Social Animal
Starts at $49 a month
Pros
- Many useful filtering options
- Keywords and domain comparison
- Fantastic support team
- Much cheaper than BuzzSumo
Cons
- No backlink analysis
- Less number of results for any keyword search compared to BuzzSumo
- Only one user in the starter plan
Content Marketing is one of the most effective ways of generating a consistent flow of free traffic to build your business online.
However, it is not an easy task to come up with new content ideas specific to your niche that your audience will find interesting.
There are some free tools like "Answer the public" and you can look for the most widely asked questions in forums like Quora, Reddit, etc.
However, if you need a more detailed analysis of the content that is doing well in your niche and why they are doing well that can be viewed in a single dashboard, you will need a more robust tool that is specifically designed for this purpose.
BuzzSumo is the market leader and easily the best tool in the market for this currently.
Social Animal is a similar tool that promises to be better than BuzzSumo. Is it really better or as good as BuzzSumo?
Let's find out in this review.
Dashboard & user interface
During the sign-up and onboarding, it is asked to choose the purpose of using the tool as you can be provided with the right suggestions.
It is also asked to choose a few default keywords and competitors' names to get up and running.
Once you have signed up, the main dashboard shows the list of trending articles and mentions for the main keywords you have selected during the initial onboarding.
It is possible to add up to 10 keywords here. It is a neat view to see the updated results of all your important keywords once you sign in.
Overall, the onboarding process is well thought out and the dashboard is intuitive and easy to navigate even for beginners.
Articles and Insights
The next section is articles where you can find the top-performing articles for any keyword you search for.
Just type any topic you want to see the trending content on. There are many ranges of sorting based on the number of social media engagements including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, etc.
Also, results can be filtered based on a lot of filters like the time period, type of content, content within the article body, articles published in a specific domain or by a specific author, a specific domain extension, number of words in the article, language, overall sentiment in the article, etc.
There is a tool called Headline Analyser which runs a short analysis on the headline of an article and gives some insights. However, I found it not so useful and it was giving contradicting results on the length of the headline in some cases.
Influencers
Influencers can be searched for any keyword based on the Twitter profile, web searches, and the best authors.
Surprising to see YouTube influencers search absent.
Pricing
There are three plans ranging from $49 a month to $499 a month. The starting plan comes with only one user and hence good for individual bloggers.
If you are a content marketing team, the agency plan is essential as it allows for up to 5 users.
All the plans come with an unlimited number of searches and insights.
Support
The support team is fantastic. Live chat support is available both on the main website and also within the app dashboard.
The response times were super quick and I got the answers immediately whenever I posted a query or a doubt. Very impressive.
However, there is a lack of help documentation covering all the features and details of how to use each feature.
How does it compare to BuzzSumo?
The most important factor before someone chooses to use Social Animal is how well it stacks up against BuzzSumo. There are a few things it does better and a few it lacks behind.
Pros
- Deep search - In addition to search for your target keywords in the headline Social Animal can also search the body of the article for matching content.
- Domain and keyword comparison - For the same keyword, you can compare two different domains and see insights on why one performs better than the other.
- Pricing - The base plan is only $49 a month, while BuzzSumo's starting plan comes at $99 a month.
Cons
- Less number of search results - Almost every time, Social Animal gave a lesser number of results for any keyword query for a specific duration.
- No backlink analysis - BuzzSumo's backlink analysis feature is really useful for SEO along with content research. With Social Animal, you have to invest in a separate SEO tool like Ahrefs or SemRush for backlink analysis.
- No YouTube influencers - BuzzSumo makes it really easy to find influencers on YouTube, while Social Animal mainly targets Twitter and Facebook.
Conclusion
To conclude, is it a good tool to consider buying?
Well, although it is still not up to the level of BuzzSumo in terms of functionality, there are some nice little features that show the real potential of the tool.
Try Social Animal & start your content research now
Coupled with the fantastic support team, it is worth considering if you do not mind the cons and need a more affordable alternative to BuzzSumo.