16 Mar Social Media Management Tools Compared
You’ve come up with a great social media strategy and your team has created some fantastic content. Now it’s time to share it with your fans and watch the comments roll in. One last question before you do: will you post and monitor your comments natively, or will you use a social media management tool?
We certainly recommend using a social media management tool for many brands, but not necessarily the same one for every brand. Depending on your needs, anything from a simple, single-channel engagement tool to a robust multi-channel tool with top-shelf analytics may be best. Here are a few of our favorites to consider (in no particular order)
Sprinklr
Let’s start with what many consider the gold standard of social media management tools. Sprinklr is used by half of the Fortune 50, and lists Nike, McDonald’s, and Microsoft among brands using their platform. Not a bad start?
With such large clients, it’s no wonder that this tool feels a bit monolithic. In order to keep an eye on all comment types across each social channel, you’ll need to have one column for each. Putting that another way: to monitor all your Twitter engagement, you’ll need separate columns for mentions, replies, and DMs. Perhaps that’s great if you have a team where one person just needs to watch for fans sliding up in your DMs, but it’s less efficient for one community manager to constantly shuffle between columns.
Sprinklr is also decent for publishing (including a very helpful calendar view) and can offer a seemingly endless variety of reports. As with many tools though, you may see a discrepancy between Sprinklr’s numbers and those offered up natively in each channel.
Sound good? Be prepared to open up the checkbook. Sprinklr customizes their plans (and in turn, what you’ll pay) for each brand, but they are among the more expensive options.
Engagor
And now for something completely different, we turn to Engagor. Unlike Sprinklr where each type of comment gets its own home, all comments can come into Engagor in one handy inbox. No scrolling thru columns necessary!
Engagor’s ability to compile all comments in one stream is handy not only for handling multiple channels, but also multiple brands. So if you have, say, two different brands with three channels each, Engagor will take comments on all six pages and ensure that the correct account is replying to each one with no need to toggle between accounts.
Reporting and monitoring the competition is also available, and as you can see above, data is presented in easily digestible formats. One word of caution: Enagagor does a great job counting comments, but while it tracks inbound “likes” it does not keep track of when your channels “like” fan comments.
We would consider this to be a mid-priced tool, with business plans going for around $500 per month, but can get more expensive based on your specific needs.
HootSuite
Ahh, good ol’ HootSuite. Since this tool is open to anyone to use, there’s a good chance you may already be familiar with how HootSuite operates. If you’re not, the dashboard looks and feels pretty similar to Sprinklr with multiple columns based on different types of inbound comments.
While it offers some analytics, going through their reports doesn’t have the same visual appeal as Engagor. One of the biggest benefits of HootSuite is that you can grow into what you need from it, both in functionality and cost. You can get HootSuite for as low as $10 per month or if you need, they can create custom enterprise options for you.
These are just three of the dozens of social media management tools out there. We’d love to chat and help you figure out the best social media tools for you and your brand!
