Adobe Social, incorporates technology from Context Optional and Efficient Frontier.
Adobe acquired Facebook advertising-management platform Efficient Frontier in November. Six months earlier, Efficient Frontier had acquired Facebook page-management platform Context Optional.
Adobe Social is an enterprise social platform competing with Buddy Media and Involver, enabling things like automated content marketing and social sweepstakes and competitions.
Customers tend to be medium to large…
N/A
Buffer
Score 7.7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Buffer is a social sharing tool. When browsing content, clicking on the Buffer icon automatically stores the content and schedules posts to social media channels throughout the day.
$6
per month per channel
Tailwind
Score 5.5 out of 10
N/A
Tailwind is a social media marketing solution built specifically for Pinterest marketing. It provides features such as scheduled pins, analytics, and scalable Pinterest activity.
Buffer was just the most simple to use. There was not a learning curve for any of us. The added perks (dashboards, informative emails) were obvious and easy to take advantage of and put to work for us. Our main Twitter contributor called it life-changing! That did not happen …
Tailwind
No answer on this topic
Features
Adobe Social
Buffer
Tailwind
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.4
9 Ratings
3% below category average
Buffer
-
Ratings
Tailwind
9.2
4 Ratings
19% above category average
Boolean keyword searches
7.58 Ratings
00 Ratings
9.52 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam
7.57 Ratings
00 Ratings
8.93 Ratings
Sentiment analysis
7.58 Ratings
00 Ratings
8.94 Ratings
Broad channel coverage
7.09 Ratings
00 Ratings
9.44 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.4
9 Ratings
9% below category average
Buffer
7.9
77 Ratings
2% below category average
Tailwind
4.0
12 Ratings
67% below category average
Content planning and scheduling
7.09 Ratings
8.677 Ratings
5.012 Ratings
Audience targeting
7.58 Ratings
00 Ratings
3.39 Ratings
Content optimization
7.59 Ratings
7.470 Ratings
3.312 Ratings
Workflow management
7.59 Ratings
7.866 Ratings
4.410 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.7
8 Ratings
5% below category average
Buffer
-
Ratings
Tailwind
4.8
10 Ratings
51% below category average
Automated routing and prioritization
7.58 Ratings
00 Ratings
5.08 Ratings
Customer interaction histories
8.08 Ratings
00 Ratings
4.45 Ratings
Bulk actions
7.58 Ratings
00 Ratings
5.08 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
8.0
8 Ratings
4% above category average
Buffer
-
Ratings
Tailwind
7.5
8 Ratings
3% below category average
Lead generation
8.07 Ratings
00 Ratings
5.07 Ratings
Content marketing
8.08 Ratings
00 Ratings
5.08 Ratings
Paid media management
8.07 Ratings
00 Ratings
10.05 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions
8.08 Ratings
00 Ratings
10.05 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.9
9 Ratings
6% below category average
Buffer
-
Ratings
Tailwind
3.5
12 Ratings
82% below category average
Twitter
8.08 Ratings
00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Facebook
8.09 Ratings
00 Ratings
1.01 Ratings
LinkedIn
7.57 Ratings
00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Google+
7.09 Ratings
00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Instagram
8.57 Ratings
00 Ratings
3.98 Ratings
Pinterest
8.04 Ratings
00 Ratings
5.612 Ratings
YouTube
8.07 Ratings
00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.8
9 Ratings
1% above category average
Buffer
7.1
70 Ratings
8% below category average
Tailwind
7.0
10 Ratings
10% below category average
Campaign success analytics
8.09 Ratings
7.170 Ratings
4.49 Ratings
Real-time tracking
7.58 Ratings
00 Ratings
7.08 Ratings
Competitor analysis
8.08 Ratings
00 Ratings
9.76 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
I used Adobe Social when I use to have my own business on social media. After many months I was having no success in finding the correct clients for my products. Using Adobe Social I was able to market and discover different ways of searching for the correct clients and later on helped my business grow.
It helps me save hours by devoting only half an hour in a month's worth of posting, in addition to that it is quite simple to use. Buffer for scheduling social posts well in advance, but I have begun using it instead of posting natively on the social apps themselves because it makes it super easy to post the same messages to more than one platform.
Tailwind can schedule your Pinteret pins, but it's an expensive platform to do this, and given it seems to miss many, it does not even do this well. Further, they continue to get you to reconnect, so it is cumbersome and poorly designed. We used it only because our vendors wanted it, but it's been a total waste of money given how poorly designed it is, how buggy it is and how useless the other so-called services they provide are. Go somewhere else as there are way better solutions as we have now found.
Adobe Social lacks strengths, as I believe Adobe themselves have acknowledged, given their decision not to continue support or development. But if I need to list three strengths, the first would be it can publish to some social media platforms with a success rate of over 50%. If that's a strength.
It has workflow processes, but they are over-complicated and poorly designed.
It has some basic analytics, but Adobe consultants usually recommend referring to Adobe Analytics instead. Which is great if you actually use Adobe Analytics.
The extension for Chrome and Safari has been EXTREMELY helpful. Through research and continuing education, we frequently see information we'd like to share with our audience and the extension has made this so easy.
The SmartLoop feature is great for times when we get busy and may not have the time to add new things to our queue. I know even if I had zero time to devote to social media that day, I was still active and getting information to our candidates.
