Social Listening is now a crucial asset for any company to grow in a competitive market.
You need to be present where your customers are. You must stay close to the ground and engage quickly with users, to build a strong online reputation.
But it can quickly become time consuming to monitor mentions of your brand on all the platforms that are now available, from social media to online communities, and check every source.
You need a tool that can handle all the monitoring for you, and keep you updated on new conversations as they happen. A tool to lift that weight for you, so that you can focus on engaging with your customers and prospects.
To help you choose the right tool, we regularly test and benchmark the different tools available.
Today, we will analyze buska as the Best social listening alternative to BuzzSumo  :

buska.io vs BuzzSumo

So let’s dive in and see how these tools can help you :

How to Signup ?

• buska offers a 7-day trial with a very simple and quick onboarding (under 2 minutes).
  
  When you sign up, you are asked to type the first keyword you want to monitor.
  And you get instant access to the latest mentions.
  The UI is intuitive and there is no need for detailed tutorials or guided onboarding

• BuzzSumo offers a 30-day trial to test its services.
  Signup is similar with email verification link and a few questions to segment users.
  No keyword to input upon signup.
  Once sign up is done, user arrives on the dashboard. It appears crowded. There is no onboarding tour and no guidance to know where to access the social listening feature.

Conclusion :

Both tools offer a quick signup. Buska is easier to setup. On Buzzsumo, you are thrown into the Dashboard with no guidance. The dashboard is rather crowded, and you need to figure out your way to the different features. 
– if you want a very simple onboarding and quick access to mentions of your brand, buska is the best social listening alternative to Buzzsumo’s onboarding experience.
– if you like scavenger hunts, you can opt for Buzzsumo. 😉

What sources are monitored

The tools both monitor different platforms.

🔍 With buska , you get access to :

• Linkedin

  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Youtube,

  • TikTok

  • Pinterest

  • Instagram

  • Reddit

  • Quora

  • Medium

  • Google Search

  • Google News

  • File Search (Ultimate plan)

    • IndieHackers
      and more…

• Buzzsumo only monitors Websites, Blog posts, Media Websites, through their Monitoring Tool.
  In another Feature of its Discover Tool, you can also track a keyword through the questions asked about your brand online in forums and Quora. But you cannot get access to all those results at once.

How to get notified

Both tools let you setup notifications to be alerted when a new mention of you keywords pops up online.

buska allows you to easily setup notifications via :

• email

  • browser

  • Slack

  • Discord

  • Whatsapp (soon)

Just turn toggles on and connect your accounts, and you are set.
You’ll receive alerts (weekly, daily, instant – depending on your plan) when it finds new mentions.

BuzzSumo allows you to receive reports and alerts for new notifications :

• via Email

• via Slack

Conclusion :

buska offers more options and « plug’N’play » solutions for notifications.
You can receive alerts on many different communication channels.
BuzzSumo lets you setup email notifications and an option to receive alerts on Slack. 

What other features they offer :

Sentiment Analysis :
Only buska provides Sentiment Analysis for the mentions tracked. This lets you understand at a glance how the audience feels about your brand.

Analytics :
Both tools give you access to visual stats of key Metrics
Buska offers more insights and visual charts of the social listening activity.
BuzzSumo only shows one chart of the number of mentions. But it does allow export of the chart as png/pdf.  

Content Research

BuzzSumo is more of a Content/SEO Research tool.
The main features let you generate content ideas, list influencers, identify keywords and backlinks.

Document Search :
Buska lets you search for mentions of your brand or keywords in any publicly shared document.
It can be a pdf Report or Study, a Competition Analysis table, a Top list image where your brand is quoted….

BuzzSumo features

How social listening looks

The tools show very different designs :

🔍 buska opted for a sleak minimalist design, focused on showing the mentions of the brand.
– The Dashboard shows you the Key metrics and latest mentions.
– The Feed shows all the mentions you have. You can filter by source, language, or sentiment.

Buska also sends designed emails when there are new notifications of mentions of the brand.

BuzzSumo’s design for social listening is much more « traditional » and flat.
It displays only a list of mentions with no filtering option.
Design focuses more on the number of shares of the mention on different platforms than on the mentions themselves

How much does it cost ?

🔍 buska targets startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses and aims for a self serve approach. It offers 3 plans :

• Free Trial – 7 days to test all the features of the Pro Plan.

• Pro Plan – with 3 keywords. It adds Facebook, Tiktok as sources, and gives more notification options and Sentiment analysis

• Ultimate Plan – with 10 Keyword, adding File Search, Team Management and more features.

The prices are aligned with the budget and needs of the target audience : from the Solo Founder to the fast growing Scale up and Growth teams.

BuzzSumo prices much more expensively and clearly targeted at Enterprise clients :

The lowest tier plan « Content Creation » plan starts at $199 / month.
it includes 1 user only and 2 keywords. 
In comparison, buska’s pro plan allows for 3 users and 3 keywords.

buska’s Pro Plan is 20 times less expensive than buzzsumo with more social listening capabilities.

Buzzsumo’s plans go up to $999 / month for the Enterprise pan.
For $499/month, the « Suite » Plan Social Listening features give you access to 10 keywords and 10 users, like buska’s Ultimate plan. But it is 5X the price of buska’s plan.

Which tool to choose ?

We have seen that 🔍 buska appears to be the best social listening alternative to BuzzSumo in 2024 .
The tools have different approaches and target different audiences:

buska is a dedicated Social Listening tool, tailored for SMBs and Scale-ups.
It tracks numerous resources, and offers dedicated social listening features like sentiment analysis and real time notifications.

BuzzSumo is a Content Research/SEO tool, with many Content search and creation tools, that includes an Online Monitoring feature. It doesn’t track mentions on Social Media and is limited to online articles.  Its pricing makes it more suited for midcaps and Enterprise companies.

If you are looking for a powerful social listening tool for your company and get the best money to value tool, buska is clearly the way to go.

if you are looking for a Content research /SEO tool with a budget over $200 / month, and don’t really care for social listening, then BuzzSumo is a good option.
If you want to do Content research and also track the effects of your actions online, then would suggest to use buska in addition to buzzsumo, for comprehensive social listening. 

If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out our Blog for more insights on Social Listening.