Millions of blogs, video’s and infographics are published on the internet every day. So if you want to create your own content, it has to stand out. How do you make sure your stuff gets noticed when there is so much buzz?
Your content has to be valuable to be a credible and trustworthy source in your niche. This type of content generates more shares, likes and traffic. In this blog I’ll share two great tools that can help you to do just that; Buzzsumo and Buzzstream. These are useful tools on their own but they provide even more value when you combine them.
Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko, knows how to generate the traffic you want. He shares the following 3 steps to get quality links and targeted traffic:
- Find link worthy content in your niche;
- Improve existing content;
- Reach out to the right people.
1. How to find link worthy content in your niche
Once you’ve decided on the topic you want to write about, the next step is to do some research to find link worthy content. If you want to find valuable data to back your idea, first find out what is already created about this topic. That’s where Buzzsumo comes in, what I call ‘Google for content marketing’.
Then click on the Content Research button. Type the keywords, for example ‘content’, ‘marketing’ and ‘trends’ in the search bar. To narrow your search results filter by date, content type and/or domain. Buzzsumo will show you a list of your search results including social media shares and the total shares.
Tip 1: I selected a shorter period (6 months) for my search because there’s a lot of content available for my topic ‘content marketing trends’. You can select a longer search period for topics when less content is available.
You can also select a specific social media platform. If you, for example, want to know if the content you want to create will be successful on Pinterest, you can search in Buzzsumo for ‘Pinterest shares’. Buzzsumo shows you a list of content that’s been shared (the most) on Pinterest.
When you look for top-content it’s important to look for the amount of shares and links. The higher the number of shares and links the better, because it’s valuable and interesting content that you can use in your own blog post, infographic etc.
Tip 2: When you are hesitant about choosing a blog post type, look at the headlines. What scores best and do the headlines have something in common?
Trending feature
Your blog generates more traffic when it links to current topics. For this, Buzzsumo has a great trending feature. This feature can help you to find top-content in your niche.
As you can see provides Buzzsumo the latest trending topics. You can choose an overall overview or you can select a topic. When you want to write a blog post about marketing, click ‘marketing’. Buzzsumo shows you the trending topics in the marketing branch from the last 24 hours. It’s also possible to select a different timeframe, such as 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours.
When you click on ‘most shared’ you’ll see what trending topics are most shared between the last 2 and 24 hours.
I personally love this feature because Buzzsumo provides me engaging content for my audience. It helps to join the conversation that’s going on, because if you know what content and stories matter to your audience, you can create more engaging content and gain more credibility.
1. Identify top-content
In the webinar ‘3 content formats to lift your traffic’ Steve Rayson, director of Buzzsumo, mentions, besides the focus on the amount of shares and likes, a couple other things you can look for in identifying top-content. He says it’s important to look for:
- The type of post;
There are different kinds of blog post you can use. Data from Buzzsumo shows that ‘How to’ posts, (Picture) List Posts and Quizzes score best, because they get the most shares and likes. You can also choose a ‘Why’ post, but this kind of blog post scores (a bit) less.
- The number of images that are used in a blog post;
Images are important, because people tend to visualize things. Using images in your blog post is preferred because it increases a higher readability. It’s best to use 1 image for every 75 to 100 words. That’s why infographics are also popular.
- Practical information in a post.
This means that the content you create is shareable and helpful to others. People are willing to share content when they are emotional touched by it, or when they want to inform other people, because they think its valuable information.
2. Improve existing content
Now you’ve done your research, you can start evaluating the content you’ve selected. It’s important that you improve the content you’ve found. Why should people otherwise read your blog when they can read the original blog post from someone else instead? So, you have to add value to the existing content. There are a couple of ways you can do this.
- Make it longer
Because then it is easier to add more items/links and you can create something valuable that you can add to the conversation that’s out there.
- Update it
Take a blog that’s written some time ago. Chances are that you find ‘outdated’ information. Spice it up by writing a (similar) post but with new information and insights.
