Sprout Social

Full Review

The small business (particularly the non-technical) segment is still trying to figure out how to effectively embrace social media and the many conversations that take place online. Twitter and Facebook could be a gold-mine or a land-mine for a business depending on how they're managed.

Enter Sprout Social.

Sprout Social is a nicely designed and easy to use application designed to help small businesses manage and grow their social media presence.Getting started with Sprout Social is easy and quick, so much so that they promote the fastest signup on their site ever was done in 7.6 seconds! Once you create an account on Sprout Social, you'll need to integrate your social media accounts. I was easily able to add both our Twitter and Facebook Page for HeadStartup in just a minute or two.

Once I created our account and integrated both Twitter and Facebook, I was immediately taken to the Dashboard which by the way, the Sprout Social UI is sharp and incredibly easy to navigate. The customizable Dashboard provides a nice snapshot view of all the activities taking place, and the performance of the Twitter and Facebook accounts. Here's what my personal Dashboard looks like:

Next, I familiarized myself with the navigation which focuses on 5 key areas, Inbox, Smart Search, Reports/Analytics, Schedule, Locations, and Contacts.

The Inbox can be customized to display a number of items including Twitter mentions, new Twitter followers (which is a nicely designed approach to tracking new followers), Facebook Page updates and messages, LinkedIn alerts and also Foursquare/Gowalla check-ins. Sent message also shows how many times a link within a tweet has been clicked and also how many times a tweet has been re-tweeted.

The Discovery section lets you set up keyword searches, people, and business searches. Since our focus is on small business software apps here at HeadStartup, I went ahead and created several keyword searches around that phrase. I also created business searches on the software apps in our database (including Sprout Social) so that I can monitor the happenings of the companies that apps that we've reviewed. I could easily envision traditional businesses using Discovery section to track customer conversations and also competitive conversations.

The Reports section is what you would expect - where you go to get detailed reporting for each social media profile associated with the account. The reports are very nicely designed and provide a quick profile summary (including new follows/fans, lost fans, total retweets, clicks, etc. You can also measure and track engagement and influence, and also Twitter follower/Facebook fan demographic data including age, sex, location, etc.

The Schedule section allows you to create and schedule a "one-time" message or create recurring message. Both were straightforward, I actually set up several a handful of recurring messages in just a few minutes - much easier than Hootsuite!

The Locations section is also where Sprout Social separates itself from the competition. If you're a brick-and-mortar (imagine a restaurant with a few locations) you can set up Sprout Social to send you an email/text when a customer checks in, monitor first time and even the influential visitors when they check in.

Sprout Social has only two plans, "Go Pro" or "Go Business". Go Pro ($9.00/month) is ideally positioned to assist independent and small online business and is good for up to 5 profiles/accounts but does not include Location services. Go Business ($49.00/month)
is ideal for larger businesses with multiple locations and needs Location services.

The Bottom Line

The problem is that Twitter and Facebook were both designed for individuals and simply cannot provide the business community the analytics/reporting tools to effectively monitor conversations. Sprout Social brings the reporting and analytics necessary for small businesses and brands that want to leverage the power of social media. We've been using Sprout Social here for the past few days and enjoy it so much, we're seriously considering making the switch from Hootsuite. If you're looking for an app to better manage your brand in the world of social media, Sprout Social is a fantastic solution.

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