Item: Zoho Social
Rating: 9
Author: Andrew Maher

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a Solo-preneur I understand the importance of self-marketing but finding the time to share my learnings and experiences is hard. Zoho Social's calendar feature has really enabled me to get ahead of the work of sharing and engaging on the various social media platforms. Once a week I sit down and plan out the next week's posts and even the week after. Two weeks out is more of a draft for the week but the monthly view makes it easy for me to see what the theme of the week will be and where it will go.

Pros and Cons

Connecting all my social accounts.
Presenting all my incoming messages in a single view.
Calendar view is a game changer.

Customizing the posts for individual social sites is confusing.
The iPad app is just the iPhone app ported. No calendar view.
No MacOS app

Return on Investment

Zoho Social allows me to "see" my messaging planning weeks into the future. I can create themes for a week or month and easily see how it performs.
Having all my social accounts in one place saves me time.
It is too early for any ROI from Zoho but the amount of content I am putting out has increased by at least 400%.

Alternatives Considered

Buffer and Hootsuite

The "streams" view in Hootsuite is useful for following my accounts or certain hashtags. I found this was not helping me grow my business and needed to focus more on content publication. Buffer's scheduling is fine but the interaction with comments from followers I found time-consuming. Zoho lets me do all the planning in one view (calendar) and see/respond to all messages in a single place.

Key Insights

Do you think Zoho Social delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Zoho Social's feature set?

Yes

Did Zoho Social live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Zoho Social go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Zoho Social again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Notion, Descript

Usability

In the browser, it has all the features I need and is in a place where I can easily find them. I rarely ever close the browser tab with Zoho running as I find myself often checking on messages throughout the day/week. I wish there was a usable experience for the iPad as that is the device I travel with and having a dedicated app would make work easier.

Support Rating

I have not needed support for Zoho Social. This comment requirement is confusing to me as I must find text to fill the requirement of a minimum of 50 words. There should be a non-applicable button that allows either user to skip a question or then require a shorter explanation like in my first sentence. Geez, now I have to give a rating while never using the feature.

Likelihood to Recommend

The pricing for me is important as well as all the social sites it connects to. Being able to set out a content plan for the coming weeks in one place is really helpful. I had been using other solutions in the past and needed to be able to plan my social activities days or weeks into the future. Zoho lets me do that at a price point I think I can be happy with.

Zoho Social for the Solo-preneur Lifts my Social Presence 1000%

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho Social