In the next month, we’ve got some major changes coming to BuzzStream that are going to seriously improve the product. After numerous iterations, user studies, and feedback from teams using it hands-on, I can safely say this is one of the biggest updates to the product we’ve ever made.
Of course, change means…change. The product will have a new look, and in many cases a brand new feel. Although we’re confident that this update is going to make life much easier, we also know that teams are going to have to get accustomed with the new UI and workflow capabilities we’re building into the update. So, we want to take this opportunity to let you know what’s coming so you know exactly what to expect!
New BuzzStream Navigation [Available to All Customers]
For the past several months, users have been testing our new BuzzStream navigation and UI in it’s beta version, and we are now ready for general release. We covered all of the changes in the new UI in this blog post, and have also given everyone the chance to try it out. If you haven’t yet had a chance to try it, just follow the instructions in the above blog post to enable it for yourself!
In the next month we will be ending the beta and moving the new UI to general release.
So what does this mean for you?
We will transition your account to the new navigation automatically, so there’s no action you’ll need to take. Also, if for whatever reason you don’t enjoy it, you will be able to switch back to the classic interface. However, the new features that we’re introducing with this release will only be available in the new interface, as will features that we add in the future.
What are those features, you might ask? I’d be happy to show you!
Research Lists [Available to All Customers]
Research lists combine some of our most powerful prospecting and research tools with new functionality for managing and vetting prospects.
Research lists give you a place to store and qualify prospects that are potentially a good fit for your campaign. Once you’ve added a prospect, you’ll see that BuzzStream has done a ton of work for you, including pulling bylines, titles, meta descriptions, contact info and metrics.
Using this information, you can quickly approve prospects, reject them, or blacklist them to stop from ever showing up in another search result.
There are currently three ways to add prospects to a list.
The first, “Add from Web Search” lets you enter the combination of keywords that you’d normally use to find prospects in a search engine, including advanced operators and keyword variations. Once you’ve done that, BuzzStream will automatically gather results and populate your Research List with them, automatically gathering all of the information we’ve discussed.
The next, “Add from News Search,” is very similar but results are limited to news-related results. This is an excellent option if you’re primarily looking to get coverage from publications rather than general websites or blogs.
Finally, you’ve got the option to “Add Prospects Manually”. This option is there to give you flexibility to do things like vet lists put together by interns or VAs, or to hold prospects from third party lists that you haven’t yet qualified.
BuzzMarker Research Updates [Available to All Customers]
In addition to giving you more information for research, we’ve also made researching prospects in BuzzStream dramatically simpler by revamping our BuzzMarker workflow.
The first of these updates adds the ability to approve, reject, or blacklist a contact into the BuzzMarker itself. This will give you a significantly streamlined way to make judgement calls on prospects while visiting their actual website. You also have the flexibility to add any information you’d like to a prospect on approval, or to rapidly move through a list of contacts.
We’ve also changed the way that you bulk research prospects with the BuzzMarker. Previously, we operated on a single tab, which meant that for each new contact you moved to you’d have to wait for both the page and the BuzzMarker to load, which could slow down workflow significantly.
Now, the BuzzMarker operates in a multi-tab workflow. When you select a list of contacts to research, we’ll break up the list and load them in a user-defined number of separate tabs in your browser. Then, when you take an action (approve, reject, or blacklist) on the site, we’ll automatically load the next site in the list. This keeps your browser from being overloaded with tabs, and also makes your research lightning fast since you don’t have to wait for each page to load in sequence!
Ahrefs Integration [Available to Customers on Group Plans & Higher]
When we opened up our new feature requests system, one request immediately jumped to the top: integration with Ahrefs metrics.
We are glad to tell you that you’ll be able to integrate your Ahrefs account with BuzzStream and view Ahrefs metrics for your prospects as soon as the new features are released!
This integration combines the analytics capabilities of Ahrefs with the discovery, research, and outreach power of BuzzStream, giving you deep insight into your BuzzStream campaigns.
You can enable Ahrefs metrics for new and existing campaigns, and use them in your Outreach and Research Lists.
New BuzzStream Metrics [Available to All Customers]
In addition to adding the ability to integrate with Ahrefs, we’ve also added more default BuzzStream metrics to your account. We will pull these metrics from sites whenever you add a new URL to BuzzStream. These will give you tons of additional information on prospects in your campaign so you can vet them more effectively.
These metrics are:
- Linked Domains
- Outbound Links
- Dofollowed Outbound Links
- Http Status
You’ll find these metrics in our new Research Metrics section in your project edit screen, where they will be enabled by default.
Prospecting Filters [Available to All Customers]
We’ve also updated and added new prospecting filters to Research Lists.
These new filters have been streamlined to show you only the information you need to conduct prospecting effectively.
First, you’ll see our Research Pages filters. These include the following options:
- Source: this filter will let you filter by the specific keyword phrase(s) you entered in your research list so you can identify the most effective sources for your campaign
- Research Page URL: this will let you filter by URLs to narrow your targets down (for example, by only looking for pages that have “review” in their URL)
- Research Page Title: this filter will let you narrow searches by title, so you can remove irrelevant content or focus on specific title keywords that are most relevant
You’ll also find our Metrics filters here. These filters will let you set relevant ranges for any metrics you’ve enabled in your campaign, including the new Ahrefs and BuzzStream metrics.
What do you think?
As we said before, we’re nearing the end of our navigation beta and are implementing all of the new features we’ve covered here, with plenty more on the horizon. We know this is all exciting, but there’s also plenty of room for feedback.
If you’ve got any questions or thoughts about these changes, including specific on how they work, what they mean for your account, or how you can best integrate them into your workflow, please don’t hesitate to reach us at support@buzzstream.com!
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2 comments
This is looking really awesome. I especially like the ahrefs integration.
Will we be able to access all of these in our existing packages? Or are these available for more advanced packages only? (I’m especially interested to learn about accessing the ahrefs data.)
Glad to hear it, Jimmy! With the exception of Ahrefs integration, all of these updates will be available to all customers. Ahrefs integration will be available to customers on Group plans and higher.