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In an era dominated by being connected and where social media is the lifeblood of digital marketing, finding the right tool to help you manage and optimize your brand's online presence is crucial.
Sprout Social is an amazing social media management platform, but some tools might offer more advanced tools at better value for money.
In this guide, we uncover the top seven Sprout Social competitors. We also discuss why Eclincher is the top alternative to sprout social and an industry-leading management platform.
1. Eclincher
At the top of our list, we have Eclincher - an extremely effective and powerful social media management platform. Its unified social inbox makes social media monitoring and responding to all social media interactions a breeze.
Eclincher excels in auto-posting with smart queues. I really enjoy this feature as it enables me to automate my scheduling and posting - saving me precious time and helping me maintain a consistent social media presence on multiple social media platforms.
The content curation tool is top-notch. It provides very relevant suggestions to ensure your feed stays fresh and engaging. Not to mention the robust analytics, social listening capabilities, and team collaboration features. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn - Eclincher is the top alternative to Sprout Social for your social media accounts, offering even better value for money with some pretty advanced features.
2. Khoros Social Marketing
Second, on our list, we have another formidable Sprout Social alternative. Centralizing your social media management, it provides an intuitive social media scheduling tool with features such as a content calendar to plan and schedule posts well in advance.
Khoros also offers impressive customer engagement tools, which allow your customer service team to engage with your audience across various channels in real time. Like Eclincher, Khoros's social listening tools track brand mentions and sentiment, while the analytics and reporting tools provide crucial data-driven insights to you and your busy social media marketers.
3. Zoho Social
Zoho Social shines in its scheduling and monitoring capabilities. This social media tool has a comprehensive monitoring dashboard that tracks keywords, mentions, and reviews across the vast ocean that is social media.
Coupled with an excellent social media scheduler for automatic social media publishing, it ensures your brand resonates with responsiveness and consistency.
While Sprout Social also provides monitoring tools, Zoho Social's dashboard is more comprehensive and easy to use - making it one of the top alternatives to Sprout Social.
4. Sprinklr Social
Sprinklr Social is also one of the top Sprout Social alternatives. With its ability to facilitate social media management from a single platform and offer real-time social media engagement features, it is a powerhouse tool for social media managers.
Sprinklr Social also delivers in-depth analytics thanks to its AI-powered insights, enabling you to make data-driven decisions. Not to mention Sprinklr's robust content management tools for creating, scheduling, and distributing content. I also really appreciate this management tool's customer care module, helping my team with more efficient customer service.
5. Hearsay Social
Hearsay Social stands out with its strong focus on compliance. It is a platform that enables social selling - allowing brands to connect with customers to sell products.
Hearsay Social supports multiple channels, making it an all-encompassing tool for social media, text, and email. It has a content library that gives users access to pre-approved content, helping your content remain fresh and engaging. To top it all, Hearsay has some pretty decent predictive analytics - delivering insights into future trends.
Overall, Hearsay is particularly well-suited for regulated industries, thanks to its robust compliance tools. This feature helps businesses avoid potential regulatory pitfalls in their social media communications - a unique selling point compared to Sprout Social.
6. Social Champ
Next on our list, we have Social Champ - a tool that streamlines tasks with features such as bulk scheduling, automatic posting, and advanced team collaboration tools that facilitate seamless coordination.
Additionally, Social Champ offers quality daily content recommendations to keep your social media marketing strategy new and engaging - two characteristics that bring value to your audience. Like Eclincher, Social Champ also provides detailed reports on the performance of your marketing efforts. This enables you to optimize your marketing strategy for higher engagement and better results.
Finally, one feature that Sprout Social lacks is Social Champ's ability to recycle evergreen and the best-performing content, which can be a real game-changer for your social media strategy.
7. Hootsuite
Our final Sprout Social alternative is Hootsuite, a veteran in the field with its comprehensive social media management suite. Like Eclincher, Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social media profiles from a single, unified dashboard - simplifying multi-platform marketing strategies.
Additionally, thanks to the content scheduling tool, comprehensive analytics suite, and social listening features, you can maintain an active and aware social presence.
Hootsuite takes managing multiple social media accounts a step further than what Sprout Social is capable of - providing a more convenient solution to managing businesses with a large number of social accounts.
Why Are People Switching From Sprout Social?
While Sprout Social is arguably one of the most popular and effective social media management tools, some users choose to switch over to other platforms for various reasons. Here are some of the reasons:
Cost
Sprout Social's "premium" reputation makes it pricier than some of the other social media management platforms. This is especially true for businesses and startups with limited budgets. Other tools, like Eclincher and Khoros, offer better value for money.
Limited number of accounts
There is a limited amount of social accounts you can manage with Sprout Social compared to Sprout Social alternatives.
Interface
This is a problem I also encountered. While the interface is well-designed, it is not as intuitive and user-friendly as some of the other apps.
