Salesforce Social Studio vs Sprout Social

If you have to manage a great volume of mentions and you don't require a specific model of dashboard, or if you don't have the budget for a AI based platform, this is a very good option that could cover your needs. Also great if you have to manage a great volume of users and projects, to have the flexibility and agility to setup your own monitoring

Sprout [Social] is great for small businesses, small agencies and those who need a platform but don't want to spend a fortune. If you need multiple user log-in's, the cost will add up. This is great to share a log-in for different people to use or add one or two users

• The amount of the information that radian6 can pull from multiple social platforms is absolutely phenomenal. Its just not only the pull but the way the information can be presented in dashboards was way good. It helped us understand in various aspects of our social presence.
• Multiple profiles helped us to break down the Big/Huge social buzz cloud to smaller and more manageable pieces. This helped us concentrate on the lows and helped us to plan better on turning them to highs.
• Radian6 allowed us to follow thru the crowd trends with the latest information presented in a single view. This also helped us to collect the social opinion on the product releases.
• The ease of use, one need not be an expert to start using this platform. The interface is easily understandable by anyone.
• A keyword can be edited quickly to tailor the needs and the results were quick.

• The Landscape system that Sprout Social offers allows me to modify all the images that I want to publish on my social networks. This service allows me to modify the size of the image, add filters, modify the colors and much more, it is a very important tool to be able to have a better presentation of the images that we use in our publications on social networks.
• It offers me a perfect statistical system where I can consult all kinds of movements that have occurred in all my social networks, I can see statistics individually or generally. The statistics allow me to see group reports, participation, information on audience movement on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and also allow me to view the activity that has occurred in my account.
• Sprout Social allows me to view a record in real time that shows me all the movements that my social networks are having by my employees. As Director of the Marketing Sector, this is a very important role, as I can know what actions my employees are taking to improve marketing with social networks.

• Jack of all trades, master of none: OK so this might sound a bit harsh, but while the tool accomplished three similar functions competently, and all under one bonnet, the fact that none of them are outstanding in functionality and capability in my book that also counts as a weakness, regardless of the fact they are all combined in one software suite. It would seem that Salesforce needs to think more carefully about who the target user audience is here - publishers, sellers and marketers, or insight types who work with the content - it's a bit lacklustre in all three areas
• Simplicity vs total control: I mentioned previously that it has a very intuitive, accessible and 'simplistic' (in a good way) UI which makes getting to grips with the tool great for early adopters. BUT with this comes the downfall that it is rather simplistic, and the rich functionality that is available in other platforms is just not seen here. For example, the engagement scores for competitor brands (not client / owned brands) are not available, meaning you can't do deeper dive analysis on content performance for rival organizations. The ability to only export content in 90 day chunks is also frustrating
• For such a large organisation, think about how much support you're going to need from Salesforce. You might have to be prepared to wing it on your own

• I'd love to see more robust tag reporting capabilities, but they mentioned that this is something in the pipeline for improvement.
• I wish it was easier to batch content and shift it to approval or draft mode. Sometimes clients can change their mind and moving through each post individually can be a bit time consuming. This is a very minor thing.
• I'd love to see more customization options come to its reporting feature so we can insert graphics. Currently it supports the insertion of text only.

I spent a lot of time researching the right platform for me and our organisation (thanks to the other reviews on TrustRadius also). Having used other platforms when I found frustrations getting my everyday work done, I knew exactly what I wanted and this is why I chose Social Studio. While there have been a few hiccups, the quarterly update releases and the outstanding tech support have kept me more than happy.

While I am currently no longer working with the company in which I was employed and utilized Sprout Social, I do know that the company is still utilizing Sprout Social on a daily basis and I do not foresee a time when the subscription would be cancelled.

• Would rate this a 6. The User Interface is pretty intuitive, but the platform was still considered pretty intimidating by our non-technical staff when they first saw it. It took a while to get used to it and feel comfortable. There was quite a lot of setup work in the beginning (for example, we had to build our own reports using a canned report as a template, and this was not simple). Although it took a while to get it setup correctly, it’s quite intuitive once that work has been done.

Sprout Social is extremely user-friendly. The publishing feature is easy to use, and provides previews of what your content will look like once posted. I also love the calendar view where you can view all posts you have scheduled for the month. The collaborative nature of the platform makes working directly in Sprout Social with clients a breeze, and we are seeing our content get approved much faster.

The platform is rarely down

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.

No issues with performance.

It is quick to post, however you have to refresh the page every time you add a new scheduled item.

I don't remember having to reach out to support quite often when working with Radian6. However, before I started in that position working with the platform, my manager relayed to me that the customer support for Radian6 and Salesforce overall was quick and efficient, and that they usually got back to him within a day or so

Sprout Social's customer support is extremely prompt and always helpful. Not only do they provide quick and useful service, but the representatives follow up multiple times to ensure that the issue is fully address and/or completely resolved. The overall experience is exemplary; very few other companies provide comparable service.

• We initially received dedicated online training for our team which was delivered by our account rep. This was pretty effective since it happened after our data had been loaded into the system and it had been configured for specific needs our organization. The training was perhaps a bit shallow though, as it was only an hour long. Online videos are available to be taken individually, and these have been useful.

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

Implementation was pretty simple. Just a matter of giving the account rep a list of our search terms and having him set the system up to pull the data we wanted to see. Once this had been done, we tweaked it with his help. Process was pretty smooth, although there was some back and forth until it worked the way we wanted.

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.

We do not make the decision for tools in most cases, however Social Studio does out-weigh all other tools on the Social Listening aspect. It is not just key-words the way most tools are. This also allows you to personalize the source, including magazines, forums etc web-wide. It also allows you to narrow down geographical information and languages.

I used Buffer previous to Sprout Social for two years. It was a good solution as we were getting a handle on scheduling content. It was the first real tool we had for this. But we outgrew it and they began removing features that were critical to our workflow, such as the RSS Feed. While their 50% off policy for non-profits was very helpful, once we started adding up the cost to use features like Replies and Analytics, we discovered that our needs were simply too robust for Buffer to handle. Sprout Social was the solution suggested by all our peers and we've been very happy with it ever since.

• I would actually say that Radian6 decreased our efficiency as a team because it took so much time and effort to train people on how to use it.
• Radian6 helped us understand the overall sentiment of our brand. This gave us great insight and helped us structure our online customer service strategy.

• Sprout has given insights to lead our creative refreshes every quarter. As we have a healthy budget on paid social, it is crucial to understand the type of creative that works best.
• Sprout has the ability to send notifications based on certain types of messages received. This is crucial for social media teams who don't have 24/7 coverage but need to be notified of urgent matters.
• Sprout has saved me hours of time as I no longer pull analytics natively from each social platform. The generated reports give me a look at all of the platforms and can be customized.