Denver Social Media Management Company Weights In On The Best Tools For Social Media Management
There are so many tools out there that is is literally impossible to keep track of them all. However, there are a few tried and true favorites, especially in the social media management world. We took a look through some of the top tools in social media management for their best and worst features. Take a look through to help you find the right fit for your business!
Hoot suite
The most popular tool for social media management, and is the granddaddy of them all! It’s been around for a long time and is highly trusted. It has some great features, and some that are not as strong, but as whole, it’s a great option for social media managers.
Pros:
- Has a free version! Yes, for individuals, the free version is great! However, if you need more profiles connected, you’ll need to look at paying (which won’t break the bank, so we’re counting that as another point for this platform!)
- Manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, Google+, and Instagram profiles from one place.
- Schedule updates using their dashboard, or even upload from a spreadsheet as a bulk uploader option!
- Basic social media reports
- RSS Integration allowing you to post updates from an RSS feed
- View feeds from various profiles to see mentions, posts and be able to easily respond.
- Schedule posts to Instagram! While Instagram doesn’t allow fully seamless scheduling, Hootsuite has a way to do it, and it DOES actually make life a lot easier for social media managers who are doing Instagram for their clients!
- Has mobile app!
- Google Analytics Integration
Cons
- Support is only available online and is not as seamless as you would expect for a tool that you’re paying for.
- Reports are expensive. While you can get a few basic reports from Hootsuite, they’re not enough to really give you anything substantial in today’s day and age. Most savvy social media managers know you need to be looking at way more depth than what they offer. Of course, you can buy them, but they come at a price, starting at $40/month to buy “points,” which then you use to purchase reports. Often you’ll need to spend way more than $40/month to get what you’re looking for. These start to add up quickly, making it hard to scale a business.
- Limited Profiles. For small marketing agencies where you’re only handling a handful of clients, the Pro version is great! But, you’ll be limited to 50 profiles, which adds up quickly. As you scale, you’ll have to pay approximately $80 for ten more profiles, which we all know adds up even quicker if you have a client with multiple profiles.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social has a great reputation in social media, and is great for growing teams. They have some amazing capabilities and they’re worth checking out!
Pros:
- Includes a in built Customer Relationship Management system (CRM)
- Support for teams (drafts, calendar, tasks etc)
- Support for multiple profiles, departments, and companies
- Security and ability to set specific permission levels and roles
- Analytics & Reports. From their website: “Sprout’s proprietary analytics suite features team and engagement reports detailing overall and individual team members’ responsiveness and engagement.”
- Has Mobile App for iPhone, iPad and Android
- Integrates with Instagram!
Cons:
- A little pricey for the little guys. As a small agency, the $59/month/user for only 5 profiles is a bit hefty compared to other options. (pricing as of summer 2016) To scale with a client, that’s a big line item.
- Limited filtering of feeds. If you’re used to something like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, you’ll find that filtering the feeds you’re seeing is much more cumbersome and less intuitive.
- Good looking reports, but not a ton of meat. While Sprout Social is known for its reports, the reports are not overly dense. They look pretty and are easy to understand, but other options like Klear Reports or AgoraPulse give you better options for filtering reports and even exporting into a pdf for presentation.
Buffer
Buffer is a popular choice for many, as the free capabilities are easy for a solopreneur, but the paid versions are great for growing businesses!
Pros:
- Free Version! Yes, similar to Hootsuite, Buffer has a free version, which is highly limiting if you’re very active on social media, but for some solopreneurs and individuals this is a great option!
- Buffer’s Queue. Buffer has this neat option where you simply throw a post in the queue and it decides when to sent it out based on optimal performance and trends. This is a great feature for people who are new to social media, or just don’t want to strategize this piece of posting.
- Integration with Pinterest. Though this isn’t seamless (and costs you a little bit more money), you do have the ability to schedule pins. This is a big plus to social media managers!!
- Easy To Navigate. Buffer is pretty user friendly and intuitive for the user experience.
Cons:
- Pricey compared to other options (though not the most expensive by far!) at $199/month for the same 50 profiles that most small/growing social media management agencies might need. They have other pricing options for both more and less profiles, but we just listed this one pricing stat as an example. Based on our clients each having between 4-10 profiles, we need AT LEAST 50 profiles to be able to schedule, watch feeds, and report on.
- Limited Analytics. Buffer really shines with scheduling, but when it comes to reports, it just is missing a lot of basics that other platforms include like monitoring mentions, searches, and hashtags. You have to use other programs to monitor these types of things.
Oktopost
Oktopost was built to be the ideal tool for B2B businesses, and that’s really more of where it shines. They’ve got some neat capabilities that social media businesses should definitely consider.
Pros
- Easy tracking for comments
- Helps curate content. Integrates with RSS feeds through Feedly to help you see potential content opportunities to share on your social platforms easily.
- Identifies Cheerleaders & Thought Leaders. Get laser focused on who you want to target and who is helping out your brand the most to empower them to be even more helpful to your brand!
- Streams. Easily follow and join social conversations that impact your brand, reply to feedback from customers, track key competitor activities and get inspiration for your next content idea.
- Social Inbox. Respond directly from the Oktopost dashboard, rather than logging into each profile.
- Analytics. Access unlimited reports to gain deep insight into your social media marketing performance. View clicks, conversions, comments, and engagement metrics in easy to read reports. Includes traffic activity on LinkedIn groups and highlights which ones are generating the most traffic and conversions. Export all your unique social data for additional analysis, whether you use Excel or an enterprise BI solution.
Cons
- More Pricey: Monthly plans are more expensive than others, but it’s hard to know unless you get a custom quote, which is what they force you to do.
- Issues with authentication and continuous re-authentication of social networks.
- Internal navigation of dashboard is not as intuitive as other options.
- Analytics and reporting tools are not as intuitive and not as robust as other platforms or as the industry needs.
- Social listening tools are lacking on this tool compared to others.
Other Options Or Supplemental Tools
Klear –
- Influencer Identification: great tools for identifying influencers in your industry!
- Influencer Management: easily build lists of your chosen influencers segmented by categories, locations, or campaigns. Add comments and keep track of your engagement and program activation.
- Reports based on influencer goals
- Social Messages : manage easily and get those message inboxes down to zero like that!
- Social Inboxes: easily manage incoming messages and comments.
- Easy calendars, and scheduling options for scheduling social posts. Easy ways to republish evergreen content.
- Export reports to PowerPoint
- Post Reporting: discover your best performing Facebook posts, your best tweets and best media (based on engagement and reach). Improve your Content strategy today.
- Competitor Management: monitor your competitors’ profiles against yours!
- Engagement.: see your most engaged users at a glance. Know who your Influencers and Ambassadors are.
- Easily create contests within the program on your Facebook Page.
We’re not affiliated with any of these tools, nor are we receiving any kickbacks for mentioning them. Just our thoughts…from one social media manager to another.
Cheers!