Hootsuite vs. Storymate: We Rated 10 Important Factors for Every
With 75 percent of high-income earning online adults using Facebook, according to Pew Research, it's no wonder that social networking is a high priority for entrepreneurs. Not only is it a top priority for entrepreneurs working inside a business, it is also a burgeoning route of revenue generation for freelance entrepreneurs. In fact, according to ClearVoice's freelance pay rate study, 80% of expert freelancers are generating interpersonal media articles for their clients.
The social media landscape is changing quickly too. In a few decades, we've seen the growth and minor drop of Snapchat, we have seen Instagram quickly move into third place for most popular social networking networks, and we've noticed the proliferation of chatbots, making Facebook Messenger a social networking tool which all marketers need to comprehend.
Ben Beck contrasts two popular social websites posting tools, Hootsuite and Storymate, in his annual update of his graded reviews. Which one is ideal for your organization? Which enhanced more? #martechmonday #contentmarketing #martech
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That's why I've refreshed this report, which was originally published in March of 2017. For this week's #MartechMonday post I've taken another close look in Hootsuite vs. Storymate.
Overview of Hootsuite and Storymate
I have employed both Hootsuite and Storymate extensively, and have affiliate nor additional direct ties to either of those businesses. Both are great options; however, in my opinion, they appeal to various audiences. Below is a summarization of this review, together with the fuller inspection, as well as the grading for each criterion. I have also included the grading rubric from March 2017 when I first wrote this report, pre-refresh, so you can observe how things have shifted in the last year.
Hootsuite
Initial impressions
Logging in and getting Hootsuite set up was easy enough, though it was not a remarkable experience. Instead, it felt as though I had been having a Microsoft-made product circa Windows 10. Even with a year passing as I initially wrote this bit, they still have not updated their interface, and it seems clunky.
It clearly has a lot of performance, but is not all that nicely styled or simple to use. You will see from the under Hootsuite-provided screenshot that there is a good deal of functionality in this item, such as the ability to incorporate a Freshdesk feed, though the item looks a little complicated when compared to Storymate.
Main strength
Hootsuite is powerful and has included significant functionality in the last year: better team management functions like content approvals, enhanced content ideas, and a library to store pre-approved content.
Though Hootsuite has sunset their $10/month plan, and now begins at $30/month, it has been more affordable than many other comparable solutions. Therefore, I think about the cost and balance of operation the major strength of the option.
Main weakness
Hootsuite's powerful features come at a price. Rather than feeling as if you are working with a svelte Apple merchandise, you're stuck working using an antiquated-feeling user interface -- similar to an old, stale Microsoft merchandise. Do not take this as a Microsoft bashing, though; I'm scanning this post from a Microsoft Surface Book, my favourite computer of all time. Like Microsoft products, though, Hootsuite offers you all the bells and whistles, but using a clunkier interface.
Pricing
$29.99/month (yearly billing) -- Free solution remains offered for those with very basic needs or just attempting to kick the tires
Grade
Initial impressions
When you first log into Storymate, you are presented with a fresh user interface. Super clean, minimalist interface. Light and easy instructions. The first couple of moments I researched the item, however, I noticed it lacked some of the functionality I enjoyed in Hootsuite. The below screenshot, supplied by Storymate, illustrates how clear and clean their product is.
Main strength
Storymate principles in the ease-of-use standard. It is a slick item, using a clean and easy-to-use interface. Additionally, it excels with Pablo, an easy-to-use graphic creation tool. Besides this ease-of-use, Storymate also boasts an energetic development team which, in the past calendar year, has launched an entirely new product called Reply, and is poised to launch another, called Analyze.
Main weakness
Everything you gain with ease-of-use, you frequently give up in attribute collection. That is true for Storymate. Your scheduling, content suggestions, and reporting and analytics purposes are feeble in Storymate, in contrast to Hootsuite.
Pricing
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Hootsuite vs. Storymate ranges and ranking
In stack ranking and estimating these two excellent interpersonal websites posting alternatives, I utilized the following eight criteria: that social networking networks every instrument can post on to; the pricing; just how easy and effective of single-view dashboards are there; the ease-of-use; what extras are offered; just how great they are in ad-hoc posting; how powerful the scheduled posting is; and also what kind of content recommendation instruments exist at the merchandise.
Here's how the two stack up, with an overall grading matrix under:
- Widest coverage on Social Networking accounts
This is one of the most essential elements of social networking marketing, and one aspect business advertising professionals are assessing the many -- at which they can receive their messages posted to. Thus, of those eight classes assessed, I weighted this one at 10 percent.
Storymate: It is possible to place to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, App.net along with Google+.
