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How to Find Great Content (BuzzSumo tutorial)

we live in a world where there is new content and new articles being published by the thousands each and every minute

and that can make it very difficult

as a consumer

as someone who is wanting to stay on top of a particular topic

or to browse even one of their favorite websites

to find the articles

to find the postings that are most either relevant to them

or worth their time

I mean think about it

the average blog post is somewhere in the range of 500 to a thousand words

it's going to take you a couple of minutes for you to sit through and read it

and you're hoping

you're hoping when you start that particular article that it is worth your time

well today I want to share with you a website that I find myself using more and more frequently to help me do just that

help me to find articles

help me to find content that is worth my time

and to see what other people are sharing

to see what other people are viewing as well

now the website is called BuzzSumo

and you can find it at buzzsumo.com

and let me just walk you through what BuzzSumo does

and how I use it to find content that is most relevant to me

and at the very least help me find content that other people are sharing

so all you need to do to use BuzzSumo is to use this search bar here

and you can search either by topic

you can search by keyword

now keywords are a little limited

they only limit you to about two keywords

if you start entering in more than two keywords you'll find that your results are not nearly as good

or you can decide to search by a particular domain

so let's type in productivity shall we

and let's see what it brings back

I'm going to search for productivity

and I haven't changed any of my filters here on the left-hand side

so by default it's going to bring me back all of the articles

all the content from the past year

but you

it's going to sort it by the number of total shares

so what BuzzSumo is doing

it is looking at all of the shares on the five major social media platforms

we've got Facebook

we've got LinkedIn

we've got Twitter

Pinterest

and Google+

and by default it is going to display these results by the total number of shares

right

because that might vary by the type of content that you're looking at

some may have many more Facebook shares while others may have many more LinkedIn shares

you can see here in these first two results

this first article from ENCOM

many many more Facebook engagements

however this second article from the same domain is almost equal between Facebook shares and LinkedIn shares

so it's taking a look at this topic that I've put in here

productivity

and it's bringing back all of the articles which have been published within the past year

and sorting them by total number of shares

now maybe I want something a little more up-to-date or a little more current than just the past year

well I can use any of these preset filters here

maybe I just want to look at the past month

I hit that radio button

and now it has adjusted my filter here

now I can see articles that are just specific to the past month

now I am NOT a pro user of BuzzSumo

so they will limit you to about 10 articles when you are searching by domain

but I find that is just enough for me to look through the content which it is listed here

and find at least a handful of articles that are worth my time

my theory being this

that if thousands upon thousands of people are sharing this content

chances are it's worth my time

or at least worth browsing the headline

or at least the opening paragraph

I mean if a piece of content is not being shared in any way shape or form

chances are it's probably not worth your time either

so let's see how it works if we choose to enter in a domain name

I like to visit Lifehacker once in a while

and lifehacker.com produces an awful lot of content in a single day

I certainly don't have enough time to browse through all of their content

so often I will come to BuzzSumo

I'll type in lifehacker.com

and maybe I'll select the past week radio button

and now I can see what are the most popular articles

what are the most popular pieces of content from lifehacker.com during that past week

now I don't have to browse through literally hundreds of different posts

hundreds of different articles that Lifehacker produces on a regular basis

I can just see a short summary

sort of a best-of

now they may not in fact be the very best articles

but they are certainly being shared a lot

and that's a hint that at least other people are finding it interesting

or other people are wanting to share it with others

so chances are I might find a few things in here that I'll want to read

that I'll want to consume as well

now of course you can filter in a few other ways beyond just a time frame

beyond just the filter by date

down below we have a few other options

we have an in-depth articles only

not exactly sure if this is restricting things to

journals

things that are recognized

like actual published journals

but you can choose an option there

you can filter by language

you can filter by country

you can also filter out certain domains

you can include only certain domains or exclude certain domains

and then at the very end you can even go granular in terms of the type of content that the results will bring back

articles

infographics

you can include videos

or you could exclude videos if you like as well

and of course you can always change the default order

if you don't want to look by total shares

you can always look by the number of Facebook shares for example

and change which way that the results are listed

but I find BuzzSumo can be a very very helpful tool to see what is trending

see what you may have missed in the past

I'll give you one other example which I find is very very helpful

sometimes I'll go out a bit further

let's let's change this filter to the past six months

the reason I choose this is that once in a while

and perhaps more frequently than we think

there may be an article or there may be a piece of content from your favorite website

or at least a favorite topic or subject of yours

that was not very popular in the first 24 hours

or in the first week that it was published

but if it was a quality piece of writing

if it was a very helpful piece of content

chances are that gained more and more shares over time

so once in a while I will go back to 6 months or even the past year

on a favorite topic or maybe a favorite website

a favorite domain of mine

so I can review and look back at that content

so I would encourage you to check out BuzzSumo

the free version will allow you to retrieve the top 5 pieces of content from any particular domain

and the top 10 pieces of content from any keyword or subject

and that includes all of the filtering that you can include here on the left-hand side

check out buzzsumo.com and see what is interesting to you

see what other people are sharing when it comes to topics that you are most interested in

I'd love to hear your feedback

and if you have used BuzzSumo yourself

especially if you're a content creator

BuzzSumo can be an excellent tool to see what else is trending amongst your competitors

against other people who are talking about the same things that you are

I'd love to hear your comments in the section below

and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up

and be sure to subscribe to the Simpletivity channel

remember being productive does not need to be difficult

in fact it's very simple

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