Uncategorized, social media, IIA Digital Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Influencer Tools
IIA Toolshed #5
Influencer Tools
Tooler’s Choice? Buzzsumo is an online tool that tracks content on all social networking sites and ranks them based on the number of shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. It allows you to find out what content is popular by topic or on any website. You can input search criteria and find out what content is already working in your area so you can identify some quick wins for social content production. Buzzsumo allows you to set up keyword alerts, so you are updated when content is posted or updated. Knowing what content is working on social for your competitors or other publishers in your industry is very helpful. Buzzsumo is a great way to find top content around specific keywords, phrases or topics which is a very useful tool when turning a content plan or strategy into a content calendar of topics. Be careful when using Buzzsumo that you don’t fall into the comfort zone of writing about what is already doing well instead of finding new topics that haven’t been written about yet but combined with other tools Buzzsumo is an excellent tool in the social or content marketers toolkit. You can also track social influencers by keyword and sector. Overall it is very powerful for social content but the free version is limited.
General Information
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Marketing Automation
IIA Digital Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Design Tools
IIA Toolshed #4
Social Media Design Tools
Tooler’s Choice?
We looked at four social media Design Tools, no one is the winner because they are all very different and serve different needs.
General Information
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers who took part this month are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Lynne Rourke, Buyandsell.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
| Product Name |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website | https://www.canva.com/ | http://piktochart.com/ | https://venngage.com/ | http://www.picmonkey.com/ | http://makeagif.com/ | https://www.draw.io |
| What Is It | It is an online image creation and editing tool. Has been hailed as "The easiest to use design program in the world” – The Webby | Web based infographic software. Works best at creating visuals using your data sets. Not recommended for creating a simple visual. | It is an online infographic maker | A very powerful image creation and editing tool for markers who are not Graphic Designers. Great for editing images, creating logos and even infographics. | Its an online GIF making site, where you can very quickly make a give from images, videos or even youtube videos | draw.io (formerly Diagramly) is free online diagram software that can be used as a flowchart maker, network diagram software but also a handy editing and design tool. |
| What's It Like To Use? | Very quick and easy. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals.It can be used for both web and print media design and graphics. | Very quick to get started, easy drag and drop feature allows you to build presentation or infographic quickly. Good selection of templates. | It is a simple platform to use for creating infographics. It has a number sample templates to get inspiration from. However, the majority of templates are only available for paid subscribers. Easy drag and drop interface allows rapid infographic building with elements such as charts, maps, pictograms, icons, text, images and more. | It can be a little intimidating and even fiddly to use initially. There are so many features and options that you can use. However once you get the hang of PicMonkey you can edit and design images in minutes. | It's very easy to use, very straightforward UI, but its sole use is for making GIF's. | The user interface initially appears intimidating as there is a lot of functionality and each session begins with a blank canvas. There is no registration and you literally start to design from scratch but the process is fairly intuitive. You can import images, add text with lots of export options and formats. |
