Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, TweetDeck - A check on their Cons !

Whether you are a social media manager for multiple businesses or running your own company, social media scheduling tools help make your job easier. It’s difficult to keep up with the latest tools, tricks and trends. But even more tome consuming to create and post content and track the effectiveness of it all. Enter social media monitoring tools to help you get the job done. they offer a one stop place to post, analyze and schedule all of your social media efforts, alleviating the pain of having to log in and out of dozens of accounts and websites regularly.

Why use Social Media Monitoring Tools?

As business owners and/or marketing managers, it’s important to know the return on our investment so we can discern where our efforts are paying off and where they are not. It’s also important to know which channels are performing best, what type of content gets the most engagement and so on so that you can prioritize your efforts and resources. That’s why social media monitoring tools tools has become so popular. And, as the number of channels continues to grow and change, so will the number of services and types of features. Some applications are used more for monitoring and responding to comments, mentions and messages, whereas some have a full-reporting social media dashboard to help you analyze trends. Many programs are a hybrid of the two and some even include the ability to schedule posts for multiple channels at once.

With so many options on the market that incorporate so many different bells and whistles, how do you know which is the right fit for you? Read on to learn more about the best social media monitoring tools you should consider.

Best Social Media Management Tools

Most services offer similar features with slightly different social media dashboards and methods of using them so for that reason it was a challenge picking a winner. Our top 3 are very similar and all do a great job of helping you manage your social media marketing and give you a social media dashboard to track trends and statistics. As active users of SproutSocial for years, our team at We Rock Your Web is a big fan of its functionality and value. In doing research and testing out some of the newer players and giving some of the old classics a chance again, we tried to find a compelling reason not to choose SproutSocial as our top pick but, alas, they still came out on top. While SproutSocial rocks our web, there could be a social media tool that is better suited to your needs so read on to learn more about our winners and the best of the rest.

Sprout Social - Cons

• No free plan and on the pricier side
• No ability to “save” a particular column to track or monitor a trending topic
• Can’t like a Facebook post or plus a Google+ comment
• No integration with Pinterest

Hootsuite - Cons

• No ability to easily tag other brands when composing Tweets
• Dashboard can be a bit overwhelming
• Must use their URL shortener Ow.ly
• Can only connect one service to one Hootsuite account at a time
• Custom reports and other features can be pricey

Buffer - Cons

• No ability to target Facebook posts
• Reports are limited
• No notifications or ability to interact with users

TweetDeck - Cons

• Twitter only
• No stats or reporting
• No ability to assign roles to team members or tasks to respond to

The best advice for anyone looking to try social media management software is to try before you buy. Get your feet wet, test the waters to see which social media analytics tools work best for you and your team, and find a system that meets your specific needs and preferences.