March 18, 2015
Review: "Why YOU should check out Sprout Social!"
Support
10
TrustRadius
https://media.trustradius.com/product-logos/Sh/i0/UB2ZWQ2XJ8XW.PNGSprout SocialWhy YOU should check out Sprout Social!2013-10-26T21:09:59.932ZI absolutely love the Sprout Social's customer service - it's phenomenal! You can always reach a person 24/7 and get a speedy response via email, chat support, phone or even by tweeting to them. I feel pretty sure that at one point, Carolyn (one of their AWESOME customer service reps - she also wears other hats!) was pretty familiar with my name!
The dashboard is extremely user-friendly and makes the product extremely easy to use. Although it's rare I have a question about using the dashboard, customer service is always there immediately if I do!
Sprout Social is constantly improving their product. I love using their services because I know that this isn't as good as it's going to get (although pretty awesome) - but that they will always continue to one-up themselves! They grasp that social is constantly changing - and they want to provide the best services for their customers as possible.
Another awesome thing about Sprout is their app! It's also very user-friendly and comes quite in handy when I'm live-tweeting events for the university. It's definitely extremely helpful in keeping up with our multiple social accounts when I'm traveling, which is frequently.,One of the big things that Sprout Social is lacking is better Twitter analytics. While they do provide great information for my analytics reports, I still feel that they could be pulling in additional data that would be extremely beneficial to users.
I really wish that Sprout Social gave users the ability to manage additional social platforms, such as LinkedIn and Pinterest. This would be immensely helpful!
Sometimes when I archive messages in my inbox (and I typically average 100-150 a day, if not more), these messages will pop back up in my inbox either later that afternoon or weeks from when the original message was archived. I opened up my inbox this summer and found messages from February that had been previously archived!,9,3,My Sprout Social inbox is never closed, so when I hear a notification I check it immediately. Working in higher education, I'm managing multiple top-level accounts for the university, and Sprout makes it possible for all of that information to come to one place and helps me to quickly respond to people as soon as I receive notification!
Sprout Social definitely contributes to my efficiency. Being able to manage, schedule and respond all from one place instead of logging into multiple social accounts is extremely helpful and saves time.,8,1,10,Yes,One time my analytics reports were not reading accurately, so I called and Carolyn responded and began to help me address the issue. After thorough explanation of my problem, she let me know that they were looking at my account and would be in touch shortly about this issue as soon as they looked at the specific problem. I received an email in 15 minutes, saying that the problem has now been fixed, and they asked if I could please check on my analytics reports to make sure the problem was resolved. I did indeed check, the problem was resolved, and I emailed them back to let them know. I told Carolyn to have a great weekend in my email, and although she did not have any further information concerning my account, I received another email from her to wish me a good weekend, too! I appreciated the kind gesture.,Scheduling posts with Sprout Social is extremely easy! I'm also happy that I have the ability to schedule a post to Google+, if necessary.
I love the analytics reports - the colors used make it easy on the eyes to read, while still being aesthetically pleasing.,Archiving messages in the inbox can be difficult at times. I receive a large volume almost daily, and sometimes after archiving and clearing my inbox, those same messages will pop up in my inbox later that day. I've also had a situation where I checked my inbox this past summer and had messaged from February that had been previously archived!,Yes,9Olivia Ann HurstWhat is the best Social Media management solution?2014-04-12T19:49:36.389ZI began searching for a Social Media Management and Monitoring tool when I realized that I was finding it increasingly difficult to create the content, manage the outgoing messages and also monitor our social media venues effectively. It came down to Sprout Social. It is being used by the Marketing Department, specifically the Social Media group.,Simple to understand visual reports: the kind you can just SEND to managers, without the need to EXPLAIN what they mean :)
A robust scheduling platform so you can arrange the content for the week according to your publishing topics and still be allowed to manually intervene when/if needed
Being cloud-based and also available for smartphones and tablets allows for reliability: you'll always have some form of access to your material and venues, no matter where you are.