| Is There Anything I Should Know? | Social-media and technology expert Guy Kawasaki joined the company as chief evangelist in April 2014. When you pay for an image, you only have rights for 24 hours. Good news - you only pay for what you use. Bad news - users might get an unpleasant surprise if they need to re-purchase an image. This is not made super clear in the interface. | It takes quite a while (marginal few extra seconds) to save, even when you haven't edited anything : ( | In order to unlock all the features you'll need to subscribe for a premium version ($15/month). With the Premium version you are able to export the infographics into PDF and PNG formats. The product was created by Eugene Woo who is also the founder of vizualize.me which is an infographic maker for resumes. | PicMonkey has a free version, but images fonts and functionality are limited. I would strongly recommend upgrading to the paid version (known as Royale Membership). It is inexpensive - $33 a year, billed annually or $4.99 a month. The paid version gives an unbelievable number of image overlays and design templates. One downside of PicMonkey is it does not allow you to re-edit images or even save a "work in progress" for a later date. One big downfall with PicMonkey is that it is desktop only. A Mobile App would be really useful. | There is no need to sign in/register to make a GIF, but having a profile gives you more flexibility (there is a limit to the lenght of the gif you can make without signing in). Also before signing in, Youtube gifs seem to not work properly. Registration is free, and very quick and easy. Once you are registered you can remove the watermark. They have an chrome extension which seems to work pretty well and is easy to use. Its also possible to share to your social profiles (in many different ways) from within the app. Note there is a limit to the video upload size ( MB). There is virtually no editing of videos - it is just a GIF maker. | This tools is really designed for rapid building of flow charts but could also be used for enhancing, editing and producing good graphics for social media output. There are limited stock graphics available in the search bar - mainly icon style but currently it is a free tool with future licensing planned. |
| Who would you recommend it for? | Creating images for use on social networks, in presentations or for print. | Any small business currently outsourcing design work. | For businesses wishing to create quality infographics without the cost of in-house designers | Any business that wants to create great looking images for their marketing materials and social media posts without the cost of a graphic designer. | Creating GIFs quickly from photos, videos, webcam or youtube. Especially useful for companies with lots of related images and willing to experiment in visual story telling. | Creating images and assets with flow chart elements or basic editing of images |
| Cost | Free unless you purchase images. It would be preferable if you could arrange to view images by Free/Paid. Payment mechanism is cr card only (no PayPal). You have rights for 24 hours to edit imagery. £1 or €1 only. | "Free" but with watermark. Starts at $15/month. Templates, icons, 100MB download (no watermark?) Moves to $29/month (everything) | Two plans: Free and Premium ($15/month) | There is a Free option, but it is limited. I would strongly recommend upgrading to the paid version (known as Royale Membership). It is inexpensive - $33 a year, billed annually or $4.99 a month. The paid version gives an unbelievabile number of image overlays and design templates. | Free | Free but with future licensing planned. |
| Specific Criteria (Out of 4) | ||||||
| Size formats for various social platforms | 4 -Yes, it has pre-set up templates for Twitter header, FB cover, and all the main social channel image post sizes. | 3 - Yes you can change the canvas size. | 3 - the canvas size is customisable | 4 - There are plenty of size templates and you can customise your image or design to any size. | 1 - no not really, its an embedded link when sharing on Facebook/Twitter, but this is probably the right way for it to be shared | Size is pretty much determined by the edited size of the canvas. |
| Purchase images | 4 - Yes, it has a range of free and priced images that you can search for from within the tool. You only pay when you publish the image - before publish you can use but they are watermarked.You can also upload your own images from your computer or Facebookor drag them from your desktop. | 0 - You cannot purchse images although there is an extensive libriary | 3 - free and for purchase images available. You can also upload own images | 2 - Once you have the paid version there are amazing templates, images and designs you can use. However you will most likely need to bring your own images to the PicMonkey table. | 0 - not relevant to this platform | 0. Some free icon style images available in search bar. |
| Add transparencies | 4 - yes you can edit the transparency of layers. | 0 - no | 0 - no | 4 - Yes it is really easy to isolate images and add transparency of layers. | 0 - no editing capability | 0 - you can move images to background but no transparency |
