At the moment, I keep on top of the social media for my business using tweetdeck, twitter analytics, unfollowers, and the integrated analytics tools for Facebook and LinkedIn. That means I usually have at least half a dozen pages open on my laptop at any given time just to keep on top of the usual social media platforms. Plus the other platforms that I am exploring, such as medium, reddit and livejournal. That's not to mention keeping tabs on my website and blogs - Sumo.me and Google Analytics are my nbf's!
The Sprout Social Dashboard gives a quick snapshot of how your different social media profiles are performing. The main sections of the dashboard are:
- Group Trends - Which displays the stats used by the various platforms (E.g. tweet impressions, engagement, etc.)
- Audience Demographics
- Connected Profiles
The buttons across the top of the app interface take you to the 6 main sections:
- Messages
- Tasks
- Feeds
- Publishing
- Discovery
- Reports
1. MESSAGES
The term 'messages' seems to be used as a loose term. It includes twitter Mentions, Direct Messages, Retweets, Retweets with Comments, New Followers and Sent Messages. For Facebook it includes Wall Posts, Comments and Private Messages.
The results are filtered by selecting / deselecting the checkboxes next to each of the above categories. You can also save messages here.
There is also an option to add 'Brand Keywords' to further filter / expand the results. You are able to add 5 'Brand Keywords' to filter the results. I sent Sprout a tweet asking if they just limit it to 5 keywords for the free trial, or if that's standard with the paid version too. They responded with the following tweet:
2. TASKS
Tasks are created by going back to the messages section, selecting the desired interaction and clicking on the drawing pin icon. You can then leave an 'internal' comment and select a 'Task Type' from the following options:
- General Task
- Sales Lead
- Support Issue
The task will then show up in the Tasks section. This creates a 'to do' list that is very useful and easy to action / follow for future reference.
3. FEEDS
I connected my twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to sprout social. This section allows me to access those separate profiles in a central place within the Sprout Social app, rather than checking the profiles within the other apps individually. Having this central location definitely saves time.
4. PUBLISHING
This is a way to publish content across multiple platforms from one central location, and posts can be scheduled in the calendar for future dates. Again, this will doubtless save time for busy social media marketers.
5. DISCOVERY
The main subsections and sub-subsections are:
- Suggestions - 'Your Followers', 'Conversed with', 'Have mentioned you'
- Cleanup - 'Silent Accounts', 'Irregular Usage', 'Do not follow back' - I currently use unfollowers to check the accounts that are not following back. Sprout incorporates this into the app, so that is a plus.
- Smart Search - This does what I use tweetdeck to do. It's great that this function is housed within the Sprout Social app, but the advantage that tweetdeck has over Sprout is that tweetdeck displays the keyword searches in columns, so you can glance across multiple topics, side-by-side, without having to change the display.
6. REPORTS
Last, but definitely not the least!
Note: This is where you can include Google Analytics for your website or blog. Very useful.
The subheadings are:
- Group Report - This is similar to the Dashboard.
- Engagement Report - Goes into more detail about the overall engagement across the group profiles.
- Facebook Pages - Gives detail on engagement with Facebook pages.
- Twitter Profiles - Gives detail on engagement with twitter profiles.
- Trends Report - Reports for each individual twitter profile.
- Twitter Comparison - This is a really useful tool! It allows you to generate comparison reports between your accounts and other twitter accounts. A great way to gauge your effectiveness compared to main competitors!
- Sent Messages - Tracks the performance of tweets in which you have mentioned other users.
IN CONCLUSION...
Sprout Social is a great app with lots of very useful features. I'm sure it is an invaluable tool for very large or busy businesses, that are running lots of social media profiles and campaigns simultaneously. Running a small start-up company, however, I'm not sure if I can justify the cost just yet, when there are so many great tools out there already that I can use for free... It's definitely an aspirational app for me, and now that I know exactly what it does, I can make more informed choices in future. Thank you to Sprout Social for extending my free trial for an extra week.
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