When we first started using SproutSocial they were still showing the "posted via" signature on Facebook, now it is gone. So the experience users see and live is made to look like it just came from a human, not by a scheduled machine, which is a great personal touch.
With LinkedIn Pages support in the building, they'll surely add another important platform to their portfolio.,Add YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr
Offer a freemium model,10,1,Cut down budget for having multiple persons on specific digital venues
Better employer branding as we manage all of our job offers through Facebook too
Allows for a proper corporate presence on social media, making sure that each (supported) venue is covered,,10,1,live feed from our events (Twitter, Facebook)
managing our daily social media feeds
nline contests: we are able to calculate the time-stamp of any message, based on the publish time we set in SproutSocial for each,I still remember the face of our Marketing Director when I showed him the smart inbox and all those mentions of us :)
I was also surprised by the multiple use of the word "iQuest" out there. So many websites and digital venues were using it and Sprout Social discovered them :),add teams and allocate specialists: one person for Twitter, one for Facebook etc. They can all work in the same app but on specific venues they are best at using.,No,Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Third-party Reviews,Would not chnage anything,Implemented in-house,No,Change management was minimal,nothing significant,10,Online training,10,10,Yes,Yes, it was 1-2AM, I was preparing for a meeting the next day where I had to present the past 6 months for all digital venues. I remember planning the design of the reports and then it hit me: I could just easily use the amazing designed PDF reports Sprout Social was producing and show them those. Great choice! Went back to sleep and nailed it the next day in the meeting room.,reporting
smart inbox,keywords (would rather have a drop-down where I can select my own variations/combinations, then write things like "keyword -from @username etc),Yes,10,8,10,10,10,Method of payment,Try to be honest and true about your business and objectives. They will not try to upsell crap to you, so the more you open in an initial approach and let them know your needs, th ebetter your profile will be matched against a solution that vest fits your needs.Valentin VesaSprout Social is a top-notch SMMS2013-10-29T15:01:27.150ZSprout has an excellent support system. When we submit a ticket, a representative responds typically within an hour. They're even reachable by phone.
Sprout's analytics are easy to understand for newbies to social media metrics. It strikes a great balance between advanced users and beginners.
The RSS reader and bitly integration is fantastic and convenient!,It would be great to see additional platform support, like Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. I know Sprout is limited by each platform's API though.,9,Sprout gives its customers a true look at their social performance. Instead of pulling numbers from organic searches and within each platform, Sprout compiles the data into digestible percentages.
The teams and task functions allow for easy management of other users, which is wonderful from a social media team standpoint.,9,8,No,Yes! Just the other day, a colleague was having problems with connecting to Sprout. Within twenty minutes a Sprout rep had fixed the issue. Great experience.,8Ryan CollinsSprout Social Has Plenty of Room for Growth2013-10-26T22:40:11.198ZSprout allows me to schedule all of my Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+ posts (including photos) from the Messaging module.
Sprout also allows me to use an RSS Feed to push blog posts to my Twitter account automatically.
With the discovery tool, Sprout allows me to search for new customers with keywords or phrases.
"Cleanup" allows me to see which Twitter users are inactive and who isn't following back so I can prioritize who to engage with.
The Twitter Comparison tool allows me to compare my twitter account to competitor accounts, allowing me to keep an eye on what kind of content engages our market the most.,Sprout might see a vast increase in their number of clients if they implemented the ability to link a Pinterest account. Also, (and I know I'm reaching really far with this one), if Sprout paired up with Pinterest and implemented a batch upload tool for Pins in their scheduling module-I would do so much happy dancing. SO MUCH DANCING.
Facebook Reports: Vague. For example, on my current facebook report I see "Facebook Impressions" and beneath that, the word "Check-In" and the number 2.2k. What is a Facebook Check-In? How does that information help me? Perhaps developers could take a look at implementing the new Facebook Insights into the SS reports. Here's what I want to know when I see my report--Who shares and likes our content the most? Who should I reach out to? Let me link Facebook contests so I can get a specific report on how the contest is doing and how many fans we're engaging.
