In this digital age, any business looking to get its name out into the world needs some extent of social media marketing. Lucky for business owners, there are tools that not only make the job easier but also faster. Today, we are taking a look at Sprout Social, a popular, feature-packed social media marketing tool.
Now, be warned! Like most digital marketing tools, Sprout Social is far from cheap. But, as you know, this is where we come to your rescue. In this review, we will not only cover what you get in the package but also help you make an informed decision on whether Sprout Social is worth your buck.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
What is Sprout Social?
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media marketing and management solution. As mentioned on their official website, this tool is used by over 30000 businesses globally to forge deeper connections with their audience on social media. Sprout Social’s scheduling, analytics, and engagement tools can help you extend your reach and amplify your brand impact.
The tool comes equipped with a plethora of features and functionalities. But what separates Sprout Social from other tools in the industry is features like the social listening module, which is extremely useful when it comes to finding new trends, analyzing market sentiment, and even deducing practical insights from conversations on social media channels.
1. Social Media Scheduling
Publishing and scheduling content on Sprout Social is a cakewalk. The tool gives you access to a comprehensive, uncluttered social media calendar with a full overview of every piece of content you are going to post on different channels.
You can create your posts without leaving the platform and it even guides you on how to enhance the quality of your content. Also, there is publishing and scheduling support for all the major social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
The cherry on top is everything else that makes the job hassle-free and quick. Sprout Social gives you optimal publishing times, a media library offering integration with Dropbox, Canva, and Google Drive, content approval workflows when working with teams, content suggestions, and a dedicated mobile app to manage your calendar on the go. Sounds refreshing, doesn’t it?
2. Social Media Monitoring
This feature allows you to track and analyze social media activity related to your business. You can monitor all social media platforms for mentions of your brand, letting you respond quickly to customer inquiries or feedback. What’s even interesting is that you can track specific keywords or hashtags related to your brand and stay up to date on industry trends and track competitors.
This Sprout Social functionality is a holy grail for anyone looking to revise or improve their social media strategy as they can track their own social media accounts and those of their competitors and identify the best practices in the market. There is also a feature to generate custom reports that can offer valuable insights into their social media performance.
3. Social Media Analytics
Sprout Social provides detailed analytics and reporting on social media performance, which helps you make data-driven decisions based on the tracked and analyzed metrics. With this tool’s social media analytics, you can track engagement such as likes, shares, and comments, and identify the most engaging content. You can track your follower growth and audience demographics such as age, gender, and location, enabling you to tailor your content accordingly.
There is an advanced report generator with selectable metrics and filters. Thus, you can create personalized reports based on the tracked metrics that matter the most to you. Some commonly used reports included profile performance reports, post-performance reports, team-based task reports, competitor reports, and paid performance reports (tracking of ad expenses).
4. Social Listening
This handy feature enables you to track and analyze social media conversations across multiple platforms in real-time, providing valuable insights into your target audience and enabling you to engage with customers more effectively.
With the Social Listening functionality, you can monitor brand mentions, track and stay up to date on industry trends, monitor competitor activity, identify influencers, and analyze industry sentiment, helping you to understand how customers perceive your brand.
5. Collaboration
Sprout Social is designed to help teams work together more efficiently on social media management tasks. The tool allows team members to collaborate on social media content and strategy, with the ability to assign tasks, leave comments, approve and share content, and manage social media permissions.
All of this collaboration happens in real-time, streamlining the social media management process and improving communication between team members.
6. Paid Social
The Paid Social feature is designed to help businesses maximize their social media advertising efforts by creating and managing paid social campaigns across multiple platforms.
With support for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can create, launch, and manage paid social campaigns directly from the Sprout Social dashboard. More importantly, you can target specific audiences, test different ads, and even collaborate with team members on your advertising efforts.
7. Pricing
As mentioned earlier, Sprout Social is far from cheap. There are four available plans – Standard, Professional, Advanced, and Enterprise.
The Standard plan costs $249 a month. The Professional and Advanced plans cost $399 and $499 a month respectively. The Enterprise plan is for large-scale businesses with custom needs and the price is available on request.
8. Limitations
Despite Sprout Social’s feature-packed aura, the tool is not perfect. There are of course some limitations that we should look into. For starters, unlike SocialBee (another social media marketing tool), Sprout Social lacks post variants. When compared to Agorapulse, a more affordable option, Sprout Social does not support re-queuing posts.
When considering the exorbitant pricing, the tool does not offer support for platforms like TikTok. Also, users on several occasions have reported slight disappointment in customer support.
Final Verdict
So, the big question – is Sprout Social worth your buck? Undoubtedly, it is one of the best tools on the market. But its best functionalities are hidden behind a huge paywall, which can be daunting for small and medium-sized businesses.
If you are willing to pay the price, Sprout Social can surely save you both time and effort on your social media marketing journey. For someone unsure if this tool will work for their business, there is a 30-day free trial.
Other than that, there are also affordable alternatives with comparative features such as Agorapulse and SocialBee. They could work well for businesses looking to take their social media marketing to the next level without breaking the bank.