Complete Review of Sprout Social: Social Media Solutions

Sprout  Social optimizes your social strategy by streamlining your ability to post great content. It also highlights trends and analytics so you can take your online marketing to the next level.

As of this writing, more than 25,000 brands and organizations rely on Sprout Social as an important part of their outreach efforts. Among them: Roku, Purdue University, Shopify, and Subaru.

Follow along in this Sprout Social review and I’ll show you why.

Sprout Social Review: Engagement

In this part of the Sprout Social review, I’ll explain how the tool helps you generate more engagement from potential customers.

First up: it’s easy to get started using Sprout Social. That’s because the company behind the product offers dedicated training and customer support.

So you can get the ball rolling quickly.

Next, the tool gives you access to a Smart Inbox. It’s an uber-feed of all your connected networks.

Use that to follow your social media channels via a single stream. No more flipping back and forth between windows.

Sprout Social also keeps you informed about message spike alerts. It will show you increases in volume for particular keywords, info about time-sensitive events, and details regarding urgent situations.

Further, the product helps you manage reviews across Facebook, Google My Business (GMB), and TripAdvisor. That’s especially important because online reviews can make or break your business.

Sprout Social also includes a chatbot builder. Use it to automate chats so you can quickly respond to incoming messages even if you’re not immediately available.

Additionally, the tool lets you tag messages for quick reference. Later on, you can easily access those tagged messages for workflows related to marketing strategies.

Sprout Social even allows integrations with various third-party tools so can aggregate data from various sources and deliver custom insights to team members.

And yeah, the tool functions as a bit of a project management workhorse. Assign tasks to team members, delegate responsibility, and measure efficiencies.

Along those lines, you can use Sprout Social as a CRM-lite. It will track conversation histories and contact details so you can stay in touch with folks in your target market.

If you’d like info about how quickly your customer service team members are responding to customers, the tool also produces presentation-ready reports with those details

Publishing and Scheduling on Sprout Social

In this part of the Sprout Social review, I’ll explain how the product makes it easier to post great content on various social channels.

Thanks to Sprout Social, you no longer need to worry about manually logging in and out of various social media sites just to maintain a strong online presence. That’s because the tool makes it easy to publish on multiple platforms at the same time.

Suppose, for example, that you’ve got a great photo that you’d like to share on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just use the intuitive Sprout Social interface to upload the photo and add your caption. Then, select your social media channels and publish your content.

It’s that simple.

But it’s even more powerful than what I’ve just described. Using Sprout Social, you can put together a social media content strategy that lasts for weeks and even months.

That’s because the tool offers automation as well. Schedule your posts well in advance and let the software handle all the publishing on your behalf.

And while Sprout Social is doing that, it’s boosting your brand online while you’re focusing on other priority items, like building your business.

The tool also enables you to aggregate approved multimedia assets from a shared library. Then team members can use those assets in their efforts to promote your brand.

SproutSocial also crunches the numbers and lets you know when people are most likely to engage with your content. That info gives you the power to publish on a date and time when the largest block of your audience will most likely respond favorably.

Oh, yeah: SproutSocial offers a mobile app as well. That means you can post, research, and optimize from any location, whether you’re at a restaurant waiting for food or at an auto repair shop waiting for an inspection.

The tool also offers message approval workflows. That’s how you’ll prevent an embarrassing typo or social media faux pas from sabotaging your brand’s reputation.

SproutSocial even shares content suggestions that you can use for inspiration. That helps you save time on brainstorming.

Additionally, the product also produces custom URLs that you can use for tracking purposes. Just append them to your social media content and then check your favorite analytics tool that you use to monitor your website.

Sprout Social Review: Listening

Here’s one of many social media software reviews from Kara Wenman, Digital Content Manager at James Hardie: “Listening not only helps us better understand what the conversations are about our brand in the digital space, it lets us make sure we’re dominating share of voice in our industry in a relevant, impactful and positive way.”

Fortunately, Sprout Social helps you with listening.

Use the tool to access industry, brand, and competitive insights. Follow conversations and topics relevant to your brand.

Then, take the info you’ve gathered and analyze it so you can improve your own business.

Spot trends before they become trends. Then ride them all the way to the bank.

Find popular topics that you can use in your ad copy. Build market share.

And so on.

Further, Sprout Social also helps you spot influencers before they’re so popular they become unaffordable. Use those folks to help get the word out about your brand at a reasonable rate.

Best of all, though, the listening feature on Sprout Social enables you to get a read on how people feel about your brand. Then you can make informed adjustments in business strategy.

Insights

Here’s another one of many social media software reviews about SproutSocial’s insights: “In the past, people valued social and certainly were willing to invest in Sprout with us, but more and more the university has become invested in our team, the data and analytics we provide.”

That’s from Clayton Norman, Social Media and Digital Marketing Leader at Indiana University.

Sprout Social offers powerful insights so you can see where your strategy has already taken you and optimize it so that it takes you even further going forward.

The tool includes a report builder that enables you to produce custom reports specific to your business interests. And you can draw from hundreds of metrics across owned and paid media.

SproutSocial also lets you produce graphs and charts so that stakeholders can see at a glance how much your social strategy contributes to the bottom line.

Sprout Social Pricing Structure

SproutSocial pricing starts off just the way you like it: free.

And it’s free for a full 30 days. That’s more than enough time to determine whether or not the product is right for your business.

Beyond that, the company offers three pricing plans.

The lowest level of service starts at $89 per month (billed annually). For that, you can manage up to five social profiles.

If you need to manage 10 social profiles, that will cost you $149 per month. You’ll also get competitive reports, custom workflows, scheduling, and trend analysis.

SproutSocial pricing comes in at $249 per month for “the whole enchilada.” That gives you 10 social profiles plus enhanced listening, chatbots, the asset library, and automated link tracking.

Wrapping It Up

This one is definitely worth a look if you’re serious about social media marketing.

And since you can get started for free (and with no credit card required), why not give it a test drive starting today?