Twitter Reports: Also vague. I want to see who shares our content the most. I see how many mentions and retweets I received, but that just strokes my ego. What I want to know is--who should I keep reaching out to and engaging with and who am I annoying? ;)
Google Analytics: Doesn't show correct information. Mine doesn't allow me to plug in a date past March 13, 2013 for report purposes. It also continues to tell me that it "doesn't have any data for me yet." Could be a glitch on my end though so I can't say fairly either way.
LinkedIn and Google+: I don't personally use LinkedIn or Google+ very much, but it makes sense to me that if you're offering reports for Facebook and Twitter, perhaps reports should be included for those two platforms as well.
It'd be great to add Facebook and Linkedin to the Discovery section so we're not just limited to finding new Twitter users. Also, it would be amazing if, when new people were suggested as connections for us, their Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and/or Pinterest accounts were all available as options to follow/like/connect with in just a few clicks. That might be a little too creepy to implement, but it would be soooo nice. ;)
Currently, the RSS Feed can only push my blog content to Twitter and it would be really great if I had the option to push it to Facebook and/or to Google+ and LinkedIn as well. (And Pinterest. Am I pushing too much? Pin-ter-est. Pin-ter-est. Pin-ter-est!) *Really though, Pinterest drives five times the traffic of all other social media platforms to our website. It just makes sense to get in on it!)
Why is there no Facebook comparison tool?,5,1,Ultimately, I only use SS to push my blog posts to my twitter account. I stay on with them because I like the design and user-friendliness of SS the most. I'm also very interested to see if and how they keep growing. I have high hopes for them.,,7,1,Scheduling posts across multiple social media platforms ahead of time.
Pushing blog posts to Twitter.
Finding new connections on Twitter.,Pushing our blog posts to Twitter.,If Sprout Social implements any ideas from my review, there will be a HUGE number of ways that I will be able to ue Sprout Social. (pssssst, PINTEREST!!!!),Yes,Price
Product Features
Product Usability,I wouldn't. The only way that I can get a feel for any product is to sit down and use it for a while, so I'm happy with the process.,Implemented in-house,No,Change management was minimal,No issues at all. I purchased it and started using it right away. Linking my accounts was super simple and I was able to start scheduling posts immediately.,10,No,10,No,When I first thought about signing up, I had questions about the different types of accounts offered. I called and spoke with one of their support members, who walked me through the different types and worked with to figure out which would be best from what I needed. She was super helpful and patient and I felt better about moving forward with my purchase after that conversation.,All of the functions are very easy to use.,None,Yes, but I don't use it,10Michelle HebertClean, concise and reliable - Sprout Social is where it's at2013-10-25T18:51:20.053ZOne of the first things I noticed about Sprout was its extremely reliable publishing module. It never faltered in the 18+ months that I've used, and is easy to navigate to for updating already scheduled tweets (for example).
The reporting module is beautiful. Very clear findings on the exact items I look to report on - plus the export to pdf function is really cool.
I actually really like Sprout Social's blog and social messaging. Not salesy and provides value to my research and trend watching. Whoever is managing their community does a great job at coming across as authentic, vs. just trying to get people to sign up for their webinar.,I've always hoped to have a better friend/follower function on Sprout. I like being able to see who's not following back, or who is idle, but in more of a batch setting vs. the long scrolling list they have now. Just the ability to clean house a little better
Sometimes swithcing between users/accounts is tricky - it isn't always obvious to me what data i'm looking at for which client so that can sometimes be a little nerve wracking. Maybe just a clearer client/user toggle than the small area in the top right.,Improved customer service for sure. It's definitely a good homebase for all channels, and keeps everything much more organized which means more efficiency.