| Add layers | Yes, and you can easily move them back and forth - easier to use layers in this than it is in photoshop. | 2 - You can basic layers | 1 - you can add layers | 4 - Yes - very easy to layer images, text and photos. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Yes. Simple basic layering |
| Editing capability | 4 | 4 | 3 - Fine | 3 - Once you create an image on PicMonkey you cannot re-edit it. However there is great editing features available when editing a picture. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Fine |
| Add text & edit fonts | 4 - yes and good range of fonts | 4 - some really good fonts | 3 - fine, but could be more variety | 4 - loads of fonts and you can even import and use additional fonts on your pc. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Simply start typing. Can change text fonts etc |
| Save templates | 3 - Yes although they are not called templates, you can save designs and copy designs to use them as templates for future designs. | 3 | 4 - Yes | 0 - Once you have created an image on PicMonkey you need to save it to your pc. They do not store your images, (This may be a good thing) | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Yes |
| Good range of export formats | 3 - presentation formats don't export to ppt compatible | 3 - limited to pdf formats and image formats. Will not export to ppt | 2 - pdf and png 4 - Dermot - export to Google Docs etc | 3 - Good format options. | 2 - GIF and MP4. Its more impressive that you can create a give in a few ways | 4 - wide range of drop down menu options of fromats and saving options from Google Drive, Dropbox to Browser. |
| What did you love? | 4 -ease of use and the pre defined templates for social and ads. | 3 - SurveyMonkey Integration was great and really easy and quick to use and get started. | 3 - easy and quick to build infographics | 4 - Once I got used to it. It made me feel like a Photshop wizard without even going near the complexities of Photoshop. | It does what it says on the tin, no unnecessary frills | Although built for flowcharts it offers lots of functionality for creative use. Easy to play around with. |
| What did you hate? | 3 - Very little. Can't believe there is no mobile option. Not even mobile optimised site. | 3 - Felt a bit like WordArt at times, limited shapes. Slight time delay can be annoying. | 1 - no keyboard shortcuts copy/paste like ctrl+c or ctrl+v, instead of clicking on delete button you need to use venngage interface button to delete items. | 3 - Only complaint is the inability to save and re-edit images. And the lack of a mobile app. | Inability to do ANY editing (even to flip the images around, which would be handy for videos taken on a phone). To get around this, upload the video to Youtube first. | Initial blank canvas and early learning curve. |
| Are you going to continue using it? | 3 - Yes | 3 - Yes, good for reporting | 3 - Yes | 3 - Yes | 4 - Yes |
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Customer Service Tools
Uncategorized, social media, Social Media Working Group, new technology, IIA Toolshed, Social Media Monitoring
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Monitoring
IIA Toolshed #3
Social Media Monitoring
Tooler’s Choice?
We looked at four social media monitoring tools, no one is the winner because they are all very different and serve different needs.
- Market leader Radian6 from salesforce is powerful and provides all you need for monitoring and listening, but it is truly an enterprise solution and requires a hefty investment. For enterprise, Radian6 is one of the best there is.
- Mention is accessibly priced tool for medium sized companies, with budget, who have reasonably large web and social search monitoring needs and wish to centralised the management of these. Ideal for those who have report generating needs and wish to involve large teams.
- New Irish offering, Olytico is an interesting software and a service tool. You tell Olytico what keywords you want to track, they set up the searches for you, and you use the tool to view results. It neatly overcomes the problem that many face with social media monitoring tools of only being as good as your search terms, but this at times can be a bit limiting. We decided that Olytico is the perfect tool for agencies who need to report back on how far their client’s brand travelled across the social media spaces.
- Social Bakers is probably best suited to SME’s, although it only really monitors what’s being said about your own social media, rather than listening widely about broader conversations. It serves a purpose for bringing reporting together and does that very well, providing benchmark industry data.
