eClincher aims to be the most powerful, complete and intuitive social media management software. According to the vendor, the product is designed to help users, businesses, and agencies manage social media presence with one platform, and offers the following capabilities: advanced publishing publishing automation (queues, RSS feeds, recycle evergreen content) engagement with unified social inbox & live social feeds monitoring content…
$49
Tailwind
Score 6.6 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.
In my quest to find the best Social Media Management software, I tried just about every service out there (scrolling through Capterra, TrustRadius, and G2 Crowd to find new programs). I was able to go for about 4 months on free trials alone and kept a log of the pros and cons, …
Best suited for a marketer that cares about reports, needs a social media management platform and doesn't want to pay more for a more aesthetically pleasing version of a platform with the same or less functionality, such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social. For a social media marketer that wants to automate some of their postings, the queues feature is great for this functionality. Not best suited for beginners to social media, as their platform is best utilized with someone familiar with the industry that knows what they are doing. Their chat support team is very good though, but this type of individual might find themselves spending a lot of time on the platform.
Tailwind is perfect for a small marketing shop where you simply need to be able to queue up Instagram posts. It works for Pinterest as well, but that's not a platform we use very often. It is very helpful to be able to plan out and visualize an entire IG series of posts in advance, and very few other scheduling platforms work with Instagram's API these days. I haven't delved deeply into the analytics tools, but I believe they would be very useful as well for a larger organization.
eClincher supports nearly every social network and connects to a large number of sources (blogs, bit.ly, Google Analytics, Google My Business). This makes workflow tremendously easy.
Posting Groups. At higher levels of service, eClincher allows you to set-up individual brand accounts. My agency isn't at that level, so we utilize eClincher's posting groups to make 1-click groups that post to all of the profiles for each client. This allows us to quickly post a cohesive message across all channels.
Workflow management: eClincher adds plenty of additional tools to make your workflow fast. Connections to free stock photo services make it easy to add generic pictures to your content. Google Analytics and bit.ly can keep track of statistics and measure success. The Inbox allows you to handle all your clients' accounts from one screen (including comments, messages, reviews, and more). The Feeds and Influencers tabs allow you to understand your market and what's being said. Altogether, eClincher makes a 1-app solution for Social Media Management.
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's not very visually appealing, but this is not a dealbreaker.
The reporting features could definitely use some work. I still get more value from the native SNS pages, but this is quickly changing. They removed the "export to CSV" functionality, but they plan to reintroduce it soon. As mentioned previously, they really respond to criticism well and update the tool constantly.
The inbox could use some work. I don't like being directed offsite to view certain comments deemed "requests for further info" when they could just easily display them there.
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.
Unless the price of eClincher moves to a point where it is too much to justify, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue to use eClincher for our agency. The value at this price-point is unbelievable and we'd be foolish to move to a pricier program purely for the sake of slicker graphics or UI. eClinchers pricing is fantastic, and is only matched by its functionality—it matches or beats any of the major Social Media Manager SaaS programs out there for a fraction of the cost. This tool is great for growing agencies, but would also be useful for any marketing department or large agency that wants to streamline their social media workflow.
Its usability was good until they changed their plans and stopped their LTD program for its early adopters who helped raise the tool by giving it positive reviews. I don't think eClincher is ethical in any sense based on the recent actions.
I have found Tailwind to be very helpful in generating our overall social media goals consistently. We are thrilled with the way we are able to easily post and pin as well as look into the insights for more in-depth knowledge. It is an easy-to-use addition to our social media.
[In my experience,] due to the fact that they did a bait and switch on their plans and blamed AppSumo for the lifetime program ending is simply wrong. [I believe that] it's unethical to get support and reviews from their early adopters then take the plan away later.
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.
Be patient. eClincher isn't perfect and has some software issues. These issues will be exacerbated if you get frustrated or have a slow connection. If something "breaks" or locks up, just refresh the page and re-do that step. It may take your team a couple weeks to get use to using the new system. Once they've gotten the hang of it, I'm sure they'll love the amount of time they save. I'd recommend taking your time with the set-up. Though there aren't a lot of steps to get everything squared away, you can break the process into small chunks to make sure you're managing your time. To just hook-up all the social accounts, it may only take an hour or so. But, if you want to set-up all the extra tools (such as user accounts, listening feeds, posting groups, schedules, etc.) it'll take longer. I think it took around a day to set-up completely, but your mileage my vary.
There are loads of social scheduling tools out there. I was using Buffer but then found it was limited in terms of listening and reporting so I started to look at a more professional software. I tried Hootsuite but hated the interface, way too busy with the primary focus being on feeds rather than scheduling. Sprout Social I found clunky and hard to use. eClincher was recommended to me by a friend. I think the interface (desktop and mobile) is easy to use but what sets it apart is its support - the live chat is brilliant.
At this time our marketing team does have and uses both Hootsuite and Tailwinds, but for Pinterest and blog management/analytics, Tailwind is superior. We chose tailwinds based on the excellent reviews and also the need we had to manage our creative outlets better.
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.
