Social media has become a significant part of many companies’ marketing strategy. The average business allocates about 24% of its marketing budget to social media. Mastering each social media platform will optimize your budget and drive positive results. To improve your social media efforts, finding the right tool is essential.
The Phase 3 social media team uses Hootsuite as our go-to social media management platform. We have also used Sprout Social and Agorapulse in the past. All three of these platforms are outstanding tools for managing social media. They each have advantages and disadvantages. In this blog, we'll explore their strengths and weaknesses. You'll learn about the nuances of each tool. With this information, you can choose the best tool for your business. First, let's define what a social media management platform is.
What is a social media management platform?
Social media management tools are digital solutions designed to streamline the administration of social media accounts. Marketing teams use these tools to build an online community, simplify workflows, and drive campaign results.
These tools typically help teams with content creation, post scheduling, social listening, content storage, calendar management, and performance analytics. These tools' insights can help marketing teams enhance search engine optimization, boost inbound traffic, improve customer satisfaction, and increase conversion rates.
According to G2, a well-respected SaaS review site, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Agorapulse are highly rated with 4+ stars. Agorapulse edges the other two out slightly in the reviews. Let's look at the strengths and weaknesses of all three.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular choice used by brands like Domino's, Ikea, Allianz, and the World Health Organization. It offers a wide range of features and functions designed to simplify creating, scheduling, monitoring, and analyzing social media content across multiple channels. The company markets the platform to the government, health care, financial services, education, real estate, legal, professional services, and nonprofit sectors.
Pros:
- Wide Channel Support: Hootsuite supports Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube, making it a versatile choice.
- Multiple Channel Profiles and Accounts: It can support many profiles within one social media channel.
- Scheduling and Publishing: It offers several scheduling features, including scheduling posts in advance. The tool will also suggest when to post to get the highest engagement. The dashboard makes it simple to identify content gaps, map out campaigns, and suspend or change scheduled posts during a potential crisis or unexpected opportunity.
- Team Collaboration: Hootsuite allows multiple team members to collaborate, assign tasks, schedule, create, and engage with content, making it suitable for larger teams. Team members can have different levels of access and permissions.
- Robust Analytics: The platform provides in-depth analytics and reporting tools to track organic, paid, and web metrics on one dashboard. Users can generate reports that provide insights into engagement metrics, follower growth, and other essential data.
- Paid Campaign Tracking: This feature is unavailable on other platforms, and reviewers find it easy to use and very valuable.
- Integrations: Hootsuite integrates with various third-party apps and business tools for enhanced functionality and efficiency. These integrations include HubSpot, WordPress, Google My Business, Mailchimp, Canva, and Shopify.
Cons:
- Learning Curve: Some users may initially find Hootsuite's extensive features overwhelming, leading to a steeper learning curve. This is especially true for analytics and reporting tools. Regular updates to the interface can also confuse and disrupt workflows.
- Integration Limitations: While Hootsuite integrates with many third-party apps and services, there are limitations on specific integrations or compatibility with certain tools.
- Cost: Hootsuite offers a free 30-day trial but no ongoing free option. The more advanced features and capabilities are only available with a paid enterprise subscription. It can be relatively expensive, especially for businesses with multiple users or social media accounts.
- Bugs: Users report that certain features and integrations are buggy and challenging to use.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social promotes the platform as "designed for immediate adoption, getting users up and running in minutes. Companies of all sizes, including Glassdoor, Loews Hotels, and Doordash, use it. Sprout Social's AI technology processes up to 50,000 messages a second and more than 600 million messages every day for their customers.
Pros:
- Intuitive Interface: Sprout Social scored very well with reviewers on its user-friendly interface. It is easy for new users to navigate and get started without extensive training. The content calendar makes planning and scheduling posts simple and easy.
- Unified Inbox: The Smart Inbox feature consolidates and prioritizes messages, comments, and mentions from various social media channels into one inbox. This simplifies engagement and response management.
- Robust Analytics: Sprout Social is known for its comprehensive analytics and reporting tools. It speeds up and automates data collection and distribution so managers can focus on other priorities. It also enables users to dig deep into relevant data when needed to inform strategy and prove ROI.