A couple of my clients noticed immediate uptick in ROI, I credit this to our kickoff of their social media programs, of which Sprout is a huge tool to make it happen with. So yes, it has definitely reached many business objectives,8,10,2,1,Editorial calendaring is so important, so being able to look at all of our content at a glance is a huge need that Sprout fills
Customer support. I'll say it again, Sprout has great customer support. If something happens they're right there, even during "off" hours (which there aren't really any of those anymore).,A great tool for event activation, the tool is extremely organized so even if you're not you'll have your ducks lined up with a little help from Sprout friends.,I hope to use Sprout to eventually do heavier outreach with writers. I'm hoping some sort of feature will come out with a facet associated with this.,Yes,,Price
Product Features
Product Usability,I wouldn't do it over, and I'm sure just like many others I still use other tools along side Sprout. I don't feel that i spent too much time shopping around - things are always changing anyway so by this time next year it may be Sprout, it may be someone else - but I'm very loyal so I'm rooting for them. :),Vendor implemented
Implemented in-house,No,Change management was minimal,8,Yes,10,Yes,Yes. When first establishing the account for a non profit I worked with last year, I was told we would receive a discounted rate because of a certain promotion. The next month saw our invoice and that particular promo had not been applied to the total amount, I called to inform and not only was the discount immediately taken off they also included their non profit discount which made a huge impact on the cost of the product year over year.,Reporting: great pdf export w/ client logo add on.
Ggreat social messaging scheduler.
Customer support is pretty instantaneous.,Just toggling between accounts/users. Sometimes it isn't super obvious what data I'm reviewing (if I've left and come back) and have todouble check using the drop down in the top right.,Yes,10Lisa Kribs-LaPierreSolid for Agency Use2013-10-24T14:55:34.711ZI especially liked Sprout Social's ability to organize your followers into categories, such as Twitter users who aren't very active. This allows a brand to weed out inactive users.
Sprout Social's reports are basic, especially when compared to reports from Simply Measured. But they lay out solid information in a very attractive package, and the data is exportable and customizable.
Scheduling posts across mulitple networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+) is simple, and the "Publishing" tab gives a nice outline of all your scheduled posts.
You can easily view your "history" with another Twitter user, not just a a recent conversation.,Reports are basic, and social networks like Instagram and YouTube are not included. If in-depth reporting is a need, you'll want to look elsewhere.,Brand engagement.
Customer service.,7,7,2,Scheduling posts.
Reporting.
Monitoring.,,Implemented in-house,7,Self-taught,Yes, though I'm sure there's plenty the Sprout Social team could show you that would be worth your time.,No,7,8,8,8Bryden McGrathDon't Doubt Sprout2014-01-14T01:20:45.843ZTracking keywords.
Cross platform analysis.
Great GUI.
User friendly and easy to get into.,The ability to monitor activities on a wider number of social media outlets.
The ability to cross-post to a wider number of social media outlets.,Much better customer service.
Better experience for the customers
More involvement with customers from both the business end and customer end.,10,10,1,1,Customer interaction.
Customer experience improvement.
Brand building with efficiency in mind.
Staying informed of customer opinions.
Staying informed of brand placement within the customer eye.,Again, customer experience was rated very high.
Keep tabs on our online presence.
Keep tabs on how our brand had developed over time through the various social media outlets.,Greater variety of social media outlets to post to.
Maintain a growing customer base without losing control.
Embed coupons if this feature is ever enabled.,No,Hootsuite,Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation
Vendor Reputation
Analyst Reports
Third-party Reviews,I would have done more research into various products/services including third party services but would've ended up using Sprout Social in the end because of its capabilities combined with its ease of use.,Implemented in-house,No,Change management was minimal,Only setting it up with a limited number of networks.,10,No,10,No,During my trial run. Sprout Social customer service made sure to walk me through it and follow up with me to see how I was doing with it.,cross platform posting
cross platform monitoring
creating charts for analysis,lack of media networks integrated
none!
none!,Yes, but I don't use it,10Steven WeitzmanSproutSocial — Stick to Reporting for a Satisfying Experience2013-08-13T23:15:45.848ZSproutSocial provides highly detailed, visual PDF reports that answer all of your key social media analytics questions in one location. For us, this is invaluable as it's the dashboard of choice we use to show progress and results to all clients.,Social media scheduling is extremely bulky and time-consuming. Lightweight tools like Buffer for scheduling are much more convenient and efficient, even after the time it takes to switch tools.
