« Happy National Ice Cream Day!
Print This Post
| |
SaaS 360: Bundle Your Social Efforts With Sprout Social |
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the privilege of taking Sprout Social’s all-inclusive social media management tool for a test drive. With all the different social media venues available today, performance tracking can be a difficult task. Sprout Social takes care of this by compiling all your social platforms into one convenient interface. The purpose of this post is to reveal my findings to give you a better idea of what to expect from this awesome software as a service (SaaS).
General Overview
At the corporate level, companies often struggle with rationalizing the value of allocating time and energy towards social media, Twitter in particular. This is primarily a result of the lack of understanding in regards to social metrics and insufficient tracking. However, Sprout Social puts an end to all this by tracking useful metrics, such as engagement and influence, over your social networks. As the alter ego for the @PPCHero and @SEOBoy Twitter handles, I can tell you that this program was helpful in a variety of ways. Here are some pros and cons that I came across:
Pros
- Connecting all of your accounts in one convenient interface.
This is my favorite aspect of this SaaS. Through their guided process, you can connect your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and Google Analytics accounts together in one place. This is helpful because it eliminates the need to micro-manage your individual interfaces from different places, which can get confusing! With Sprout Social, syncing your accounts becomes as easy as 1, 2, 3.
- Detailed reporting that is meaningful to businesses.
As internet marketers, we are constantly digesting and analyzing numbers in order to look for ways to improve quality scores, rankings, etc. This is much easier said than done when it comes to tracking the performance of social media. Sprout Social provides you with helpful metrics for tracking performance, such as engagement and influence.
Engagement
Your engagement score is an indicator of how well you are communicating with your audience. The higher your engagement, the more valuable your audience will become to your business.
Influence
Your influence is an indicator of your growth and the interest level among your audience. These numbers are commonly low, but increasing them over time will result in greater brand awareness and enthusiasm for your business.
In addition to these, they also provide you with other more common metrics, such as clicks, new followers and demographics. You can even present them to your boss or company with ease by selecting the “Export Data” button, which compiles your data as a PDF or CSV and presents it in a digestible format.
- Ability to easily create and automate your posts.
I can remember back when I created my first Twitter account. I had to painstakingly curate interesting posts and ensure that they were delivered throughout the day, which turned out to be terribly meticulous. However, Sprout Social enables you to send your message instantly, schedule a one-time or recurring post, and even set up RSS feeds for automated delivery.
What’s better is how easy they make it to create your posts. They have a “Send from Sprout” button you can drag to your navigation bar that creates the post for you. By clicking the button, it pulls bits and pieces of a page’s meta data and generates a headline for your post with link included. If you are using custom bit.ly URLS, these are also compatible with Sprout’s interface. All you need is to do is enter your bit.ly username and API key in the “Account Settings”, then you’re all set.
- Detailed message inbox and outbox.
This section is pretty straightforward, allowing you to filter your messages by incoming and sent messages. Within the “sent” tab, you can see all the messages you have sent, as well as the clicks, retweets and total reach. This feature can be particularly helpful if you’re trying to drill down to your tweets and see which posts are performing well and attracting the most attention.
- Easily locate and attract new followers.
Although I haven’t utilized this section to it’s full potential, Sprout’s “Discovery” tab can be an excellent resource for locating and attracting potential followers to interact with. The best part is how the interface does all the dirty work, performing the search for you.
- Compatibility with Google Analytics.
For those of you looking to go even deeper for a better understanding of your social media efforts in relation to your overall site traffic, Sprout Social is compatible with Google Analytics. In fact, you can sync your Analytics account with your social media handles to have that information included in Sprout’s interface.
More On Facebook
It’s no secret that Facebook is like an addiction for some people with endless status updates, comments and likes taking over every extra minute of the day. However, for the internet marketer, it is equally important to manage your time wisely while taking advantage of the traffic possibilities within Facebook. The Sprout Social application could be the answer to that time management quandary as it gives you the ability to setup an entire day’s worth of Facebook posts in one visit. Here’s a brief look at the Facebook tab and features:
Pros
- Ability to track Facebook performance, in respect to other social media venues.
Being that you can schedule things to be posted on your Facebook and Twitter simultaneously gives you the ability to look at data and know if one is outperforming the other or if both are bringing in equal traffic since blogs, etc. are fed out at the exact same times.
- Extremely insightful demographic info, etc.
The reports section has a ridiculously detailed amount of information about likes, comments, age groups, languages…and having all that data gives you the power to alter your activity to raise traffic in places where it’s needed. Take a look at the screen shot above and see for yourself!
To wrap things up, Sprout Social’s SaaS definitely has a lot of good things going for it. It is my hope that you might try it for yourselves and build off of what I’ve learned so far. In fact, I would recommend this program to any company, small or large, who is looking for a way to consolidate social media efforts into one convenient and easy-to-use platform. But you don’t need me to tell you, go try it out for yourself!
