Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management software tool based online which focuses on four main relevant components to help social media marketing efforts including monitor, engage, measure and grow. Pricing for Sprout Social starts with a free trial with no credit card necessary. Paid plans utilize tiered features starting at $59 to $99 per month, per user to $500 per month for three users with white label branding, advanced analytics and more. I also like that you can quickly integrate an entire help desk system such as Zendesk or UserVoice into your account quickly. You can save in drafts so you're not forced to publish anything offline though that's always a good idea. I like the team calendar function which gives you an overview of team wide scheduled messages. The smart inbox is probably the coolest feature about Sprout Social which features a main activity stream containing all details about your social media marketing campaigns in your account dashboard. The collaboration tools are quite solid inside your account along with the ability to store contact information like customer relationship management software. You can also view complete histories between agents and staff with fans, prospects and customers. The reporting is quite good and have read the Twitter analytics are some of the best in the market, though I'm still doing my research to learn for myself. I really like the user interface in this software. I find it to be stylish and super easy to use. There is a lot going on at times but you can move around your account quickly and find everything you need easily. Sprout Social does what it does very well which is social media management. It allows for fan, prospect and customer engagement through a few major social media platforms very easily. The mobile capabilities are good you can check messages and stats, view histories, search keywords, manage your social media feeds and even publish messages from any device where you have an internet connection. The ability to track brand mentions across the entire web as well as the integrated social media channels is great and that is a feature that differentiates it from others. I like the idea of engaging fans and brand advocates using this software. Currently, it seems like a contact manager and help desk rather than a sales tool. But this may very well suit businesses do not sell via social media but have the need to manage customer support and care for the brand by being able to keep tabs on it online. I like that I've heard the Spout Social support team is very good but haven't had to contact them yet, and I like you can export important data and information from the software, too.

The integrations possible with sprout social seem limited. There is not an ability to close the deal if you want to sell directly from the platform integrated to Facebook ecommerce for example. It seems the best use of Sprout Social is to monitor brand mentions and provide customer support and it does that all very well. They clearly have nailed down a market that doesn't necessarily sell products or service via social media but have only the need to respond and monitor their reputation this way. It syncs to LinkedIn but I don't see any reporting available for this account. Sprout Social is a bit more expensive than other platforms I've tried. One review I read the person mentioned you get what you pay for and that well may be true but that depends if you find the value of the software to be include all that you need in the first place. If you're using this as a sales tool in my opinion there are better software solutions available that include management tools as well for less cost.

I really like how easy Sprout Social makes it to correspond with fans online and to monitor the brand and take care of it in real time. I believe Sprout Social could extend it's specialization to help grow the bottom directly with ecommerce functionality integration or social media landing pages, or social contests. With contests you can raise awareness for the brand and not just respond to it's mentions but that's just my opinion. I still recommend Sprout Social as long as you don't need to maximize your bottom line using social media channels.