With many brands embracing social media, the use of social media tools has become very important. Many brands have accounts on various social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Facebook Page, LinkedIn, Foursquare to name a few. These tools help a brand or an agency to manage all these accounts on one platform to ensure easy usage and access. For the purpose of this post we’ve compared two popular tools meant for businesses in Hootsuite and Sprinklr.

HootSuite

This multiple operating system (Web, iPhone and Android) service was launched in 2008. The service is used by various big companies such as Facebook, Martha Stewart Media, SXSW, and The Gap and also has association with media group Time Inc. for their magazines – People, InStyle and This Old House.

HootSuite offers support for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Page, LinkedIn, Ping.Fm, WordPress, Myspace, Foursquare and Mixi.

Its stream area offers support for viewing multiple social media properties in a column format, on a single window.

HootSuite i an optimum resource for Twitter account management as there are separate columns for timeline, mentions, direct messages and a company can also track keywords, search queries and lists.

For the Facebook page monitoring section, a brand can like or comment on a status from inside the dashboard itself rather than opening a separate window. Another option in the Facebook page management system is to assign a specific post to a team member. This helps in quicker management of concerns and queries with the expertise of the correct team member.

In the analytics section, reports can be created based on the quick analytics section or by creating a custom analytics report based on your choices. In the quick analytics section, reports can be created to see clicks on ow.ly links, individual/vanity URL links, Facebook insights and/or Google Analytics. Custom Analytics would allow the manager to create reports by using a combination of these options and design the format as well.

In the contacts section, information of each follower/following can be seen in a list format. This list would show those respective users’ followers, following counts and also their influence score as calculated by Klout.

Sprinklr

Like HootSuite, Sprinklr is another social media management tool but one big difference between the two that I noticed from the onset was that Sprinklr offers more large business and enterprise centric features while HootSuite is good for small, medium and at times large organisations as well.

Giving the demonstration of the tool, Ragy Thomas, CEO of Sprinklr explained that the platform is currently being used by hundreds of users at many global brands some of which manage more than 100 social media accounts using it. He further went on to explain that the tool is perfect for large enterprises that have a need to manage social media planning and execution across multiple product lines and business units.

The platform is currently being made available to select clients who fit Sprinklr’s Early Access Program (EAP) criteria. It is expected to be generally available later this year.

The tool primarily covers four functional aspects:

• Outbound Social Campaign and Message Management
• Inbound Response Management
• Influencer and Audience outreach
• Reporting & Analytics focused on Optimisation.

Sprinklr just like HootSuite supports many social media properties but main ones for the brands are Twitter, Facebook page/profile, YouTube and LinkedIn.

For monitoring and moderation, the platform provides multiple options. Messages can be read in an ‘Inbox’ view which is easy when there are multiple users managing for the brand. Or brands can create dashboards with multiple columns side by side tracking different message streams like in HootSuite or Tweetdeck, which makes it easier to monitor different social media properties on one single window.  Moderation rules can also be set up to instruct the platform to take specific actions when certain keywords like profanity or competitor names show up in the brands’ message streams.

One feature which could prove very useful for large organisations is of assigning a message to a colleague or a team member. Using this feature, a member of the social media team can ask a member of the tech team to answer a query if needed. This would help brands in maintaining a positive image for itself as the right subject matter experts can be tapped to provide timely and relevant responses.

Facebook Pages are a very important property for most brands. It allows them to engage in conversation, respond to concerns and run contests amongst many things. It therefore becomes imperative to have Facebook Page open at all times for a social media marketer. Sprinklr allows a manager to like, comment and/or view multimedia content right from inside the tool. This makes for easier usage as users don’t need to go to multiple websites to manage social media.

On Twitter, each member has an influence score, engagement score and spam score created by Sprinklr’s proprietary algorithms. These influence numbers can help brands prioritize message responses as more influential audience members can do more damage with a negative comment.

IndiaSocial readers might remember we had covered how various businesses are using customised URL shorteners for their branding purposes. Sprinklr offers this feature at no additional cost and also provides click analytics by referral source and geography.

An important feature which can come in extremely handy is the planner which displays a global calendar of planned messages across all accounts and social properties.  There are also elaborate workflow features that allow users to seek approval from managers prior to posting messages. Messages can be scheduled for future dates or published immediately

Sprinklr has its inbuilt analytics that provides comprehensive reporting on all aspects of social performance including clicks, reach, impressions, comments, likes, retweets, audience growth, replies etc. This can be interlinked with Google Analytics or other web analytics programs like Omniture to analyse ROI.

Reporting can be analysed at campaign, tag or message level.  Custom reporting dashboards can also be generated which can then be exported into Excel if needed.

Which to go for?

Sprinklr is best suited for large organizations which have various accounts on social media properties. With more accounts, more suitable tools and handling is necessary which is provided by Sprinklr.

HootSuite in contrast is good for small and medium organisations which have lesser number of accounts to manage. It offers tools and services which are suitable for medium or small enterprises.

Considering Sprinklr is suitable for large enterprises, the tools are more advanced and the usage is more for intermediate or advanced users.

HootSuite offers a more ease of use as compared to Sprinklr. This makes sense due to its target of smaller companies and even makes sense for individuals for a non-business role.