A seamless solution for busy social media managers
May 26, 2015

A seamless solution for busy social media managers

Nicole Swanson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Social Studio

Social Studio allows us to manage publishing, moderations and enquiries on our social media channels. We are also able to listen to conversations about our brand on other public social media channels. The reporting features allow us to analyse our efforts on our own channels and keep track of conversations on external channels. The ability to create numerous user accounts with different access levels and assign engage or publish access, along with approval rules for publishing really helps share the load for social media content creation. The ability to assign enquiries to other users and follow up on workflow through the system is also extremely useful in managing customer service workflow.
  • Superior publishing platform with the ability to share workspaces and content calendars between users
  • Seamless integration with external tools like Google Analytics and bit.ly allow for content creation in one place
  • Engagement of all channels in one place with he ability to assign enquiries to other team members and follow up on progress
  • Superior data collection from major social channels, as well as blogs, forums and mainstream news sites
  • Performance alanysis for own channels and the ability to create dashboards for reporting
  • Some channels not supported yet (Instagram for example) and content from Facebook events is not captured
  • Customisable, and exportable reports still not available in the analyze component of Social Studio - some reporting still needs to be done in Radian6
  • Can't tag people in responses, or tag people/pages in posts for Facebook yet (this means we still schedule some content direct to FB if this is needed)
50 - As people in the organisation find out about features available in Social Studio, more people are requesting access.

Staff in our marketing, communications and media teams access Social Studio to provide content for publishing to our platforms. Staff from our IT and web services teams use the platform to listen to conversations regarding their services and provide responses accordingly. A team of customer support staff have access to respond to assigned posts.
  • Improved employee efficiency due to the ability to work across teams in-platform
  • Improved reporting functionality allowing for transparency in performance
  • Advanced sentiment and keyword tracking allowing for in-depth analysis of brand or competitor conversations
  • Meltwater Buzz,Hootsuite Free,social pulse
Social studio is far superior to any other platforms I've used because everything is seamlessly integrated, the UI is amazing and the platform is user friendly. The ability to work in teams, in shared workspaces, with shared calendars, the ability to share content across workspaces and see the performance of content is fantastic. The engagement side is also very superior. Enquiries can be assigned using macros which make the job much less manual. Enquiries can be assigned to any user for following up and workflow is tracked simply with the ability for users to write notes within the platform. Reporting is also superior to other platforms and is continually being improved. Technical support is also highly effective and efficient.
It looks good, is easy to use and totally customisable to individual users. It does everything I need in one place. I spend many hours of everyday in this platform and I still like it!
I am able to contact support directly via email rather than through an account manager. I get a support auto response immediately with a case number. I usually get an initial response from a support person via email within a 24 hour period and then if it's not resolved quickly I get further phone of email support until the matter resolved. I always get an email asking if I am happy with the resolution before the case is closed.
If there is only one person managing social media within the organisation, then the features of social studio would be under-utilised and therefor the cost may be unwarranted. But if you have anyone else supporting customer service or content creation, this is a great platform.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring) Feature Ratings

Boolean keyword searches
10
Filtering out noise/spam
8
Sentiment analysis
5
Broad channel coverage
10
Content planning and scheduling
10
Audience targeting
10
Content optimization
10
Workflow management
10
Automated routing and prioritization
10
Customer interaction histories
7
Bulk actions
9
Lead generation
8
Content marketing
10
Paid media management
6
Campaigns and promotions
7
Twitter
10
Facebook
10
LinkedIn
9
Google+
9
YouTube
8
Campaign success analytics
8
Real-time tracking
10
Competitor analysis
10
Role-based user permissions & privileges
10
Mobile access
8

Using Social Studio

1 - A little technical knowledge is required for the overall administrator, but the tech support provided is outstanding so any problems can be easily resolved.
  • Content creation
  • Customer service
  • Analytics and reporting
  • Providing access for other areas to manage their own channels but within the same platform has created more of a community of channel managers without the organisation
  • Sharing content across workspaces cuts down on duplication
  • Integration with other analytics tools has reduced double handling
  • Providing access to business development staff to look at conversations about our brand for future opportunities
  • Providing more areas of the organisation access to provide customer service in their specific areas
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.

Evaluating Social Studio and Competitors

Yes - We replaced Meltwater Buzz with Social Studio due to the ability to create a greater number of user accounts with the ability to restrict access and publishing rights to some of them. The superior reporting was also another factor in making the change and also the ability to cut down on everyday task but using macros to simplify multiple step tasks.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Third-party Reviews
The most important factor was the product features. I looked at what I wanted in a platform to make my job easier and went out to find the platform that provided most of these at a reasonable price. Social Studio was slightly more expensive that Meltwater Buzz based on the number of publish account, but I was able to justify this based on the product features. It has been a good decision.
No. I am happy that I did the research, got as much information about the features of each platform, and made an informed decision based on this. Unless something changes in the future, I will be sticking with this platform.

Social Studio Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
No
Support is part of the price so we don't need to pay for anything extra.
Yes - Yes it was resolved quickly.
I had a problem where I couldn't get access to my content calendar besides a strange work-around I had figured out. I submitted a support email, got a response asking for some screen grabs, but when it couldn't be replicated on their end, a phone call with remote screen sharing was set up to investigate the issue. The support person was very friendly and helpful and took a recording of my screen activity to escalate further. Once the resolution came through I was notified and the issue was resolved. The personal touch to their support is outstanding.

Using Social Studio

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Scheduling and publishing content is very simple and easy to use
  • Monitoring and engagement of own channels is simple and easy to use
  • Performance reports are simple and easy to understand
  • Having to go out of the platform to Radian6 to get some detailed reports in problematic
  • The inability to export reporting in the Analyse dashboards is frustrating although I know this is a feature to come
Yes - It works for simple features, but the macros do not work in this version and it is more difficult to manage