SOCIAL MEDIA: EVALUATING ONLINE MARKETING TOOLS

Service comparison: How do the current crop of social media service management tools stack-up for a small business

I evaluated the functionality, integration, deployment support and costs of multiple Social Media management providers in market; tested 3 and finally selected one. This article walks through the method and madness associated with undertaking the process.

Why?

Rather than burn my time churning through different social media channels, like X, BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and the others, I need to streamline my content management and distribution with minimal effort. I must be able to write-once, and publish many, and do it cost-effectively and super-efficiently.

I can't afford to employ a dedicated communications advisor so I assessed the following low- to medium-cost platforms for social media management to see what's what.

Table: Social Media management services evaluated

Buffer	HubSpot	Social Champ
Hootsuite	Social Pilot	LinkedIn
Loomly	Sprout Social	Sendible
Zoho Social

The next bit is background, approach and some exposition with the 'what's involved' and 'how to go about it'.

Why social media management solutions?

As a practicing consultant and small business, I want to be able to showcase what I do and why me. For this there's social media for multi-channel communication.

I've been creating content, evaluating software and services, and implementing solutions for 25years. I am very good at it, and like most practiced consultants there's a common set of questions and criteria I apply - and then I look at specifics for case-in-hand.

If all you want is the Recommendation for the 3 services weighted in the end, you can skip ahead to Scoring. Or you can jump to the Assessments if you want to see examples of profiling comparison.

Why not just "ChatGPT" it?

The generic platforms like Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini etc can be used to churn content out, but they are frankly rubbish at automation and targeting for specific business problems. Social media management and publishing is one of the areas in industry that specific AI models have been refined with years of training by specialists, to achieve specific outcomes. You do not get a good experience if you chuck the request in Copilot and hope for the best. I know. I tried it.

Now let me be really clear, I did use tools like Perplexity.ai and Claude.ai to trawl data on the services, pull up the raw information and do basic analysis and comparisons, but when it came to specifics of the situation I fall back on real-world expertise and experienced guidance from Social Media Communications experts (consultancies) that I know.

The combination of Generative AI + Expert guidance reduced my effort by about 65% on a normal job, but it didn't negate the need for the assessment to be based on sound data and recognised decision-making framework. Hence I ended up trialing the last couple.

Background and key criteria.

For the sake of brevity I'm just going to list the kind of questions posed when starting on this task:

Do have a communication and marketing strategy and plan?
Do you have a definition of what your brand scope is?
Have you assessed and defined primary channels and target audience(s)?
Why are we looking at an online service, not a managed service or employee?
What's the available budget for operating the service?
How much time can be dedicated per week to support outcomes?
Where's is the primary source of content created or sourced?
How much needs to be automated?
And do you have rules, guidance and principles for automation?
etc..

My responses to which can be summed up as: no none-sense; and keep-it-simple-stupid.

Rather than expand on each, I've just put the summary of situation below. The scope is:

the service is required for multiple (valid) reasons,
content output and some effort (hours, not days) per week or fortnight is available,
minimal service budget is available - $x0s of dollars / mnth.

Working principles I applied were that, whatever I end up with... :

Something, is better than nothing;
Simplicity is best, and
It must join-up core preferred channels.

Assessment

First-cut - Raw data points

I used the following as criteria for Perplexity.ai to provide me a comparison and general indication on which to do more depth assessment:

Basic functionality: content queueing, publishing, calendar, key channels (current, future), analytics.
Integration to preferred services platform.
Cost per month.
Automation availability: content generative AI, approval workflow, scheduling

The summary of simple comparative functionality and pricing let me drop the following straight away:

HubSpot	Painfully expensive. $890/mnth. (min)	Didn't fit with our primary content source platform, or our contact management platform. Required 2 modules using Professional. Did integrate to our services automation platform.
Sprout Social	Really expensive. $299/mnth	Didn't integrate to primary content source, but did have primary channels, content AI and queueing. Really good resources and support. High cost/low-benefit for our purposes
Sendible	Still too expensive. $199/mnth	Didn't integrate to primary content source, but did have primary channels, content AI and queueing.

HubSpot getting knocked-out here was frustrating as our service automation platform has integration for HubSpot, but the fact it doesn't integrate to our web-platform and that its cost was more than 4x the nearest border-line option, was frankly taking the p***.

