Which Social Media Management Tool Is Right for Your Business?

Your business finally has a professional looking presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, but it’s not enough to have a virtual storefront, now comes the challenge of managing all of your social networks on a daily basis.  Should you connect your accounts to HootSuite, Sprout, or Tweetdeck and attempt to manage it yourself? Should you hire someone to manage it for you? With so many different Social Media Management Software (SMMS) options on the market today, it’s no wonder business owners have their heads spinning.  As a Social Media Manager, I manage hundreds of social accounts, but there are two SMMS platforms that I rely on: Sprout Social and PropelSOCIALSUITE.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a SMMS tool for the more advanced social media user. It has many of the same features as HootSuite, but in my opinion it is much easier to navigate and looks great! With Sprout, you can connect your Facebook account or fan page, Twitter, LinkedIn, or blog. All of your contacts and notifications will be synced to one place. This eliminates the hassle of having to log in and out of many different accounts. On the home page you can see your latest stats at a glance – how many people like your accounts and how influential you are. In the messages tab, you can easily track and respond to your latest messages across all of your social networks.

The scheduler allows you to schedule all of your posts for the week or month in advance. You can add photos, links, and even schedule your message to be sent out across multiple networks at the same time. Sprout has also added a new feature called the Sprout Queue. This icon can be easily installed in your browser’s navigation bar. As you surf the web you can share content with the click of a button or “Queue” it up to be sent later at an optimal time based on your prior audience engagement.

Sprout has also made it easy to conduct lead and reputation searches based on keywords for your business or industry. Let’s say you are a Realtor and you want to conduct a search on Twitter to find out who in your geographical area is talking about “buying a house”, Sprout will let us save that specific search and refresh it each day to find new leads. You can then log-in and message or follow those talking about “buying a house”.

As an agency, I can create groups of all my client accounts in Sprout and toggle between them without ever having to log out. Businesses with large teams or multiple people handling social media can assign users to different accounts and assign tasks that need to be completed.  Finally, Sprout’s reporting feature takes all of your social insights and organizes them into very attractive and easy to understand reports that can be easily white labeled with your logo.

Overall, Sprout is clean, easy to navigate and highly efficient. Unfortunately, the platform does not yet have the ability to connect with Google+ accounts or LinkedIn Company Pages, however Sprout has informed me that they are working on integrating more social networks. It also requires the user to be fairly savvy with social media and SMMS.

PropelSOCIALSUITE

For the SMMS beginner, PropelSOCIALSUITE is the perfect solution. Unlike Sprout, HootSuite and other more advanced SMMS platforms, PropelSOCIALSUITE is so easy to use even someone who has never been on Facebook or Twitter can use it. When you first create an account, you will receive a brief tour around the platform to help you get familiar. On the home page is where you will find your “Inbox” with all of the notifications from your social networks. PropelSOCIALSUITE is compatible with Facebook accounts, Fan Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and soon…Google+!  The inbox you will notice is set up to look like your email inbox (this is very much deliberate). Most people are familiar with how to navigate and respond to emails and SOCIALSUITE works the same way.

Since this platform is designed for the social media beginner, when you first log in, you are asked to select your general industry and a plan (beginner, intermediate or advanced). The plan will guide you with how often you should be posting and when. The user is held accountable to complete a designated number of tasks or posts each week. The platform then takes all of those hard to understand insights, charts and graphs and assigns you a letter grade based on your progress. If you are getting an “A” it could be time to move up to the next plan, if you are getting a “C” it might be a sign that you might not be able to manage social media on your own and perhaps you need some extra help.

The best and most unique thing about PropelSOCIALSUITE that other SMMS platforms do not have is the custom content library. Stuck for ideas of what to post? Don’t have hours to scour the internet for content relevant to your business? Choose from hundreds of hand-selected articles, across multiple categories, then easily schedule and share across all of your social networks with the click of a button. Want to write your own content? Check out the Guidance section for some cool ideas.

Like Sprout, PropelSOCIALSUITE allows you to conduct lead and reputation searches, monitor all of your social streams in one place, and schedule posts. As a business owner you are probably very busy. With this tool you can spend twenty minutes a week on social media, freeing up the rest of your time to do what you love.

I would highly recommend both of these tools to any business owner who thinks they can manage social on their own. If you try it and still find that you don’t have the time or it’s too hard, call in a professional! If you have any questions or would like a free social media consultation, please feel free to email me at MMastro@propelmarketing.com.