Sprout Social Review — Social Media Management Comparison (2012)

If you rely on free tools to help you discover online mentions of your brand, you should consider using a social media monitoring vendor to take your efforts to the next level.

Sprout Social is an easy to use application designed to help you effectively embrace social media through the monitoring and expansion of your social media presence. This service enables you to eavesdrop on the multitude of conversations taking place online; plus, it allows you to interact with your current customers to forge stronger relationships.

Sprout Social encourages you to locate new customers, or track competitors' conversations and marketing efforts, by utilizing the Discovery section of your user dashboard. You simply set up keyword, people, and business searches and Sprout Social will comb the internet and notify you of any matches. 

Twitter and Facebook were designed for use by individuals; therefore, they cannot provide reporting tools or analytics that the business community can effectively use to monitor conversations. However, Sprout Social solves this dilemma by offering the reporting and analytics necessary in one straightforward interface.

The nice thing about Sprout Social is you can sign up with a 30-day free trial...and they don't even require a credit card! I interpret that as confidence in the service they provide. This is certainly unique for this industry.

The sign up is quick and easy, literally taking the average person less than one minute to complete. Once you sign in, you will need to integrate your social media accounts. This process only takes a few minutes.

Immediately, you will notice that the dashboard is well-designed and it displays your recent messages, follower demographics, your engagement and influence stats, your recent followers and a list of online mentions. The recent followers section is very useful. Just click on a follower icon and view their profile. This provides you with a tremendous opportunity to welcome and engage your new prospect or fan. In my opinion, their dashboard is superior to their competition.

Sprout Social is one of many social network web applications. There are two that stand out among the crowd: HootSuite and Postling.

Sprout Social, HootSuite and Postling all give you the ability to schedule automatic updates to your social media accounts. This prevents you from coming on too strong; instead, you can spread out your tweets and posts. This is certainly an advantage over other competitors, such as Brizzly or Tweetdeck, who do not have this feature.

HootSuite offers a feature that is not available on Sprout Social or Postling. They allow you to assign tasks, such as asking a team member to follow-up on a new user. This makes it easy to share the load of welcoming and engaging all of your followers.

The sign up process is fast with all three applications, and the social media account integration for all is easy enough that a computer novice can complete the required steps. However, Sprout Social's dashboard is superior to HootSuite's and Postling's. HootSuite is a close second, but Postling is seriously lacking. I found that the messages and tweets that they pulled were not even the most recent.  

Spout Social offers two plans to help you monitor your online social presence: Their Go Pro Plan and Go Business Plan.

Go Pro ($9/mo)

• This plan is ideal for non-profits, freelancers and online and/or small businesses
• Monitor up to 5 identities
• Attach multiple networks to each identity
• Supported networks: Twitter, Facebook Personal Pages, Facebook Fan Pages and LinkedIn
• Email and chat support

The Go Pro Plan Includes:

• Daily/Weekly Email Summaries
• Web Monitoring
• Customizable Dashboard
• Contact Management
• Message Scheduling
• Cross-Platform Posting
• Unified Inbox
• Performance Metrics
•  Contact Notes, History
• Daily/Weekly Email Summaries

Go Business ($49/mo)

• This plan is ideal for larger businesses with multiple locations
• Monitor up to 10 identities
• Attach multiple networks to each identity
• Supported networks: Twitter, Facebook Personal Pages, Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn, Gowalla and Foursquare
• Email and chat support

The Go Business Plan Includes:

• Geo Targeting
• Web Monitoring
• Customizable Dashboard
• Contact Management
• Team Workflow
• Message Scheduling
• Cross-Platform Posting
• Unified Inbox
• Competition Monitoring
• Performance Metrics
• Audience Demographics
• Contact Notes, History
• Daily Specials
• Daily/Weekly  Email Summaries

Hootsuite offers three plans to help you monitor your online social presence: Their Basic Plan (Free, but ad supported), Pro Plan ($5.99/mo) and Enterprise Plan ($1,499/mo).

Postling offers three plans to help you monitor your online social presence: Their Starter Plan (Free, but no analytics dashboard), Plus Plan ($9/mo) and Premium Plan ($34/mo).

Sprout Social's average rating on Oneforty.com, an online community that rates and shares social media monitoring software, is an impressive five out of five stars, based on thirty-two user reviews.

Mashable says: “Sprout Social is a solid offering for the smaller brand or agency; it offers robust management tools, and it's still affordable.”  

TheNextWeb says: "If you manage a brand and have yet to try Sprout Social, then you are making a big mistake."

All of Sprout Social's reviews indicate very satisfied customers. Here are two of Sprout Social's customers' comment from Oneforty.com:

• Michael D. Yoder likes the interface. On December 1, 2010, he wrote: "Nice, clean interface that is easy to set up and to use. You can start with a 30 day free trial to check it out. Very affordable for the small to medium-sized business."
• Yeming Shi Rankin agrees. On June 18, 2010, she wrote: "Lots of functionality packed into a comprehensive, clear, and intuitive interface. Sprout Social is a one-stop-shop for monitoring your online presence...no more wasting time on a bunch of other websites."