General Information
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers who took part this month are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Lynne Rourke, Buyandsell.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
| Product Name |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website | Radian6 | Mention | Olytico | Social Bakers |
| What Is It? | Radian6 is a Social Media listening and monitoring tool owned by Salesforce.com. It is heavily integrated with other Salesforce products (Buddy Media) and features. Very often used as part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud package. They are repackaging Radian6 with new features under a new name called Social Studio | Mention is a online social media monitoring tool that searches the main social media channels and incorporates alerts, responding capability, task assignment, reporting and analysis. | Software AND a service! It's a hybrid between self service and managed. You tell Olytico what you want to track, they set it up for you, and you can then do the monitoring yourself | Online, Self Service, Social Media Measurement Tool. Very good for competitive analysis & industry benchmark. Super basic for Free. Social Bakers Statistics = free. Marketing Suite = paid. Additional upgrade features = Analytics (customised reporting, benchmarking etc), Builder (Plan, publish, measure from single place), Advertising (plugin to FB & Twitter ads), Listening. |
| What’s It Like To Use? | Simple to use. Set up automated searches by keywords and/or company name. Search by location for better results. One of the best things about Radian6 is its ability to turn searches into really digestible reports. Within seconds I can search, measure and identify business opportunities. It is great for analysing sentiment, monitoring competitors and identifying influencers and brand advocates. | Reasonably simple set up. Does a very broad search and generates good reports. Allows you to respond to mentions or allocate to team members. | Simple to use. It's all set up for you. Can view activity by day, and assign content to team members. Cannot track whether they have actually done something with it or not. It trawls all the main social platforms (FB pages plus open groups, not profiles), Flickr, Insta, not that strong on Pinterest, plus forums, and news sites. | It's easy to use at basic level. Free Trial offered for 2 weeks. Heavily focused on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. May be more customisation possible but not obvious. |
| Does it give meaningful results for Ireland? | Yes - easy to limit results to Ireland only | Yes. Strong on Twitter especially when hashtaged | Yes. Strong on Ireland as you'd expect from an Irish tool. | Yes, as strong as any other country |
| Is There Anything I Should Know? | Salesforce seem very cloak and dagger in giving anyone access to it unless they are a large multinational and already using the Salesforce platform. Very difficult to get a price list from them. They can penalise organisations when high volumes of data. | Range of functionality appears limited for the price. Much of the functionality could be achieved with free tools like google alerts and topsy/social mention. Low threshold on number of mentions means upgrade for busy accounts. | Workflow exists in that you can tick the box and assign content to team members. Team collaboration is coming, where you can mark it as done or dealt with. Good support function. | Ideally you should set up more than one business for benchmarking, so ideally you're monitoring you and your competition. I like the presentation format exportable reports. Love reports about which types of posts perform best, which times of day, and days of week, also industry benchmarks |
| Who would you recommend it for? | Organisations already using the Salesforce.com platform. Great for big companies with a sizable budget and a large community to monitor and listen to. Possibly a good tool for Digital Agencies who want to offer listening and monitoring services to their clients. Enterprise. | Medium to large organisations with budget who wish to utilise the team collaboration features. Suitable for disparate enterprises centralising brand/company mentions who appear over a wide variety of online sites. | Agencies needing to track client mentions. Or brands/businesses who are being talked about widely and not just on FB and TW. Good example given was Jameson Film Festival, who were talked about widely for a month. No annual contract means they can sign up and use the tool just for the month. | Medium size businesses who are |
| Cost inc VAT | Expensive - Pricing in Feb 2013 - The good folks at Radian6 got back to me and it turns out that they have changed their pricing model. There are now two different models: Business Model: $600 / month for up to 10,000 mentions Agency Model: $950 / month for up to 1 million mentions Historical Data: $100 / month going back to 2008 (except Twitter that goes back to 2010) Source Some hidden charges especially when there are peaks in activity, which seems counter intuitive | Starter $29, Growth $99, Company $299, Enterprise $799 (per month) | €700 per month, without limitation on keywords or Results or seat/user. If you want separate feeds per channel, €200 per additional channel. Single chanel is good 2-3 clients.. | "Free Trial for 2 weeks. $120 per month thereafter. I believe there are other more tiered products, but v difficult to get access, and default is to 120 per month. Social Bakers Statistics = free. Marketing Suite = paid. Additional upgrade features = Analytics (customised reporting, benchmarking etc), Builder (Plan, publish, measure from single place), Advertising (plugin to FB & Twitter ads), Listening." |
General Criteria (Out of 4) – 1 is “Really Dislike”, 4 is ”Really Like”
| Name of Tool: | Radian6 | Mention | Olytico | Social Bakers |
| Ease of Use | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
| Price | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| Documentation | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Mobile Compatible? |
3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Tablet Compatible? |
3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
Specific Criteria (Out of 4) – 1 is “Really Dislike”, 4 is ”Really Like”
| Social Media Platforms It Monitors | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| Sentiment analysis | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Reporting | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Unique Insights | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Analytics? | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Any Restrictions? Gotchas? | Some hidden charges especially when there are peaks in activity, which seems counter intuitive | You can’t experiment with searches | No API integration | |
| Customisable dashboard | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Product Intuitiveness / UI | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| Team Collaboration Features? | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Are we going to continue using it? | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| Total Score | 35 | 32 | 32 | 34 |
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Social Media Design Tools in July.
