I have narrowed down what social media tool my work will use down to these 4. Note: if you have a tool you strongly believe is good, please mention it. I might have overlooked it.
If anyone has experience with these tools, could you perhaps give me a brief review? What you liked/didn’t like? What option you would choose if you could start over? What should I avoid?
All comments welcome. If you are going to post in this thread though (since Social Media category gets spammy) please do not post anything without giving an explanation behind it. If you say X tool is better than Y and Z, please explain why you think so. Brief comments with no explanation will be flagged for the moderators to deal with.
I always recommend SproutSocial for new users and beginners, or only casual users. It’s by far the easiest to set up, the easiest for basic analytics, and the easiest to schedule posts.
HootSuite is also quite easy to use but unless a team is set up properly from the beginning it can sometimes have issues ‘sharing’ social accounts (particularly Twitter) with a team.
You won’t be able to schedule Instagram with either of these. As far as I know you can only do so with a specific Instagram program, two of which are Schedugram and Latergramme.
You also shouldn’t expect anything overly exciting in the analytics department, since Instagram doesn’t hyperlink URLs you won’t get any click-through rates. You can sell via Instagram though - let me know if you want more info on this.
You can track Tumblr using good old Google Analytics or use Numblr, but like with Instagram, don’t expect anything overly granular.
Ultimately the tools you pick depend specficially on the level of your users, and how granular you need reporting to be - that comes down to the social media strategy of your employer.
We are a government agency with many platforms to monitor. Reputation management is important to us.
Sproutsocial seems like it’s too beginner for us and lacking sophistication; is that correct?
Hootsuite is decent but would you recommend it for a government agency (school?)
We have SiteImprove which has its own analytics and webmaster tools. We only wish to monitor feedback and comments about us.
Our users are probably 95% students, 5% parents. Our main concern is reputation management and we just want to be able to track any complaints or feedback about us. What would be your recommended course of action @Jasmine ?
It sounds like you need less of a posting tool and more of a listening tool. My favourite for this, and it works great for large numbers, is Radian 6 by salesforce. Have a chat with someone from salesforce and get them to take you through the program, to see if it’s right for you.
I also like Meltwater in terms of reputation management, it also has in-built PR tools. I’m not sure about the US version but the Australian version can track both digital and print, which would be useful for your schools. It uses Boolean search terms so you can make it as specific as you’d like, and you can also check competing schools to see how your reputation compares. Same advice with Radian6- talk to someone at Meltwater and get them to demo it for you.