Item: Sprout Social
Rating: 6
Author: Adrienne Hardin

Overall Satisfaction with Sprout Social

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Sprout Social is being used by one person within our organization's Communications department. I implemented Sprout hoping to streamline our social media efforts and manage all of our organization's social media platforms from one place. I currently have two Facebook accounts, one Twitter account, one Instagram account, one LinkedIn company profile, and a Google Analytics account connected to Sprout.

Pros and Cons

Pros

The social listening capabilities do a great job of providing me with information I need from our target audiences.
Customer service is readily available, thorough, and considerate. When I call them with questions, I’ve gotten live people EVERY time, which is rare in the social media realm.
The option to shorten links and add photos directly in tweet drafts has helped not only workflow, but it also helps maintain a seamless aesthetic on our Twitter profile.
The ability to export calendars into PDFs and send them to campus partners has made workflow for campaigns so much better. I no longer have giant spreadsheets full of posts to send off to other departments for approval.
The dashboard is simple and easy to navigate.

Cons

Sprout calculates impressions and engagements differently than Facebook and Twitter do natively, so I’m unable to rely solely on the reports pulled from the platform.
Sprout’s Instagram integration didn’t suit our needs. Our audiences respond best to posts in real time, so there isn’t opportunity to schedule Instagram posts in advance. With recent privacy changes, I’m not able to like or comment on Instagram posts from Sprout either, so I’ve moved back to using Instagram natively.
The integration with LinkedIn company pages is weak; links don’t format correctly, so it’s easier to post natively.
Approvals and task assignments aren’t available with the entry-level subscription, and the cost of upgrading is similar to what I could get for a more robust tool like Falcon.

Users and Roles

1 - The content specialist-social media produces high-quality content that maintains the organization's identity and brand standards. They publish content to official organization social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat, ensuring key messages are presented in a deliberate, timely, accurate, and compelling way.

Return on Investment

The single dashboard and scheduling tools have saved me around 5-8 hours per week that were previously spent juggling between browsers.

Alternatives Considered

TweetDeck, Hootsuite Free and Falcon.io

We needed something more thorough than the free products we had tested (Hootsuite and TweetDeck), but the more robust products (Falcon) were out of our budget. Sprout hit the sweet spot of having everything we needed at the time for the right price.

Key Insights

Do you think Sprout Social delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Sprout Social's feature set?

Yes

Did Sprout Social live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Sprout Social go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Sprout Social again?

Other Software Used

Adobe PhotoShop, Trello, Google Analytics, TweetDeck, Meta Business Suite, Buffer

Likelihood to Recommend

I would wholeheartedly recommend Sprout for basic social media management. Twitter scheduling, social listening capabilities, and being able to export calendars of scheduled posts are all features that have saved me time and allowed me to focus more on strategic efforts. But, if you depend on accurate data reporting, or are looking for something that integrates well with the rest of a team's workflow, Sprout (at least at the premium level) probably isn't the best choice.

Sprout Social Feature Ratings

Comments

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Solid entry-level product for social media management

Software Version