You can also add on a dozen or so others, including Instagram, Tumbler, Blogger, Reddit and Youtube. A few of those add-ons are considered superior apps, and you have to pay extra for them. Hootsuite obviously has the advantage here.
- Ease-of-use
You'll devote a whole lot of time in your social networking management solution, and it ought to be a joyous experience. I weighted this standard in 15 percent.
Storymate: All things considered, Storymate is a bit more easy and much cleaner-looking in its own layout; and consequently, Storymate wins this class. From the below screenshot, in Storymate, it is possible to observe how visually appealing and easy-to-use Storymate is.
Hootsuite: Just Like Storymate, Hootsuite is easy to use and does not have an extremely sharp learning curve to develop into a power-user.
- Scheduled posting
Scheduled posting is among the main reasons entrepreneurs turn into social media management alternatives. If you don't belong to a larger company with dedicated social media marketers, you'll really need scheduled communicating, since it lets you appear as if you are extremely busy on social media when in fact you are logging in just a couple of times a week and scheduling your posts out. Of course, social media does require some fluency, therefore I recommend a mix of scheduled and ad-hoc posting. That said, this is a very important criterion. I weighted it heavily of all eight criteria: 15 percentage.
Storymate: While Storymate does have some scheduling capacity, it's much less robust or integrated into the tool as Hootsuite's.
Hootsuite: The edge here goes to Hootsuite, which has very powerful programming functionality. That is the true defining standard of Hootsuite versus the rest of the social media management alternatives.
- Ad hoc posting
As stated above, ad-hoc submitting is important to creating a consideration more responsive to breaking information. Ad-hoc posting allows a social networking advertising professional to place items on the fly, so adding more immediacy to their social networking presence. I classify this as being a more significant judging grade, therefore that I weighted this at 10 percent.
Storymate: The advantage goes into Storymate. The two Hootsuite and Storymate have Chrome plugins that let you post content directly from your browser, as you are consuming content. But, Storymate makes it super simple. You do not need to choose a day/time you desire the social post to go live. Instead, you just click to post it and Storymate will place it in line at which it believes is best.
Hootsuite: Hootsuite enables you to post in the Chrome plugin also contains a feature where you can disable the guide scheduling (similar to Storymate). But, Storymate does it much better that many of those"social share" plugins such as sites that have a native"discuss through Storymate" button incorporated into them. As an instance, from the societal share example below, you can see that Sumo Share natively incorporates Storymate in their share options -- something I have never seen for Hootsuite.
- Conversation Administration
An area that both tools have somewhat facilitated over time, conversion direction is now a hot"must-have" feature in the last few decades. Chat management permits you to select the back and forth dialog that occurs in comments or guide messages on social media and better keep them organized within your social networking management solution. Anyone that has tried to encourage a product or service via social media knows that every social platform has different methods of holding dialog, along with the actual back and forth can be difficult to track and manage in a timely way. Storymate takes the win for conversation management, as I explain below. I have weighed this standard in 10 percent.
Storymate: Storymate has entered the customer-service space with Storymate Reply, a tool dedicated to helping businesses better manage the back and on communication that happens on social media. It's a very robust instrument, also departs, in a way, by the simplicity of Storymate's publishing tool.
Nevertheless, if you are supporting a service or product via societal stations, then you likely know the need for a more robust instrument, something that lets you create internal notes to a dialogue, assign dialogs to team members, then push specific content to third party tools (CRMs, Slack, etc.) and let for assistance special reporting.
Storymate does all these matters with Reply. The prices of Reply starts at $50/month, a departure from the way things was with Storymate (a low-cost plan at $15/month). Fantastic customer support is something which is intentional, though, and Storymate has built a sufficiently robust product and priced it so.
Hootsuite: Hootsuite provides some dialog management performance in its platform that enables you to perform what Storymate does, though it isn't as graceful or as thoughtfully assembled out. Here is a page in which Hootsuite outlines some of the operation. I have talked to customer service people who've tried to utilize Hootsuite, and they continue to have problems together with the way in which the platform is assembled, with regard to providing support on societal channels.
- Reporting and dash views
For business users, liability for money and time spent on marketing is crucial, and good reporting and searchable dashboard perspectives come into play here. As important as reporting is, I have worked in many organizations where social networking liability wasn't too large as it should be. I believe it's a shame, but it's a reality too. Thus, I've weighted this criterion only at 5%.
Storymate: With Storymate, you want to click on each network to see them separately. There's no powerful dashboard existence. Additionally, reporting Storymate is not as feature-rich as Hootsuite.
Hootsuite: Hootsuite wins on this one, simply because it's possible to observe multiple social media networks all at exactly the same view. Hootsuite also supplies more powerful reporting functionality, as can be seen from the under analytics screenshot from their site.
