Sprout Social – Review
What is Sprout Social?
Sprout Social, at least on the face of it, is a management tool for social media. However, once you start using the tool, you will realize that it is more like a complete management suite. Sprout Social breaks its mobile and web applications down into a number of sections to help you simplify your social media scheduling, manage your mentions and inbox, and provide analytics and insights.
As far as primary social media goes, Sprout Social supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest. Moreover, once you connect a profile, you will also be able to link accounts from Glassdoor, Tripadvisor, Google Analytics, and GMB (Google My Business).
Sprout Social – Features:
Below are some of the key features that Sprout Social offers to customers:
User Interface:
Sprout Social’s user interface (dashboard) features two distinct menus (one on each side). On the left-hand side, you will find a sidebar that offers accessible shortcuts to the various tools that the app has to offer, such as Smart Inbox, Social Listening, and Publishing.
The right-hand sidebar, meanwhile, features quick-access toggles for the following functionalities:
- Composing a new post on social media
- Viewing notifications
- Opening conversations with your team members
- Viewing any links shared between your team
- Connecting a new profile
- Searching for keywords and profiles on Twitter
- Inviting a team member
- Opening the help center
- Viewing a cheat-sheet containing all the keyboard shortcuts
At the center of the dashboard, you will be using the particular tool or feature that you have selected. If the left-sided bar has been inactive for quite some time, it will automatically disappear, allowing you with more room to work with.
Scheduling:
As far as scheduling goes, Sprout Social offers various scheduling options for new posts. It is, of course, possible to publish posts as soon as you create them, but the Publishing feature certainly stands out in the way that it allows you to schedule the posts.
You can, for one, select the specific date and time on which you want to publish a post. Other than that, the tool will produce a list of optimal scheduling times that you can choose from (if you want). It also allows you to set extra times and dates in case you might want to publish a particular post again in the future.
The above feature is pretty standard across all social media management apps. However, the real showstopper is Sprout Social’s auto-queue functionality.
Inside the queue, you can select the particular days and times at which you want to publish. You can then use the Auto Queue feature to place the post at the bottom or top of the queue (or anywhere in between). The tool will then use this schedule configuration at the time of publishing a post.
Reports:
Through Sprout Social’s individual platform reports, you can judge performance based on metrics like impressions, audience growth, and post performance. In addition, using the quick-access toggles, you can also access specific reports, which have been categorized into the following four sections:
- Competitive Analysis
- Strategy & Insights
- Team Performance
- Customer Care
These categories contain more than 20 different reports, including:
- LinkedIn pages
- Google Analytics
- Inbox Activity
- Tag Performance
- Paid Performance
- Trends Reports
- Twitter Keywords
Wrapping Up:
To sum up, Sprout Social is a robust social media management tool, offering a number of features that can be used to streamline publishing and optimize social media marketing. To learn more about how Sprout Social can help your business, please feel free to visit the website.