualizing volume and sentiment trends

This enables responding quickly to emerging opportunities, news, or PR issues.

Projects

Projects let you bookmark content, influencers, questions, and more for organization. Seamlessly save assets from any tool to reference later.

Consolidate research and create content briefs to streamline collaboration. Projects keep all your data centralized for easy access.

BuzzSumo equips you with all the monitoring, management, and analytics capabilities essential for dominating in the digital space.

BuzzSumo Pricing

BuzzSumo offers several pricing tiers:

• Basic - $119+/month with limited features
• Content Creation - $249+/month unlocks ideation tools
• PR & Comms - $249+/month adds monitoring capabilities
• Suite - $399+/month for all features except early access
• Enterprise - $999+/month for unlimited searches

A free 30-day trial is available to test it out.

Conclusion and Ratings

BuzzSumo definitely lives up to its reputation as the top content marketing platform. The extensive feature set equips you to thoroughly analyze competitors, brainstorm differentiated ideas, identify influencers, and monitor brand mentions.

Everything is seamlessly integrated with a clean, intuitive interface suitable for beginners and power users alike. It's easy to see why BuzzSumo is a favorite of content marketers and PR professionals.