I’ve spent the last few weeks reviewing social engagement tools – something I did at my previous agency, but this time I was a little more involved in actually setting up demos and cherry-picking who we should speak to, which I realised took a huge amount of time. That’s why I’ve written this post to guide you and hopefully help shorten the process down to help you figure out which could be the best option for your client. It should save you some precious time!

Firstly, here are the tools I’ll be covering; This Moment, Conversocial, Spredfast, Sprout Social and Radian6 Engagement Console. I would also be covering Buddy Media Conversation Buddy, but even though I’d already worked with them on an alcohol brand over at AF, they repeatedly ignored my demo request, even though they promised to get through to me on Twitter. Named and shamed! Bad practise guys, hopefully your tool will pick up some negative sentiment over here.

This Moment

A fantastic tool which would be ideal for a company with limited access to developers and designers. You have custom built templates for Facebook apps and YouTube channels that are genuinely gorgeous – and a huge variety so you wouldn’t have to worry about dodgy duplicates with other brands. The DEC is a system for managing a your presence and mentions across a multitude of sites and platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube . You get all basic Facebook and Twitter functionality thrown in.

It covers such a gigantic variety of sites and platforms that I’m sure it will cater for most brands’ needs. Well worth a demo and consideration.

I’d recommend it for smaller brands to get set up, follow leads and engage with people talking about your brand.

Clients include: Barnes and Noble, Socialtext, Acxiom.

Conversocial

I have reviewed this tool in a little more detail, because I’d been considering it for so long, so give that a read if you’re interested in more info.

Conversocial is one of those tools that initially wowed me – clean layout and design, simple functionality that just works and basic workflow functionality (with some nice analytics at the same time). The only downside was the variety of channels available to work with – just Facebook and Twitter right now. A great tool to use to get on top of your mentions, create keywords to follow (ace for competitor monitoring and engaging) and build genuine relationships with your community. It will help you engage more efficiently and effectively.

Clients include: River Island, Cafe Nero, Tesco, Hertz, Odeon.

Spredfast

My winner by all accounts – Spredfast is a dynamic, fantastic and adaptable tool. You can pretty much customise *anything* which means that it can easily tick many of yours or your clients boxes. It also enables streamlined collaboration within your team, from integration of social data through to existing business systems. You can access tons of channels from the platform, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Blogs and Flickr to name a few.

You can prioritise conversations, assign tasks, manage your social inbox and create analytics reports in one space. I can’t recommend enough that you consider this tool for *any* client. The only thing could be cost, but from research I gather that price plans start at $1,500 which is really reasonable considering competitors.

Clients include: Starbucks, Warner Bros, Whole Foods, at&t

Sprout Social

I *loved* Sprout Social. It’s a real community manager’s tool that allows you to view previous conversations (awesome for new starters and for anyone in the team to understand context) and engage in deeper way.

It all depends on what your client is looking for – this tool wouldn’t really be ideal for a large team across multiple countries with regards to workflow (assigning, delegating, following up). A little feature I especially like – it puts a little star on influential users who’ve mentioned you. It’s fairly affordable, so ideal for smaller clients, or a section of the brand you may be covering in just a few countries. The only real criticism I have is that you only have two levels of permissions – one who can do everything and then one

The best bit has got to be the reports it produces – they’re incredible! Clean, easy-to-read and designed to your specifications. Give @SproutAngus a tweet for more info on this tool.

Clients include: Fender, McDonalds, Groupon, Adobe.

Radian6 Engagement Console 

I’m going to be brutally honest – I just was simply not impressed with what the tool offered.

There were nice aspects, such as a great mobile app and keyword groups but as a comms manager, you can’t do basic things such as upload photos, videos or any sort of attachment with your updates. You can’t schedule any updates (wtf!?).

You can have a section of the tool dedicated to procedure guidelines, so anyone within the team can access your best practice guidelines at any time. Really nice, but not a deal breaker at all.

I have a feeling because they’re all part of the new SalesForce family that they’ll probably be pushing for people to use Buddy Media.