Gremln is a St. Louis startup offering basic publishing platform for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. One area of focus is compliance. The platform includes a compliance package that includes approval workflow, keyword filtering, and message archiving. They are also currently working on a Listening / Sentiment Analysis module.
Gremln offers a basic free edition and paid plans start at $6 / moth and go up to $99 / month.
$6
per month
Sprout Social
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Sprout Social provides social media management, marketing, customer care, data and intelligence, and employee advocacy solutions for brands and agencies, including Ticketmaster, Chipotle, Grubhub, Subaru, and Zendesk. Sprout’s platform is used to simplify social publishing, engagement, reviews, analytics and listening for customers. Sprout also provides customer success and technical support, to deliver consistent value to all users. Any organization, regardless of size or industry, receives…
I think that Grmln works best for small businesses that are not in position to hire a brand management company or specialist. They can still feel in touch with the purpose because they are still personally involved in the messaging. It best suited for businesses that have less than 7 social media platforms for their company.
IMO it's best for an organization that has a lot of different people working on social media. They could be in different departments or just different members of the same team responsible for different types of posts (corporate, e-commerce, branding, etc.). I don't think it's as vital for a one-person team working solely within the Meta platform, for instance, especially if they're less concerned with detailed analytics.
This product is good at publishing. It is very easy to use. It allows me to publish in real time quickly, and I can publish on a schedule if I like. Participating in the conversation is important for staying engaged with existing and potential customers,
For each account, customize posts for each platform, and schedule them to go live simultaneously.
Employee Advocacy via Sprout Social has integrated AI assistance for captions. Usually I would generate one suggested caption for employees to use/stem from when re-sharing to their socials. But now, EA message ideas display in random orders to better promote the full range of content.
Sprout Social has made the option to gamify the sharing concept quite easily with Employee Advocacy. Using the Leaderboard feature, employees can earn points in Employee Advocacy. Customized point values ensure you know how to climb the Leaderboard and start some friendly competition.
Social media platforms don't always play nice with Sprout so it will always be a challenge to get all integrations to work properly.
Sprout Social is a growing organization and they are acquiring new technologies, which can be good. However, they often spend time in meetings upselling new services. I like to learn about enhancements and opportunities but prefer to focus on my investments first.
The pro version is cheap. It is relatively easy to use. The recurring tweets are very helpful and not many other services offer that. It is worth paying the monthly price for this feature alone.
I like Sprout for our needs and I like that it is easy to use. We want something better than HootSuite but don't need a high-level fancy program. The only think I don't like is customer service (except for chat).
The usability on the listening side is poor. The process to set up streams is not very intuitive, involving too many steps. Also, the ability to create custom search streams is fairly well hidden. The reporting is pretty weak as well, with separate click through reports from other types of engagement, and a lot of engagement types within Facebook and Twitter are simply missing.
Sprout Social's ease of use and navigation throughout the technology are relatively easy to figure out and teach. We also had a representative thoroughly walk us through the features and functionality to set us up for success in using the platform. I didn’t give it a ten because there were times when the navigation didn’t make sense, but once you figured out the quirks, it didn’t cause any trouble.
Uptime was OK, but given the fact that we are in Europe, there were some specific problems: They tended to take the system down for maintenance during the night in the US, which was during our workday. This was definitely problematic and hard to explain to our clients.
Sprout Social's customer support is extremely responsive. They're also always looking for suggestions on how they can make the product better and will actually take your ideas to their team to see if they're worth implementing. I've never had an issue that couldn't be resolved by them in a timely manner.
Their training is good, but the promotion of it is even better. I don't need or have the time for training, but I was always happy to know it was there. They did a great job sending updates out and making me aware when there was a new feature that I may want training for. As for the training I never used it, so I can't comment on that
Make sure you do it all the way. Do not break it into phases. Pour yourself a coffee, start it in the morning and you'll be done before you finish that coffee.
I have used both Hootesuite, Twitterscope and Grmln. Using the individualized brand platform (Twitterscope) still meant that had to separately post to my other networks. Hootesuite is comparable and the only thing that really makes it standout is the the social media management certification. The downside of that is that you have to pay continue to pay a monthly fee to maintain the certification. Grmln is simply easier to use
We are constantly exploring our options and looking for the most cutting-edge products that suit our needs as a business. Sprout ticked the boxes for what we needed when it was time for a change. Both are powerful tools, and you can only see by doing.
One positive impact has been a huge time saver for our team. Where we once had multiple systems and delays from producing content to approval to publishing, now everything is seamless.
Another positive impact is streamlining the onboarding process for new team members. Sprout Social is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy to study even for someone completely new to social media.
One negative impact has been the time it takes to wade through irrelevant social listening posts. The filtering is not effective enough to eliminate the noise.