- Competitor Analysis: The tool provides more detailed insights into competitors' social media performance, helping businesses better understand their audience and make more strategic decisions.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Integrated CRM features help manage and engage with customers effectively by providing contextual information to help resolve issues, nurture leads, and deliver exceptional service.
- Wide Channel Support: Like Hootsuite, Sprout Social supports Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. It also supports WhatsApp.
Cons:
- Cost: Sprout Social is more expensive compared to some competitors. There is a free 30-day trial but no ongoing free option. Each package includes one user. Additional users are an extra cost.
- No Content Creation Tools: Unlike others, Sprout Social does not offer content creation tools within its platform. Users need to create and design their content using other tools and then upload, schedule, and manage the distribution of that content through Sprout Social.
- Limited Channels and Features on Lower Plans: The lowest package only includes five profiles and some of the more advanced features and integrations are only available on higher-tier plans.
- Fewer Integration Options: While integrating with many digital solutions, Sprout Social has fewer third-party integrations than Hootsuite.
- Advanced Features May Be Challenging to Learn: While the basic interface is intuitive and relatively easy to grasp, some more advanced features may need more training for users new to social media management. The reporting features may require a deeper understanding of analytics.
Agorapulse
Agorapulse supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube. Its unified social inbox lets teams easily manage all incoming social media messages, comments, and reviews in one place. Intuitive publishing tools help teams plan, collaborate, and schedule content for all social channels. It also offers social listening tools that provide insights into trends affecting the sector and how competitors respond to them. These details make the platform ideal for agencies.
Pros:
- Ease of Use: Agorapulse outranks both Hootsuite and Sprout Social in ease of use and setup on
- Free Tools: It offers five free tools, including Facebook Ads Report, Facebook Barometer, Facebook Timeline Contest, Twitter Report Card, and Easy Advocacy (for employee engagement).
- Affordable Pricing: Agorapulse is often considered more affordable than other platforms for small teams. Each package is billed per user monthly. There is also a free account that includes three social profiles and ten scheduled posts per month.
- Social Inbox: It offers a unified social inbox for managing messages and comments across different social media channels. Additionally, it includes social CRM features, allowing users to manage customer relationships, track interactions, and create customer profiles.
- Content Approval Workflow: It includes a content approval system, which is helpful for teams that need leaders to review content before publishing. This feature is valuable for larger teams or leaders collaborating, assigning tasks, and sharing workflows.
- In-Depth and Custom Reporting: Agorapulse wins with users across the board in reporting. It provides detailed social media analytics, including competitor benchmarking and custom reports. The tool can measure audience engagement and sentiment analysis, which is valuable for building marketing messaging and strategies.
- Customer Support and Training: It is recognized for its excellent and responsive customer support. It provides training tools to help users make the most of the platform.
Cons:
- Limited Channel Support: While it covers some of the most-used channels, Agorapulse does not support Pinterest or WhatsApp.
- Fewer Advanced Features: Some advanced features, such as paid campaign tracking, in-depth social listening, and bulk scheduling tools, are limited on Agorapulse.
- Fewer Integration Options: While it integrates with some digital software and solutions, Agorapulse has fewer third-party integrations compared to Hootsuite.
- Scaling Challenges: Each package supports ten social profiles and is billed per user. Additional profiles and users will add extra cost. This may be a challenge for growing social media teams.
In summary, the choice between Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Agorapulse depends on a company's specific social media channels, number of accounts, integration needs, budget, and team size. Hootsuite offers versatility and collaboration, Sprout Social excels in intuitive interfaces and analytics, while Agorapulse provides an affordable option and ease of use.
But these three platforms are not the only tools available to busy social media and marketing managers. A glance at G2 will show you a multitude of new and growing platforms like Sprinklr and SocialPilot, as well as social media management tools built into other marketing platforms like HubSpot. Choose wisely. It's crucial to analyze your unique requirements and consider the pros and cons of all platforms before making an informed decision.
The social media team at Phase 3 uses Hootsuite daily and is proficient in delivering outstanding results while optimizing client budgets. However, we are always ready and willing to incorporate any social media management tool that suits our clients' budgets and needs. Bring your tools, channels, profiles, and social media needs to Phase 3, and we'll take it from there. Contact us for more information today.