Summary:
Uncategorized, social media, IIA Digital Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Publishing Tools
IIA Toolshed #2
Social Media Publishing Tools
Tooler’s Choice? Hootsuite
Check out the detailed review below including Buffer, SproutSocial, and SocialOomph.
General Information
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Dermot Casey, NearFuture.io
- Greg Fry, Contentplan.co
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- Alan Cronin, AIB.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Laurynas Binderis, Talentevo
- Eoin Young, Electric Ireland
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
| Product Name |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website | Buffer | Hootsuite.com | SocialOomph | Sproutsocial |
| What Is It | Online scheduling tool that publishes to TW, FB, LI, G+ and now Pinterest. Ronseal! | A Social Media scheduling and reporting platform. You can schedule and manage content from your Facebook (Personal and Business), Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Wordpress accounts. It also has 100s of additional apps that gives your monitoring and commenting abilities on other sites including Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. | Social media productivity tool which allows you to publish and monitor social media activity | Sprout Social is an online social media management, reporting and engagement tool that enables publishing (incorporating analytics's) to various social media platforms. |
| What’s It Like To Use? | Pretty easy and seamless. No real learning. Support was a bit generic. Dashboard intuitive - easy to remove accounts. When you move stuff around or change times, it caused a few problems. | Easy to set up and use. Just go to hootsuite.com and sign up. Easy to add Social Media accounts and search for add on apps. Its dashboard is easy to navigate, search social networks and see previous scheduled posts. Hootsuite has a mobile app that allows you to manage your activity on the go. However - would recommend that you do the bulk of your Hootsuite scheduling and reporting from the Desktop dashboard. | When it comes to giving access to another user, they must create a social oomph account, it's time consuming. The interface appears to be very poor but it does have some good functionality. Cons: It is not intuitive and learning to use it takes some time. The design is hard to navigate. Pros: It has feature called Queue Reservoir which helps to drip feed updates to selected social profiles. The Posting section does have a number of features such as creating and managing updates, creating updates from RSS feeds, and creating updates via email. The Following section facilitates follow-back and auto-welcome on Twitter as well as finding new people to follow function. The Monitoring section allows to set up regular email alerts for monitoring particular keywords found on Twitter. Other stats like mentions, retweets and following are also available. | Set up on a free trial was painless with minimum effort and adding social media profiles was generally a 2-3 click process to add Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Feedly. It also incorporates google analytics and operates using a classic dashboard. Posting to different social profiles was just a matter of adding the content and clicking the profiles with the optional inbuilt scheduler allowing flexibility on when it would appear. The dashboard in general was intuitive with rapid report generation and useful exploring and search tools. (EY) No option to upload video or multiple images to Twitter via the Scheduling App. Reporting option is great, with the option to sort Facebook posts per engagement particularly useful. Overall, it has many of the features needed under one dashboard (scheduling, reports, assign tasks, Twitter Advanced Search), which makes it extremely useful. |
| Is There Anything I Should Know? | Nothing compelling to upgrade. Auto shortens links to buff.ly, but you can override. Time zone of scheduler is confusing. If you've already scheduled a post to publish, you cannot change the distribution e.g. just add in G+ after scheduled - instead set up new post 🙁 | Hootsuite has a cool bookmarker called Hootlet that allows you to schedule content directly from your web browser. Hootsuite also supports RSS feeds so you can ensure you latest blog is automatically distributed to Social Media as soon as it’s published. It also offers suggested content - which is similar in nature to the content you share and allows you add it to your publishing schedule (hit and miss at present). Hootsuite integrates with Google Analytics, Twitter and Facebook Insights and can create Social Media reports in seconds. Pro account holders are allowed create a number of reports for free, otherwise they come at an additional cost. Hootsuite allows you to add 100s of apps to your dashboard. E.g. Pocket and Feedly from Hootsuite and even manage YouTube Account. Finally - the only issue with Hootsuite at present is that it does not (currently) display visuals properly when posting from to Twitter, it posts as a link. And if you're posting a link, it posts 2 links if it's got an image in it. | 45 mins to integrate a FB account. Not a good UI. Can schedule. Can bulk upload. Can integrate a bit.ly account and create a unique URL shortener. Very basic posting functions. Can create a Reservoir - can create a schedule to post at different times. Monitoring is basic - just mentions, and RT's. CLUNKY. Needs training. UGLY. Basic version can only add Twitter. 