Collins Online Marketing

Background and Challenges

Collins limits its services to one client in any market vertical. Exclusivity. Clients love it, knowing their work won’t be shared with competitors. Content quality is the yardstick by which customers measure success. Success indicators include site visits, follow-on actions, shares and movement down the sales funnel.

CEO Terence Collins identifies the chief objectives in promoting his clients.

“To make my client look great, we need to either create helpful, well-respected content, or be involved in conversations when others do. My clients look to me to be their authoritative voice in those situations.”

“Easier said than done”, he added “Before discovering BuzzSumo, we spent hours creating alerts, identifying trends and hot topics and pegging industry influencers. We used CRMs, Excel, and Evernote to organize content and present it. It was a dog’s breakfast and a constant struggle to stay on top of everything.”  

How BuzzSumo Helps

1 Faster access to what’s happening

Collins says BuzzSumo gives him wider, easier and faster access to information on what the industry, competitors and thought leaders are putting out. This allows him to react quickly.

“I had one case where a well-regarded competitor published a controversial article. A BuzzSumo Alert tagged it in the evening, and we had created a rebuttal and had it on the desk of our client’s Marketing Manager, ready to publish, by 8 am the next morning. Client for life on that one.”

“BuzzSumo’s Alerts allow us to watch competitors and industry leaders. We see what they publish, how well it’s shared and can either hop on a trend, counter it, or ignore it. Instantly. We can now respond in hours rather than days or weeks.”

The company quickly spots competitors’ new posts and see who’s shared them, by using BuzzSumo content alerts.

“Author Alerts shows us not only industry heavyweights but potential partners and collaborators.”

2 Content strategy and planning

Collins says BuzzSumo has cut his content creation and customer editorial calendar preparation time more than half.

“And not just cut the time in half. More important is how we can now quickly create reports in BuzzSumo. We now create an impressive monthly snapshot for our clients, showing them exactly where they stack up – in terms of shares and how closely their content matches important industry issues. And a calendar of upcoming issues we will cover, based on identified trends. All of this thanks to BuzzSumo”.

Collins summarized some of the ways he uses BuzzSumo:

• Assessing best social media for clients. So if we see infographics or videos are under-represented, it may reveal an opportunity
• Identifying heavily mentioned or shared ideas by media type and site
• Creating endless content ideas by simply running subject searches for client interest topics

3 Influencers and outreach

BuzzSumo has allowed Collins to identify complementary partners by watching what others publish.

“I seek out great financial planners to co-market services with my attorneys. BuzzSumo makes it a breeze.”

“Using BuzzSumo’s Guest Post filter, we can pinpoint authors to reach out to, either as guest authors, authority sources, or promotion partners.”

Using BuzzSumo’s Influencer search also allows Collins to find key influencers in any topic or location.