*Big thanks to Kayla Stockert, an account executive here at Hanapin, for compiling the “More On Facebook” section!*
Dave is an Assistant Account Executive at Hanapin Marketing, a search engine marketing firm focused on generating results through pay-per-click advertising. Learn more about Hanapin Marketing's PPC management services.
Related posts:
- Monitor Your Social Media Initiatives with Trackable Shortened URLs
- How to Be a Social Media Snob and Why It’s Important for Your Success
- 2 Ways of Using Social Media to Improve Your SEO Campaign
- Social Media Distractions
- Google Personalized Search and Social Media
| | do some of that social network stuff. |
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 5:28 pm and is filed under SaaS Tools, Social Media & SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Thank you Dave (and Kayla) for compiling a very extensive review of Sprout Social. You’d drilled down into several features that too often get overlooked like our bookmarklet and the details in Sent Messages.
I also appreciate you offering your readers to experience Sprout Social. We’d love to hear their feedback too!
If you or any of your readers have any questions about Sprout Social, I’ll gladly help at @sproutsupport or at support @ sproutsocial.com
Thank you Dave (and Kayla) for compiling a very extensive review of Sprout Social. You’d drilled down into several features that too often get overlooked like our bookmarklet and the details in Sent Messages.
I also appreciate you offering your readers to experience Sprout Social. We’d love to hear their feedback too!
If you or any of your readers have any questions about Sprout Social, I’ll gladly help at @sproutsupport or at support @ sproutsocial.com
collection, mentor Madison will certainly attract all belonging louis vuitton outlet the style oriented sunglasses for men individuals out there.Coach Madison bags is certainly a classic.Coach Madison Bags design consistency has set up a distinctive look, gucci outlet like a signature perfume.Coach Madison handbags are relatively well-known outlet inside the style market place nowadays.It is merely because belonging using the reputation outlet louis vuitton using the mentor Madison collection. So should you can personal mentor Madison Gathered leather-based Sophia Satchel,you could also fixture using outlet the mentor outlet gucci or mentor wristlet away from your Madison collection.The chic and fabulous choice consists of many colours and styles. The Hobo carries a zip top, a ring to clip louis vuitton outlet handbags with a internal zip pocket to store your cell cellular outlet phone or your selected lipstick. mentor Madison Bags are fascinating sort that combines metallic with leather-based to gucci bags
Many friends tell me the site.there are many replicas.you can find designer replica handbags.you must like Replica designer handbags,so i buy a lot of Hermes handbags.If Designer replica handbags are indeniably the most popular choice of modern women, other leading brands continuously experience huge demand. Also, our Louis Vuitton Handbags, associating sophistication and tradition, attract the eye of tasteful women… Also, to satisfy the tastes of each woman, we carry a very wide range of Discount Louis Vuitton Handbag, including copies of bags by Fendi handbags,Mulberry handbags,Marc Jacobs handbags,Gucci handbags,Yves Saint Laurent handbags, Balanciaga handbags,Miu Miu handbags, Thomas Wylde handbags, Mulberry handbags, Prada handbags,Coach handbags,and Hermes handbags…We are continually updating and adding more and more products from famous brand such as LV,Marc Jacobs handbags, Gucci,Dior, Chanel,Chloe handbags,Fendi, Balenciaga ,Coach handbags and more!Such as,all Fendi handbags of the materials are exactly the same as the genuine and all the products are produced with elaborate technique. . . All Miu Miu handbags also come with a dust cover, certificate of authenticity card and care booklet.you should buy them at here. I buy some bags, they are very cheap.
www.christianshoeus.com
like to read your post again and again.
manolo blahnik sizes
Awesome stuff
You actually placed right stuff on the table.
I hope more users will get the information that i receive from you.
I can’t wait to read much more, maintain me coming!
Sprout Social is a good tool for managing the social media for
promoting the business. Thanks for the great stuff which also saves our so much
time.
This program looks really awesome. They should integrate the ability to track Google Y/B keywords rankings as well.
Wow, this seems like a great tool!
Useful article, it looks a helpful tool for putting a good impact on our business.
Sprout social looks pretty awesome. I’m gonna have to give it a go! Thanks for the detailed review.
Nice post.Well written. Your site is really to good.Its full with information.You have done a great job by sharing this post with us.I like this post.Keep sharing with us in future too.
I really like the concept of this post and I feel that this is a very unique and rare information that you have managed to compile.You have done a great job by sharing this post with us.I like this post.Keep sharing with us in future too.
I’ve been using Sprout Social for years and I love it!
Great post
I have usually liked good detail sexy.The high-heeled shoes,so Christian Louboutin Heels of traditional is like, for the reason that put on the Jimmy Choo Shoes profit of sprouting, put on I ran Yves Saint Laurent Shoes discovered this good, despite the truth that christian louboutin profit than wedges a great deal higher, however charlotte olympia shoes is nevertheless much better than a great deal of of put on large heels, right here specific suggest all christian louboutin sneakers new of 1 period sequence traditional large heels.