- Content recommendations
Content recommendations can be important to some budding social networking manager, who is still studying an business. If you're uncertain what it is possible to post, articles suggestions will show you a few prospective posts that could possibly be relevant to your audience. While these are important and may be widely leveraged by the majority of business customers, most still do not understand how to use them. As such, I'm weighing this criterion at 10 percent.
Storymate: Although Storymate did have articles recommendations at one time, they have pulled support with this operation. Their justification is a great one: offering content recommendations was not true to their intent and mission.
Hootsuite: Hootsuite wins this category. Hootsuite does an OK job with articles suggestions, but not fantastic.
- Content library
A content library for saving new post ideas and distributing them to your own internal staff is more important than ever, as firms become more complicated with their use of social networking and as your company should continue to evolve to stay relevant. Both programs provide mechanisms to discover new articles, but just one of these tools has a strong content library option that allows you to save time together with pre-approved content that your internal teams can post from. Because this functionality is a great wishlist item but is like the content recommendation that Hootsuite has needed for some time, I have seen this standard at only 5 percent.
Storymate: Storymate lacks an material library and articles integrations (unlike Hootsuite), making it a less attractive tool to moderate to larger companies which will need to scale their societal media efforts.
Hootsuite: Over the previous year, Hootsuite has stepped up their game within this field. Their content library performance allows you to curate articles and save it in a place of the tool which may be easily searched. Additionally, you may tag content to make it more findable, and then you can see use stats to observe how the library content is being leveraged.
While this operation is reserved for those that cover their organization or enterprise bundle, cloud content integrations (available to all package tiers) also further distinguish Hootsuite from Storymate. With cloud content, you are able to get content stored in most of the key online cloud file services (Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), to pull new post suggestions for your promotion team. Due to both of these components, Hootsuite wins the battle for curating articles.
- Product extras
Merchandise accessories are a nice to have. I'm not talking core features here. To the contrary, I'm speaking completely separate tools. While I typically recommend for a business to concentrate on their core strength and not spread themselves too thinly across multiple product lines, in the case of Storymate, they have done an superb job of offering up a new product that delivers a great add-on performance to their base product. I provide this judging criterion 10 percent weight.
Storymate: Due to Pablo, Storymate wins this particular criterion. I am not speaking painters , though I'm guessing the title of the merchandise does detract from the famed painter Pablo Picasso. With this tool, Storymate provides a new product which permits you to create visually stunning graphics in seconds.
Pablo is not a full-on infographic generation tool, but it will permit you to earn fast and simple images for social networking sharing. Additionally, Storymate is creating a new Analyze tool, it asserts will revolutionize how social media supervisors capture significant data on the performance of their postings. It is still in alphabut you can signup for early beta accessibility when it's ready.
Hootsuite: Although Hootsuite does an exceptional job of adhering with its core product rather than branching out, within this scenario, however, that is a drawback.
- Pricing
Pricing can also be a criterion we assessed. Though, social networking management solutions are so competitively priced, compared to other marketing solutions, it does not appear to be as large of an issue for marketing professionals. As such, I have weighed this at only 10 percent.
The two Hootsuite and Storymate are about the same. They utilize the freemium model, and their free versions really are quite good. Their characteristic full versions intro at around $10/month. In addition they have company accounts where you are able to have multiple users, and they also are priced very similarly. No clear advantage holder at pricing.
So do I advocate Storymate or Hootsuite?
Again, both of these social media management alternatives are excellent. For the business user, nevertheless, they do stack up a little differently. Here are the 2018 levels for Hootsuite vs. Storymate:
For the reference, here are the grades we conducted in 2017, comparing Hootsuite and Storymate. It is possible to observe that in the previous year Storymate has closed some with newer performance is has developed, but Hootsuite still has a slight edge.
2017 Criteria and Grading of Hootsuite vs Storymate
I use both these tools religiously. I've either paid Hootsuite and Storymate accounts, and that I use these interchangeably. I utilize Hootsuite more for reporting, articles recommendations and scheduling posts. I use Storymate for regular ad-hoc articles. Since I see content I enjoy, I can simply click on the Storymate button within my Chrome browser window and also then share the information I had been reading.
Nevertheless , I wouldn't suggest this to most professional entrepreneurs, largely because handling several tools could be problematic, and company users ought to construct best practices around one item. In my instance, where I am a single ranger for my company's social networking efforts, it is OK to get a bit more complicated.
Hootsuite vs. Storymate: Top Takeaways
For medium to business users, I recommend Hootsuite. It's a really powerful way that covers more ground than Storymate.
For small business users, I urge Storymate. It's a slick tool which allows you to do everything you generally need to do, and it is such a pleasure to use.
For customer service groups, I recommend Storymate. With the new Reply alternative, Storymate chooses the lead in enabling customer service teams to offer support via social media stations.