It is not a one-size-fits-all-dashboard because the interface takes too much time to load most features — the functionality that allows users to find people to follow and connect with is slow and ineffective, and managing any type of back-and-forth communication is very frustrating. You are going to use multiple platforms if you use SproutSocial.,Since implementing SproutSocial, we have been able to clearly tie social media initiatives to ROI for our internal marketing efforts as well as for those of our clients. Between measuring all of the social media-specific metrics within SproutSocial, we have supplemented conversion monitoring with Argyle Social to show a clear social media attribution path.,8,8,1,1,Social media reporting.
Social media scheduling.
Social media management.
Finding followers on social media.
Social media analytics.
Social media dashboard.,,,Implemented in-house,10,Online training
Self-taught,9,Yes, it's pretty intuitive in terms of what is where and how to use the platform.,10,6,10,5,Google Analytics
Twitter
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn,Argyle Social,Lizzie MaldonadoSprout Social is A Member of Our Marketing Team2013-10-23T19:15:03.366ZCreates visually appealing, clear analytics reports.
Easy to organize, publish, and edit across multiple clients and users.
Great for finding new audience members that may like the content.,You cannot respond to comments/responses through the platform.
Cannot upload videos to post.
Can only manage certain types of accounts.,Able to monitor and provide substantiated reports to clients.
Easy to manage multiple clients and teams.,9,7,6,1,Create and publish content, and manage social accounts on behalf of a number of clients.
Monitor and document analytics.
It aids in outreach and monitoring conversations to enter our client into.,,Implemented in-house,8,Self-taught,Yes, it's fairly intuitive and has a similar UX to other social platforms.,8,7,7,7,Facebook
Twitter
Google +,LinkedIn,,I am not sure.Sarah ZibanejadradData analysis inadequate for an agency.2013-02-22T17:08:45.307ZIt is a good overall social media analytics tool. It has basic data but it doesn't drill down to our specific needs, and it doesn't have the ability to deliver custom reports with hard data.
It certainly has some nice features (e.g. search) and is probably an effective tool for corporate social media managers.,It doesn't go deep in to data analysis: In order to supply our clients with the kind of data they wanted to see, we were still obliged to export data from the system into Excel and spend valuable time creating appropriate reports to share with clients.
We really needed a tool where we could build custom reports and provide our clients with access to those reports by logging into the system. Sprout does not offer this kind of "agency" functionality.
We also needed to compare changes in metrics across specific time periods. Sprout does not offer this functionality.,Better insights analysis for our online and social media data. Improvement on decision making,1,4,4,1,Social Media Analytics: Our main business problem was being able to provide our clients with proof-points that the social engagement efforts we were making on their behalf were, in fact, effective. The overriding issue was to provide customized metrics showing engagement through content click-throughs etc.,,,Professional services company,6,Self-taught,The product is fairly easy to use and has a good user interface, so it's not difficult to learn.,Yes,4,6,7,7,,There isn't any room for negotiationsVerified UserGood, simple publishing tool.2012-12-05T23:16:30.036ZSprout is a decent publishing tool. It is easy to use and understand, so communicating is relatively painless. There are more sophisticated tools out there, like Spredfast and Hootsuite, but Sprout is good enough for simple needs. Some features that are lacking are robust editorial control, which more involved organizations may need.,The listening aspect is not detailed enough. I wanted to have more specific streams such as listening to specific people in addition to listening to my accounts and keywords.