7 day trial you can add other accounts, big learning curve to learn it in 1 week. Support was quick enough, help section is descriptive - good - but it's a big time investment. | Follow up mails including offers of phone support from a dedicated person gave a nice personal touch to the experience. Sprout Social really comes into its own when you are managing teams with a powerful task manager and is very suited to larger organisations with disparate teams and multiple profiles. Its mobile version works well with similar functionality. One of the draw backs is the relatively low number of social profiles it connects to and would expect instagram etc. |
| Who would you recommend it for? | "An organisation (doesn't matter the size) who is already running its own publishing schedule, who wants to supplement with shared content. Yes, it's probably not as sophisticated as some, but definitely a great scheduling tool, and a lot of functionality comes for free." | My favourite of all the platforms, but currently has a few issues with posting images (in particular to Twitter). Would recommend a PRO account that allows you to manage up to 100 accounts. I would use it to post to multiple LinkedIn and Facebook Groups. | We wouldn't! | A large organisation with multiple profiles and team members |
| Cost inc VAT | $10 per month Awesome (up to 100 posts and tweets + 10 social profiles per month) Freemium model. Free package is pretty good to get started. "Awesome package” has some analytics with export functionality, you can have more multiple admins on an account, and allows you to schedule more posts in advance. Awesome plan is $102 per year, Small Business Plan is $50/mth which is pricey. Discount for non-profits is nice touch. | Free account for up to 5 Social Networks. Hootsuite Pro (recommended) $9.99 per month (free 30 day trial available) - allows you to collaborate with up to 10 team members, manage 100 accounts and access free Social Media reports. There is a further paid option - Hootsuite Enterprise for larger organisiations. | €12.58 every fortnight, €27.26 monthy, €81.77 quarterly, €327 annually. | 59 (USD) for Delux, 99 (USD) for premium and 500 (USD) for team version per month |
General Criteria (Out of 4) – 1 is “Really Dislike”, 4 is ”Really Like”
| Name of Tool: | Buffer | Hootsuite | Social Oomph | Sprout Social |
| Ease of Use | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| Price | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
| Documentation | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| Mobile Compatible? |
4 | 4 | 0 | 3 |
| Tablet Compatible? |
4 | 4 | 0 | 3 |
Specific Criteria (Out of 4) – 1 is “Really Dislike”, 4 is ”Really Like”
| Social Media Platforms it posts | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
| Schedules image posts? | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 |
| Schedules videos post? | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Sentiment Analysis? | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
| Analytics? | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| Any Restrictions? Gotchas? | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| Customisable dashboard | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Product Intuitiveness / UI | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| Team Collaboration Features? | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Are we going to continue using it? | 1 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Total Score | 44 | 52 | 14 | 42 |
One to watch: echobox – This new scheduling app might suit large publishers,
enabling them to curate ALL the content on their site to send to social. It forecasts ideal post times and layouts, AB testing each post. The range of features includes forecasting Page Views (which is the publisher’s bread and butter) and the algorithm learns what works and what doesn’t. One key aspect is you can flick a switch, and ultimately let it publish for you. Someone may be out of a job soon.
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Social Media Monitoring in June.
Summary: Hootsuite won, but Buffer closely followed. SproutSocial if you’re an enterprise. Avoid SocialOomph.