Customer Support
I always thought Sprout Social had good customer support, that is, until I experienced Eclincher's and Zoho's customer service. They will make you feel as if you are flying first class - helping you almost immediately if you have problems and going out of their way to make sure you have an overall good experience with the app.
Advanced Features
Don't get me wrong; Sprout Social does have some amazing features. But it is not as advanced as I would like them, and many other people agree. For instance, AI-driven insights, automated and streamlined posting, or compliance tools for regulated industries are available in some of its competitors.
What Is A Social Media Marketing Tool?
A social media marketing tool is a software or platform that enables businesses and marketers to manage their social media presence more effectively by managing and automating various tasks related to social media marketing. These tasks include creating, scheduling, and publishing content, engaging with their audience, tracking and analyzing the performance of posts and the brand on multiple social media platforms, and more.
Social media tools help streamline the process of managing a social media presence, making it easier to maintain a consistent and effective strategy across multiple platforms. This saves you time, allows you to reach a larger audience and help you understand the impact of your social media efforts.
Main Benefits Of Using A Social Media Management Tool?
There are many benefits of using a social media management tool, but from my own experience, here are the benefits I appreciate the most:
Saves Time
Time is the most precious commodity, and any tool that can help me save time is always a good tool in my books. Social media management tools allow you to plan and schedule posts ahead of time, and the tool automatically posts these scheduled posts according to your schedule.
Consistency
Consistency is key if you want to retain and grow your audience. By scheduling posts, you ensure your content is shared consistently, even when you are busy or out of the office. This ensures your audience stays engaged and helps you maintain your brand's presence.
Multichannel Management
Say goodbye to the cumbersome and inefficient management of all your social media profiles. Social media management tools allow you to control all your social media accounts from a single, intuitive dashboard - simplifying and organizing the management process.
Advanced Analytics
As the saying goes, knowledge is power. With the help of a social media management tool, you can analyze and report your social media performance on multiple social networks. This allows you to tap into metrics such as engagement, reach, shares, likes, and follower growth. After implementing the tools' insights and adjusting my marketing strategy accordingly, I saw a steep rise in my engagement and follower growth.
Customer Engagement
Some social media management tools have a feature called social media monitoring. This feature enables you to track mentions, comments, and messages. It is very helpful to ensure prompt response time and engage with your audience more effectively.
Furthermore, some tools offer social listening capabilities, enabling you to monitor online conversations relating to your brand, track competitor activities and customer sentiment, as well as helping stay aware of trends in your industry.
Main Factors That Make A Great Social Media Management Platform
Social media management tools are there to help you manage your social media campaigns. How good a social media management platform depends on its ability to simplify social activities, elevate your marketing strategies, and help you stay on top of your brand sentiment. Here are the five main elements that determine the quality of a social media management tool:
Usability and Interface:
Nobody wants to spend unnecessary time learning a new platform. Yes, there is a learning curve to anything new, but a great social media management tool has a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard, allowing you to easily navigate its features. This includes features such as straightforward setup procedures, easy operating mechanics, and a simple way to navigate the app and between multiple clients (social media managers) and accounts.
Multichannel Integration
While it is nice to have a robust tool for a single social media network, more times than often, a business has accounts on multiple accounts. Therefore, a platform should be able to integrate with multiple social networks, at least the major social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Scheduling Features
As the saying goes: "Failing to plan is planning to fail." A social media management tool mitigates such risks by providing scheduling features that allow you to plan and schedule posts ahead of time. This saves you time and ensures your content is published at the right time when engagement is at its peak.
The best tools also have features like bulk uploading, setting post times based on engagement hours, and a visual calendar.
Comprehensive Analytics
Most social media management tools have analytical features. However, the best tools provide easy-to-interpret and highly accurate analytics. These analytics should make it easy for you to adjust your social media marketing efforts based on the insights the tool provides.
It should also track multiple metrics, such as engagement, reach, impressions, competitor analysis, and growth.
Customer Support
Customer support is very important, as there will be times when you need assistance with the platform. Regardless if it is a technical issue, a billing question, or a new feature you are not sure how to use, the platform's support team should be easy to reach and capable of resolving your issues swiftly and professionally.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Salesforce own Sprout Social?
Yes, Salesforce and Sprout Social have partnered, making it easy for Salesforce customers to manage their social media presence and social customer care operations through Sprout Social's social suite.
Which social media management tool is the best value?
Eclincher has the best value for money - it is competitively priced with the rest of the market, plus you get some of the best and most comprehensive tools available.
What social media apps are compatible with Eclincher?
Eclincher is compatible with the following social media apps: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Twitter, Google My Business, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok
The Bottom Line
While Sprout Social is a powerful platform, it may not be the best fit for everyone. With tools like Eclincher achieving higher customer ratings on G2, it is natural to want and explore alternative, possibly better tools. Because in the end, the tool that allows you to remain at the pinnacle of your industry is vital in ensuring the longevity of your brand. Well, Eclincher is that tool for you! Not only does it offer best-in-class features, but it also has some of the best customer service I have ever encountered.