Second-cut - In-depth capabilities

The remaining options hit all the following technical requirements, and what's the cost / overhead. So I did a more targeted comparison with refinement of options (below):

Table detail functional comparison

Feature	Buffer	Loomly	Hootsuite	SocialPilot	Social Champ
Post to multiple channels	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
LinkedIn	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
X (Twitter)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Instagram	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Track comments	Limited	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Analytics	Basic	Basic	Advanced	Comprehensive	Detailed
*CMS integration**	No	No	No	No	No
Monthly cost (1-3 users)**	$5-$10/month	$32-$60/month	$99-249/month	$42-$85/month	$26-$89/month
Automation	Basic	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced	Advanced
Calendar mgmt	Basic	Visual	Advanced	Color-coded	Visual

*Integration with Wix/SquareSpace

**Pricing based on published RRP as of 31/12/2024.

I did a deep-dive into integration and support for individual as well as for small-business on the preferred 3-options from the comparison table, but if you want details on what what, how and why for that you'll need to shout me a coffee.

Surviving options: Pros and Cons vs. Subjective qualia

The final 3 which went through active testing of the service had a range of quantitative, qualitative and some purely subjective measures applied. The net result can be summarised as a set of Pros and Cons. Ultimately the final-selection rested on a fair few subjective measures - having used some robust processes to get there though.

Result: all services selected for evaluation could meet the base functional requirements, at an acceptable (budgeted) price.

Sloth at a laptop — So what were the 'subjective' experiences which weighted the selection?

Table of subjective criteria and reactions that influenced decision

	(tool) User Experience	Knowledge sharing	Annoyance factor (web)	Narcissistic	Effort to be proficient
Buffer	Ok	Ok	No	No	Lite
Loomley	Better	Good	No	Borderline	Acceptable
SocialPilot	Too much	Drowning	Borderline	Oh yeah.	Ooof

The net winner in this case was: Loomley. Enough functionality to achieve the desired outcome, appropriate intelligent customer-focused information - and not so up their own... marketing - that they have become abhorrent to me as a potential customer.

Learnings

When it came down to it, I was going to be spending a fair old chunk of time trying to test and evaluate the last few, and it pays to be prepared. Have your accounts, access, content and channel options lined-up. Set aside the time every couple of days to see how tracking, how results come-back and what and where it gets too painful to proceed.

At the end of the day, this toolset needs to be:

simple to setup
easy to use (i'm not a Marketing specialist),
easy to feed (content),
show where it is saving time and adding value, and
not annoying pre/during/post evaluation.

REMEMBER: If you cannot see where the product or capability is helping - it isn't.

Considerations

Understanding what you want to achieve now, and in the medium term, are important. Put the effort in to learn about the space before jumping in.

What I found was, if you want dedicated service for Social Media channel management, there are tons in the market. Have good criteria, and be prepared to walk-a-way if too many of the basics are compromised. There will be another one along shortly.

General observations

HubSpot might be a worthwhile investigation if you have money, and dedicated people in Communications roles - and you are looking for an integrated CRM and Marketing platform. I don't have a dedicated marketing person and I wasn't after end-t0-end marketing. Just social media management.

Other options like Sprout Social get consistently good ratings, and if it wasn't for integration at content-source and being more than 2x cost of next option we were willing to compromise on, we would have probably done a deep-dive on testing.

Recommendation

Ultimately I chose Loomly. If you are on your own doing this stuff, then you might as well start with Buffer or Loomly because they are easy to start and get you going - but to be honest, as soon as you are in the position to off-load this for someone else to manage do it. Its just not worth the head-space for normal people.

Scoring

What would I give my final choice for this task? hmmmm - 4.5/10

...so why did I accept that?

I only wanted basics and cant afford $x00's for 3rd party to que this up for me, but believe me as soon as I can this is off my plate - quick-sharp.

Based on my criteria it will do, for now. I'm not locked-in and I can switch to something better later if need be.

Using the toolset is ok. But I'd prefer if we had the money to throw at a Marketing and Comms graduate for a year or two. Then we'd get some insights in to other ways of thinking and the creativity that comes with someone who can colour things in well.

Next?

In the Redux later this year I'll answer the questions about: do they fill the gap of a marketing or communications advisor, or are you still better getting a Graduate Intern and paying minimum wage for someone to post picks? In the meantime why don't you let me know what you think of the hands-on experiences when using these tools.

Alternatively if you are interested in the what, why, and how of doing product evaluation, you can always give me a shout. This should be a staple for a solutions architect, but I don't know many who do this regularly enough to do it well.

About the author: Jonathan Stuckey

Disclaimer: I don't get paid for making my research, findings and content I make available. I am not sponsored by any of the vendors listed here. What I offer is the method and model outcome from 25 years working with global and international organisations, and developing an understanding of what I want, what I need to do and what I can afford.