Overview of Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management suite designed to help businesses and organizations streamline and enhance their social media presence. This web and mobile application is tailored to manage various aspects of social media, from content creation and scheduling to analytics and customer engagement.
Key Features
Social Media Management
Sprout Social supports a wide range of social media platforms, including Instagram business accounts, Twitter, Facebook pages, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Additionally, it allows connections to other profiles such as Google Business, Google Analytics, TripAdvisor, and Glassdoor.
Content Creation and Scheduling
The platform offers robust publishing tools, enabling users to create, manage, and schedule content across multiple social media channels. Features include a social content calendar, content library, and suggested send times to optimize post engagement. Users can draft, queue, and publish posts, and even pre-configure specific times for publishing on each platform.
Social Engagement and Inbox Management
Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox centralizes all messages from various social media platforms, allowing for seamless engagement with customers. It includes contextual thread tracking, tagging, and filtering of conversations, which facilitates team collaboration and prioritization of messages. The platform also supports AI-generated canned responses and automated bot interactions for handling FAQs and customer support queries.
Analytics and Reporting
The platform provides extensive analytics capabilities, including social analytics, competitor analysis, follower analysis, and post performance metrics. Users can generate customizable reports for individual profiles, competitor profiles, specific post types, Twitter keywords, and hashtags. These reports help in measuring campaign success and understanding audience engagement.
Social Listening
Sprout Social’s Social Listening tool uses AI to capture real-time audience insights, supporting cross-functional departments from sales to HR. This feature helps in uncovering new business opportunities, informing product launches, and guiding future strategies based on unfiltered thoughts, opinions, and feedback from social media.
Team Collaboration
The platform is designed for team collaboration, allowing users to assign tasks, track progress, and ensure that social media management duties are evenly distributed. Features like approval workflows automate the content approval process, ensuring that posts are approved by managers or clients before publishing.
Integrations and Security
Sprout Social integrates with various tools such as Zendesk, HubSpot, and Salesforce to manage customer support and track leads. It also supports Google Analytics for URL tracking and measuring traffic and conversions. From a security standpoint, the platform offers multi-factor authentication, secure credential storage, and brute-force protections to ensure data safety.
Additional Features
- CRM Tools: Allow multiple team members to track conversation history, contact information, and other notes for customer interactions.
- Feedback Surveys: For Twitter, to gather direct feedback from followers.
- Chatbots: A proprietary bot builder for chat management.
- Reviews Management: Monitor and engage with reviews across different platforms.
- Alerts: For increased message activity, ensuring timely responses.
Pricing and Plans
Sprout Social offers four main plans:
- Standard: $249/month, includes 5 social profiles and basic features.
- Professional: $399/month, includes unlimited social profiles and additional features like competitive reporting and social commerce integrations.
- Advanced: $499/month, adds features such as digital and content libraries, chatbots, and automated link tracking.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing with additional features like 24/5 prioritized customer support and consulting services.
Overall, Sprout Social is a powerful tool that combines social media management, analytics, and engagement into a single, user-friendly platform, making it an invaluable resource for businesses aiming to enhance their social media presence and customer interactions.