Interface is extremely user friendly. A lot of time these programs that are supposed to help us and bring ease to our workload are so complicated and intense that they cause more stress than they relieve. This is not true with Tailwind. Tailwind is easy to use and truly does take a load of stress off us as an organization.
It would be great if Adobe scheduled video uploads for Twitter.
A time change in a social post automatically puts the post back to Level 1 of approvals. It can be a big hassle to have to start the process over for such a small change.
Adobe uses a different algorithm to measure engagement our company does. It would be great to upload your own algorithm into Adobe.
Expensive Analytics: The upgrade you need to access your analytics is quite expensive, and I have come across other tools that provide the same or even more for a lesser priced plan.
No Media Library: The one feature I have found on another social media planning tool that I wish Buffer had is a media library. This allows you to upload photos you aren't using right away to have them readily available when you do decide to use them. This is not a feature in Buffer.
When you add a link to your post and add the caption, it goes to the first line and not where I had the cursor. I do not want the link to be the first thing people read.
The Tailwind Create is fun and helpful but still hard to use.
I wasn't in charge of making the actual management decision, but I would absolutely renew Adobe Social. As I mentioned, it provides strong and in-depth analytics and listening tools. The reports that it generates are very thorough and easy to read. I loved the platform and would recommend it to anyone
I am giving buffer this rating because of a couple issues that it has compared to other platforms. It does not always post to instagram and you will need to go in an manually post. Also, one of the biggest qualms that we have with buffer is the price it costs to have robust analytics
The reason why I give this rating is that the overall platform is simple to use. You don't need to be tech-savvy or have a vast understanding of how to work a marketing tool. It is very simple to use compared to different platforms and you learn a lot of different ways to build your business.
We use Buffer for certain website content that should be shared on social networks, having this tool helps us to do it faster and easier since we can send the publications from the internet browser and the stack of scheduled messages. It is really fast and easy for all team members who share access to the account, so at the same time that we analyze the information that we can share, the message stack is prepared
Tailwind is great when it focuses on it's core functionality. However, in my opinion, Tailwind isn't great at listening to their customers and instead likes to add features that are not beneficial and tend to "break" the other features that ultimately sell it's product. In my opinion, it has lost ROI over time and was much better 3-4 years ago.
Buffer performs well on both desktop and mobile platforms. The one area as I have stated before is that it does not always want to automatically push to Instagram and the user will have to go do it manually. Buffer works very well pushing to other platforms. The instagram issue is the only reason buffer does not get a 10 on this section
The reason why I give this a 9 out of 10 in terms of support is because of the mobile app functionality. I have had many issues in terms of logging in and also loading pages. The app overall is easy to use but at what cost? Other than that it is great and I still enjoy Adobe Social.
I have received wonderful support from Tailwind. Recently when I was on their new Tailwind Create and was looking at their site photos, I had a question and I received an answer in less than 24 hours. They have also been receptive to comments and ideas to make the product better and they used some of the ideas as well giving us a discount for the help.
Training was long and a little confusing. While a number of features carried over, they were still covered in this elongated training. It would have been nice to have training tailored to experience level with the product.
The implementation was done during our POC. We had a very mixed experience here, and have had some issues arise since based on the way the tool was implemented. An Adobe employee went ahead and made a change to our account that was unauthorized (helpful for our implementation) which caused issues in on boarding another team who needed the same change, but could not get it done without costly Adobe certification
We were very satisfied with the implementation of Buffer. We had no issues switching from the platform that we were using over to buffer. Our staff did not even miss a beat when it came to posting content. It was an easy transition and I feel that is something that buffer has really done well. They have an "out of the box" usability platform
Hootsuite Enterprise is superior in many ways, but the biggest factor is probably that it is constantly evolving and adding new features, working directly with social media companies ahead of new releases. Adobe seems to have stopped developing their product.
I also used Combin which is easy and free to use. However, Combin only posts when the computer is active and connected to the internet. So, posting while you are not actively using your computer at that moment is not possible, therefore Buffer is much more efficient as you can even post while being on vacation without working.
When I was looking for a solution for Instagram, neither Buffer nor Hootsuite were offering the ability to post directly to Instagram. That may have changed recently, but in my opinion, Tailwind is a much more user-friendly, less (unnecessarily) complex solution for Instagram management. I don't need a ton of in-depth analytics; I just need to be able to be efficient, consistent and engaging in my posts. Tailwind allows me to do that without getting bogged down in all the bells and whistles on Hootsuite or Buffer.
Buffer does what it say on tin as they say! you can always count on Buffer. Buffer can be scale to 25 social account with 2,000 scheduled post which is enough for most agencies or businesses
Although we chose Adobe Social believing it could provide ROI metrics we could not get elsewhere, that turned out not to be the case. Site Catalyst can give us everything we need without Adobe Social
Adobe Social did not create greater efficiencies and speed up our activity within social media. In fact, it has done the oppposite. It is very cumbersome with little clear benefit.
Definitely an ROI - We have increased our clicks on our website due to traffic from Pinterest, primarily from our Smart Loop.
We have increased Pinterest following due to our intensive use of Smart Loop, which has led to #1 (increased website traffic).
Organization and time management has been a massive advantage of utilizing Tailwind. Because I can set Smart Loop and not worry about it, I can dedicate my time to other areas of the business.