- Be thorough
When you write a blog post, it’s important that you write an in- depth article, because in that way you add more value to your content. Thus, before you start writing, use Buzzsumo for a thorough topic search.
3. Reach out to the right people
Once you’re done writing you want to share it with your audience, so they will read the blog you put all your effort and time in. You can use your own social media channels to promote your content. But if you want to reach a bigger audience, you can connect with influencers in your niche. Most of the time, these are people who:
- Run a website in your niche.
- Are interested in your topic.
- Have already linked to an article on that topic.
A great tool that can help you find and connect with influencers is Buzzstream. I use it to spread and promote my content online for efficient outreach. ‘It’s my personal content marketing database and it makes the outreach process fast and easy.
You can use Buzzstream for:
- Digital PR;
- Link building;
- Content Promotion.
I use it for content promotion. After logging in you can collect relevant website data, data about people and data about your activities.
First, make sure to install Buzzmarker for Buzzstream, because it bookmarks important links, blogs, news, tweets and influencers.
Before you can use the Buzzmarker, you must log in to Buzzstream and Buzzsumo, at the same time. If you only log in to Buzzstream the ‘you have to be logged in’ message shows up and the Buzzmarker won’t work.
Tip 3: Make sure you install Buzzmarker in Chrome or Mozilla for the best results. Internet Explorer does not work with the Buzzmarker.
After installation, you’ll see the above icon in the right corner of your internet browser toolbar.
Click on the Buzzmarker, the Buzzmarker widget opens and reviews the website for interesting data, such as articles, authors and contact info.
But there’s more!
With the Buzzmarker you can also add(prospective) Media Outlets.
When you click ‘Save to Buzzstream’ it adds the page to the website list in Buzzstream.
One way to promote content is to reach out to influencers in your niche that shared similar content in the past. If you want them to share your content you can start by sharing their content in your own blog post by using links and/or mentions. You may ask yourself: ‘Who are the influencers in my niche and how do I find them?’
If you need help with your influencer outreach you can use Buzzsumo’s influencers search option, by clicking the influencer button.
For example, search for ‘marketing’. Now Buzzsumo provides a list of all the influencers in your niche.
To select ‘top influencers’ Buzzsumo’s Steve Rayson explains that it’s important to look at the ‘retweet ratio’and the ‘reply ratio’. When both have a high ratio, it indicates that people are talking a lot about this content by retweeting/sharing it and commenting/talking about it.
Tip 4: A retweet ratio from 4% or higher means someone is a valuable influencer. Also look for an engaged audience at the reply ratio. The higher the reply ratio, the more engaged the audience is.
Based on that information I can select influencers in content marketing. But there is more you can look for. Such as:
- Do they create content themselves? If yes, what kind of content do they create?
- Where/how often do they publish?
- Where does their content get shared?
The ‘View Links Shared’ button provides all the above info.
All this data can help to decide whether this person is a valuable and interesting influencer, because when you know what kind of content he/she creates or is interested in, it makes it easier for you to create similar content or you can use their Twitter name or URL in your blog post etc.
Once you have found influencers, you want to save their data somewhere, so that you can reach out to them after you finished your content creation process. That’s where Buzzstream comes in. In Buzzstream you can add the influencer name, e-mail, social media et cetera in the ‘People section’, through Add people.
When it’s time to promote your content you use the influencer outreach function in Buzzstream. With this option you’re able to create e-mail templates that you can send out to all the Influencers you’ve found through Buzzsumo and saved to Buzzstream. A great advantage of the influencer outreach in Buzzstream is that you can save and edit e-mail templates at any time you want. So you don’t have to write them from scratch, over and over again.
The fact that you can save influencers and e-mail templates to Buzzstream saves you a lot of time!
In this blog I shared two great tools to create and spread valuable content.
How Buzzsumo can help you in the preparation and orientation process and Buzzstream in the outreach process.
I think these are valuable tools because it has helped me a lot in the whole content creation and distribution process and I hope it will help you too! I’ve noticed that the combination of the two, in the content creation and distribution process works best for me. What do you think? Are you already familiar with these tools? What’s your experience? I’m curious for your thoughts!