Shoutlet (Discontinued) vs. Vista Social

I think Shoutlet is an excellent tool for any mid-sized to larger company looking to improve their social strategy. While it does have some minor improvements that can be made, it's overall an impressive way to mass post to multiple networks and interact and engage with your followers in the social space. I feel at this time that a smaller company could probably benefit from a lesser in-depth version of this tool at this time

Incentivized

When I need to schedule a full week of posts for multiple clients. the calendar view makes it fast and clear. When a client sends last-minute edits, I can quickly reschedule or update posts by dragging them in the calendar. When I’m short on time I use the AI tools to generate quick captions and adjust them to fit the brand voice. When I manage comments and DMs I reply to everything from one inbox, without switching platforms. When planning content, I use Canva inside Vista Social and publish directly, which saves a lot of time.

• The ability to manage and publish to various social accounts from one platform. This feature helped us to have a cohesive social strategy and saved us a lot of time having to go back and forth between accounts.
• The module that allowed us to build contests and custom landing pages was perhaps my favorite part. For the contests, it proved to be ultra convenient to be able to build, host and run social promotions through the same platform that housed our social accounts and lists. From a landing-page-design standpoint, it was also wonderful and time-effective for each individual department to be able to build professional and dynamic pages themselves rather than tasking it to our web designers who really didn't have the time.
• I was also very pleased with the customer service we received from the Shoulet team. From the original demo, to the training sessions, all the way through to back-end service maintenance, everyone we dealt with was available, accommodating and friendly. Not entirely common in this day in age.

Incentivized

• The design and layout of the site is simple, with the options to click through the different tools on the left hand side of the page. What I liked most about Vista Social is the ability to combine all the different tools that a social media manager needs into one platform.
• I typically use various different apps and platforms to write down notes, assign tasks to different team members, and look at my overall content calendar for the month. It is brilliant that Vista Social is able to combine all of these into one platform.
• When first signing up to Vista Social and exploring the platform, each page offers you a walkthrough of all of the tools available to you, which is really handy, as well as a customer support section on the right bottom hand corner.

• I would like to see Shoutlet improve the usability of their "Shoutlet Profiles" module. It has improved over time, but I would like to see more individual user metrics such as affinity, time spent engaged per user, and monthly interactions by user.
• I would also like to see Shoutlet redesign their "manage urls" module and URL shortener. The shortener works well, but I would like the interface to be more user friendly, and be able to access it throughout the rest of the tool. Perhaps in a slide out drawer.
• Unfortunately, Shoutlet does not offer a Pin scheduling tool at this time. This would be a HUGE asset for them to have.

• I think the price is quite high compared to hiring a person for the same task. This may put one off from purchasing as with a bit more time you can do the same job yourself or with an employee for much less
• In my opinion, the interface is rather complicated visually and doesn't have an appeal. It is cramped with so many features that provide a sense of confusion whilst starting off
• In my experience, the tutorials do leave a few questions afterwards regarding set up and this can take more time to figure out by yourself.

While I do not have direct control over the renewal of our contract, I am definitely lobbying to not only renew the contract, but expand our contract with Shoutlet to include more of our company's accounts in our Shoutlet account for the many reasons already stated. By pulling all of our accounts, pages and platforms into one media management tool, we'll be able to better serve our fans, members, patients and employees. It will cut down time it takes for us to post across our entire company's breadth of social media options while sharing more easily between locations and entities. For medium and large scale enterprises, Shoutlet is hard to beat.

Very effective, efficient and an integral part of our daily work. Our team members are more productive and motivated to finish projects.

While some things do require a little training, a quick phone training session or reading an online guide usually suffices. I've never needed multiple training sessions for any part of Shoutlet. As someone with very little coding/programming background (read: absolutely none), I am always able to accomplish what is needed without feeling over my head or needing help.

Since the platform is user-friendly and easy to navigate, start using it and making content creation feel effortless. The dashboard and each module for content management and creation it has the visual hierarchies in place. Building, customizing and exporting reports to PDF facilitate the journey with the clients. Its overall usability is well rounded for such large and powerful tool.

In general, the software works really well. I get weird errors for time to time. Tech Therapy does a great job helping when things go awry

I feel that the level of support I get from Shoutlet is far beyond the level of support I've received from other companies in a variety of services. It would be nice to have a regular update from Tech Therapy that lists out any potential bugs they're working to fix for the various browsers they support. Sometimes I wonder if I'm experiencing an issue simply because I use Firefox vs. Chrome.

Shoutlet is infinitely more advanced than SocialMadeSimple. It is a much more complex and in-depth platform. We actually changed to SocialMadeSimple after Shoutlet and I miss how easy to use and advanced it was in comparison. It was a money decision but if they were the same price, I would absolutely insist we go back

Incentivized

It's reasonably priced compared to others and offers more capabilities for creating and implementing marketing campaigns. For example, social listening, reputation management, and employee advocacy are all tools it has that I haven't found in the previous ones. It also supports all marketing campaigns, not just social media.

• Allows our small staff to provide our clients with world-class service and data.
• Exponentially improved fan base expansion for our clients.
• Rapid response for customer service issues for clients - allowing us to help our clients prevent their social media presence from becoming the Complaint Department, rather a true community of fans and supporters of a brand.

• The DM automation feature means we're not missing out on important messages when we're off the clock (after hours essentially), which is a huge advantage in hospitality where response time is everything.
• In most cases, time is money, and being able to manage all our platforms from one place has cut down hours of switching between apps and tabs. That in itself has boosted our company's productivity and allowed the team to respond faster to guests and potential leads.
• The real-time insights and mentions helps us tweak content and react to trends quicker, which has increased our visibility and bookings.