Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Sysomos Expion is best suited, in my opinion, to offices where either you have only one moderator/manager OR where multiple users plan to manage a specific channel. Without live updates, it gets far too complicated for multiple users to manage the exact same workload
Read full review Pros I can plan and publish content on social channels. Buffer's interface is quite tidy and generates the necessary facilities to save us time in publishing consistent content. It has a special price; it is pretty affordable. It has the possibility of integrating with other tools to improve its functions. Read full review Ad-hoc research. During planning phase of a campaign it is a helpful tool to understand the marketplace, key influencers and topics that engage a target demographic. Post-event hashtag analysis. Rapid generation of reporting on efficacy of a campaign, key voices, topics that resonated, viral reach and more. User interface. Friendly and accessible enough to minimize training needs and enable decentralized access, though we have found some hand-holding is still required to get the most out of the platform. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review It does not provide a visual for volume over time. The visuals aren't excellent, and would require an export to create better looking graphics. The interface isn't intuitive and sometimes requires clicking around to find things that seem like they should be under a different title. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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
Read full review There are two differentiating features that Sysomos MAP has that the competitor tools I have experienced (Radian6, Meltwater Buzz) did not: user-friendly Boolean queries for searches and near-real-time results. The former is important because, of course, your results are only as good as your search/campaign. With Sysomos, once you master Boolean queries (which isn't terribly difficult) you're set for creating any kind of listening report. I strongly prefer this to the "campaign creator" forms that other services provide. Second, Sysomos MAP returns results almost immediately - like a Google search. So if you get your results and see that you need to tweak your query - no big deal. Or if you have a last-minute request for a client - not an issue. Meltwater can take up to 48 hours for a search to fully populate. This is a major issue if you get your full set of results back and see that you need to adjust the query; you're looking at another two days of wait time. A long wait on results can also prove problematic in agency settings where clients or prospective clients often need results with a quick turnaround.
Read full review Usability 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
Read full review The product is very easy to use. The platform is visual and data is easy to read. Boolean construction can sometimes be difficult, but the boolean constructor tool is helpful for boolean beginners. For more experienced boolean constructors, the boolean display at the top is very helpful in identifying where there may be holes in the construction
Read full review Reliability and Availability Buffer is always on hand and very reliable, their software suite rarely has outages
Read full review Not really an availability issue, but concurrency licensing rules mean that only one user can be logged in at a time.
Read full review Performance 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
Read full review This has not been an issue. It is actually beating TweetDeck when we are tagged within a post that TweetDeck is monitoring.
Read full review Support Rating It really helped to my business to grow online. I was able to take actions mindfully as the analytics are damn good. Also used for managing clients social media accounts and it proved to be a best resource. Clients were really happy as they got high demand and growth on internet and the secret is Buffer. The user interface is really easy to understand and manage. Support is 24/7 available to help. Read full review Unfortunately, we have not had a great experience with customer support from Klear. In the sales process, they were very responsive and helpful, but when onboarded, it definitely changed. We are based in the US and our customer service rep is based in Israel, meaning our work hours barely overlap. Oftentimes we're waiting 24+ hours for a response, and when it's a time-sensitive issue (like the platform not pulling in Instagram Story data) we want it to be resolved as quickly as possible. Klear also has a chat feature for more immediate help, but we've experienced a similar situation there where it takes 12+ hours to get a response and it's usually from our customer service rep. Our rep is very nice, but also doesn't seem very knowledgeable about the platform, and usually can't provide an immediate answer to a question we ask and has to "check with her team."
Read full review Online Training We had a kick-off training with the whole team where they walked us through the functionality. This was a pretty effective and comprehensive training.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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
Read full review Implementation was so easy I dont even remember it!
Kelly Cates Manager, Online Marketing, Brand Relationships, Direct Sales
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review We've used
Sprout Social &
Hootsuite in the past -- and they all stack up pretty evenly. Sysomos has the same features as Sprout or
Hootsuite , except their reports and analytics are a little more detailed.
Hootsuite has a better social media management software and dashboard though
Read full review Scalability 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
Read full review Return on Investment It has saved money by allowing us to automate our social using one person It allows us to connect one channel at a time instead of wasting money on larger account management tools We are making money, because it has already delivered several clients Read full review Lowered costs and overhead when Expion got introduced as we now use one centralized solution for all of our social media work We can finally calculate ROI with ease and understand our campaign performance through proper tracking and analytics Competition tracking was never easier Read full review ScreenShots Sysomos, now part of Meltwater Screenshots