Hi All,
Given that there is a large community of people here all looking to grow their Instagram channels i thought it would make sense to create a listing where people could share any tools that they have found that has worked well for them and helped grow their channels.
So to kick things off what do people think of the scheduling tools available? Ive used the following to various degrees and here are my thoughts:
Buffer - Good entry level platform but has its limitations - starts at $15 a month for 1 user and up to 8 connections with a limit of 100 scheduled post. Can connect to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn. The issue ive found here is that for anything with a large network of the accounts you would be likely to have to pay for the Media Business package which starts at $199 a month. One of the most annoying things i found with Buffer is the inability to schedule Gallery or Story posts on instagram.
Sprout Social - Next level up from buffer starting at $99 a month for 5 social connections. positive of this is that they have a mobile to be able to work from if needed as well as keyword and location monitoring. Cons of this platform is that again for anyone with a large network can start to add up. Anything more that 10 profiles ($249 a month) needs bespoke pricing which kind of only means one thing.
Falcon IO - Very easy to use enterprise software. If you have lots of people in your organization then this is an easy platform to role out and get good adoption. The issues comes if you do lots of commercial content as they do not have the brand handshake feature which means all of that would still need to be scheduled in the native platform. Any contracts tend to be yearly and their API link drops more than it should meaning reconnecting your channels each time which is annoying.
Sysomos - Top of the price spectrum with advance features. Harder to use than the likes of Falcon however their UI is in the process of being redesigned. Able to do anything you would want from a social tool with the added benefit of social listening thrown in with unlimited calls. Due to Facebook limiting social listening access this part of it is limited to Blogs, Forums and Twitter mainly but you can pull our very useful and actionable data to inform your content strategy. For a large enterprises this tool would get my vote. they also have 24/7 support.
What tools do you guys recommend?
