Sprout Social

Our team has used a variety of social media scheduling platforms, including Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and others, and Sprout Social is by far our favorite for many reasons.

• As an agency with hundreds of profiles, Sprout Social makes multiple account management a breeze.
• The scheduling browser is very easy to use.
• It offers ideal posting times to help you optimize reach and engagement.
• It offers a birdseye view of the month. (One of our pain points with Hootsuite was that this was not an option.)

There are also many features that those who work with social media every day can appreciate that the average user might not, such as:

• The option to schedule and create a new post without having to click into a new window each time.
• The ability to download reports by platform and specific date easily and quickly.
• The option to view data which allows you to see which content is performing the best.

I won't beat around the bush. It's pricey. Very pricey. If you're a freelancer or not using social media daily, it may not be worth the investment. If you're an agency working with multiple clients or if social media is part of your daily routine, a scheduling software that offers everything Sprout Social offers is well worth it.

Sprout Social makes social media management simple. I publish content on a daily basis and review our notifications, messages, and assign tasks when needed. The crop tools help us with our photography and graphics for each platform. Most platforms also allow alt text, which is extremely helpful and is a huge priority for us as an institute of higher education.

Sometimes the content calendar glitches and it shows all of the posts per day, including shares, that we didn't necessarily create. It can be a little messy and difficult to navigate when this happens, but it is rare and likely occurs when the software is going through updates. And who doesn't want updates/improvements? Definitely not a deal breaker in the slightest.

The best part of Sprout Social is the ability to preview your social media posts. These previews allow you to see if a photo will crop properly or if it will crop in a weird way, and they allow you to adjust text so it best fits the page. It is also great that you can schedule posts to multiple sites, plan ahead, and easily duplicate posts.

While the post previews are a great tool, sometimes they are deceptive, especially with Twitter. Most of my posts to twitter end up looking different in the final post, as preview photos are not always pulled through. Additionally, if you make adjustments to the photo or crop in Sprout Social, it is important to double check that they actually apply on the back end.