The reporting is lacking in Sprout. It is not detailed enough to truly understand the specific kinds of engagement happening.,My clients could easily tell the difference in the time they spent communicating to their social channels. Previously, they were managing their communication directly in the social networks. That meant they had a shared username and password among several employees. They also had to spend a longer period of time each day to decide what to communicate, when it would be communicated and which of them was going to do it. With Sprout, they were able to plan communications in advance and even write them as a team, setting the publishing for a later date. That saved planning time was valuable and it freed my clients up to do their other work.,7,7,3,1,Social Communication - Publishing information such as event details, inspirational content, and student work to my client's social accounts
Social Listening - Listening to the social conversation about my client and their industry, so that we could participate in the conversation,No,,Implemented in-house,8,Self-taught,Sprout was quite easy to use. I have a lot of familiarity with SMMS software, so I may not be the typical user.,Essentially, this means accessing your social accounts, configuring users, and creating listening streams.,No,,6,10,9,CRM systems and Email programs,,None. This is essentially an online subscription.Verified UserAffordable and effective.2012-11-30T20:46:20.368ZIt's a great tool. It just depends on the needs of the user. I think Sprout Social has an affordable pricing structure and offers basic but organized information on social media accounts which can be incredibly helpful.,Sometimes it's difficult to drill down into deeper analytics.,I can manage the accounts more effectively and I save time on collecting information on how different accounts are performing.,7,8,1,1,Social Media Management and Measurement,,,Implemented in-house,8,Self-taught,I thought it was intuitive but they do offer webinars if you need help learning the tool as well as someone who will walk you through the features.,8,10,8,9,More with Omniture analytics instead of just Google Analytics,,Just know that you need to figure out the admin situation so budget for that accordingly.Verified UserNo real presentation layer.2012-11-12T21:51:39.065ZSprout allows us to easily track most of the metrics we care about for weekly presentation to senior management. It does this very well.,Sprout doesn’t do everything well. For example, it can’t show the growth of Facebook fans over time (snapshots of stats from the past). It can only show how many fans you have now.
The software cannot track blog shares as it doesn’t integrate with WordPress. We use Add this to track how many people share or blog content.
It is also unable to track how many people came to the site using the share buttons. Cannot tell whether came to site via a social property. Can’t tell how many people clicked a Twitter link.
No real presentation layer. All the data has to be manually exported to Excel to produce a report. I would be nice to have some kind of automated report builder capability.
Prefer Hootsuite publishing UI.,Now we can track everything which is something we could not do before. We can prove to upper management that we are having an impact increasing impressions. Show what’s trending up. If there is a spike or dip, we explain why. If anything interesting happens, we share with management. The most important things we are able to demonstrate using the tool are:
Get more people to know who we are (impressions)
Build our image as though leader in space. Metrics around sharing of relevant articles are critical. We want people follow us to find interesting data and to see us as a media company. It’s not just a matter of talking about ourselves all the time.,9,8,2,Before we got a tool, there was no reliable way to measure audience size. We had do things like count the number of re-tweets manually. We had no way to track impressions, or mentions or to track how many people clicked a link. Sprout allowed us to track everything and save an enormous amount of time.
Bazaarvoice has 3 Twitter accounts, and 1 Facebook account. Sporut Social is used to track a wide range of metrics in Sprout to ensure that marketing strategy is successful:
Audience size (# of Twitter followers / conversation rate)
Number of Twitter mentions of BV
Facebook impressions (# of times a follower sees a BV post)
Amplification rate (Twitter re-tweets)
Applause (FB likes and shares).
We do not use Sprout to measure blog shares or viral lift (# of times our content is shared to a social network compared to # of times content is clicked). Sprout cannot track this, so we use AddThis to track these metrics.
Also do not use Sprout for publishing (automated posting to FB and Twitter) because I prefer the Hootsuite publishing user interface. I had used Hootsuite for publishing in the past and really like how easy it is to use. Looks a little better than Sprout.,,Self-taught,My manager trained me, but I figured it out by myself by just by playing around No formal training required.,No,9,9,10Verified User
Unspecified
Sprout Social
279 Ratings
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