Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social
The advent of Social Media Management platforms have taken so much of the load off of social media posting, tracking, and overall handling. Instead of the usual logging in and out of multiple accounts to keep all of them up to date with your posts, SMM’s have ingeniously compartmentalized everything within a single platform that lets you do all this in one site. Aside from the impressive amount of time that you save, you also get the added advantage of being able to schedule your posts where you want, when you want, and even as many as you want with their bulk posting feature.
With that being said, two of the frontrunners in the SMM arena are Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Both have received very good feedback and, of course, the occasional negative review. In this article, however, we aim to explore the differences and similarities between these two platforms to hopefully give you a more comprehensive view and help you decide which one would work best for you and address your social requirements.
Obviously, the most important feature of any SMM platform is its publishing capabilities. Both Hootsuite and Sprout Social give users the ability to schedule posts into the future. Now, with the introduction of Hootsuite’s Autoschedule and Sprout’s ViralPost components, users can choose tohave a post go live at a pre-determined time. And that’s typicallywhen the system predicts each post will get the most audience share. It will be interesting to note that this is a free feature in Hootsuite, but only comes with a premium account in Sprout. Both platforms also allow URL shortening when publishing posts. However, Sprout’s compressed bit.ly version is considered to be more viewable on more outlets than Hootsuite’s ow.ly rendition.
Now when it comes to collaborative capabilities, be prepared to shell out some serious dollars when working with Sprout Social since it requires the purchase of individual accounts for this feature to be activated. Hootsuite, on the other hand–especially when you go on Hootsuite Pro–will already allow multiple members of the team to work on a single account, and going on Hootsuite Enterprise gives access to up to 500,000 users! Now that’s what we call collaboration.
If you are a stickler for details and reporting and all the good stuff, you’d be glad to know that both these platforms are able to produce pretty accurate reports when it comes to your social media activity. We’d have to say though that Sprout Socialtakes the cake on this one because it offers a detail bonanza of analytical data that is impressively similar to a CRM program. Did we mention this is free on Sprout? Hootsuite has yet to fully tap into its quantifying abilities, but you can still have access to a limited number of reports depending on which payment plan you’re on.
Need help? Well then it’s a good thing both platforms have support elements that give users the option of seeking technical support whenever they need it. Hootsuite and Sprout Social both offer full helpdesk support when a user gets to the second tier option. Hootsuite adds to this by coming up with Hootsuite University–a certification program that teaches the user all the important (and even the not so important) features of the platform so that they eventually become Hootsuite gurus themselves.
But enough about the bells and whistles, let’s get down to what you really, really want to know — pricing. Sprout Social has standard, deluxe, and premium payment plans that users can purchase according to their needs. Hootsuite wins by having a free basic plan that already gives the user the standard social media management experience. Its premium plan also gives you a virtually unlimited number of accounts to work with. 500,000 accounts, anyone?
Admittedly, this article may not have even scratched the vast and multi-faceted surface of these popular Social Media Management Platforms, so we highly recommend visiting the Hootsuite and Sprout Social sites to get a better feel and understanding of each program.
Alternatively, if you do not have the time nor the patience to sit down and try to use these platforms yourself, we strongly suggest that you hire one of our expert Social Media Managers. Ezy VA’s Super Staff is full of highly competitive virtual staff members that can add unbelievable value to your business through social media management alone. They also go beyond the platforms and do whatever they can to help grow your social media presence so that you can be confident that you are reaching more of the people who matter wherever they are in the world. Visit http://www.ezyva.com/ for information about Ezy VA, our services, fees and a whole lot more.
Originally published at Ezy VA Blog — Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social.
