Sprout Social, First Impressions

I am experimenting with SproutSocial this week, and my overall reaction has been “wow, this is powerful.” It has great analytics capabilities, extensive monitoring tools, and the ability to schedule or queue posts. That last one, the Sprout Queue is pretty cool…it is built on the concepts started by BufferApp, and is a direct competitor to the new AutoSchedule from Hootsuite.

The reports and graphs are easy to read and digest, and scheduling these to email your manager at regular intervals will make you look like an awesome employee. 😉

One of the best features of Sprout is its ability to manage accounts as a team, assign tasks to team members, and add notes/contact info for your customers. A common problem I have experienced when using a shared password for a social account is that more than one person will respond to the same posts, or schedule a message for the same time as someone else. This platform smooths out the team workflow.

Another insanely cool feature is the ability to link to your Google Analytics account for your website. You can quickly see the impact of your social campaigns on your website traffic. Awesome!

Pricing is amazingly affordable compared to other platforms I’ve seen quotes on, like Radian6 and Vocus, though I would still struggle to justify this cost for my personal brand and side business with so many good free tools out there. For a social media consultant, or small/medium/large business, I would definitely recommend this platform as a way to monitor your brand and engage your audience.

There are also lots of free platforms for social media monitoring and management. How do you manage social media for your personal brand? As a team?