[Infographic] The Top Reviewed Social Media Management Tools of 2015

2015 was a huge year for social media management tools. As channels like Facebook begin rolling out more advanced marketing options to the masses, marketers are beginning to understand how imperative it is to have the right tools in their arsenal.  That’s where G2Crowd comes in. They’ve analyzed thousands of user reviews helping us distinguish what’s worth our dollar in this bloated space. If you’re one of the many marketers struggling to stay king of your many social empires, this could be the knight in shining armor you’ve been waiting for.

The Social Tool who’s who

There are literally hundreds of social management tools out there to choose from but for the past couple years the market was dominated by a spare few. I’m sure you’ve heard of Hootsuite and Sprout, pretty much every marketer has dabbled with the big boys. However after checking out the results from the G2Crowd, user reviews are showing an obvious trend towards preferring  smaller indie tools with better UX and customer service. Let’s take a look at the results from the latest G2Crowd user review analysis for 2015:

Infographic brought to you by Seriously Social and G2 Crowd

Started from the bottom now we here

After reviewing the results it becomes pretty obvious that AgoraPulse is coming out on top of overall user sentiment and functionality. What I liked most in particular was that it’s being called the best tool for adapting to the changing social landscape. This is an absolutely crucial feature most companies these days fail to even look into. Social marketing changes literally every single day and if the tools we use stay stagnant we’re basically working on outdated tech.

Taking a quick look at the AgoraPulse homepage we’re able to see this is truly a company that cares about advanced functionality across multiple verticals. They even have an ‘auto moderation’ feature that’s able to streamline social maintenance on a granular level. Honestly that has me pretty damn excited and wondering how I ever lived without such a feature. Small details like this are why it’s so crucial for us as marketers to dive deeper into the tools available to us.

We’re also noticing a fairly unknown tool called Sendible outmatch the top dogs in the results. Somehow they’re able to offer advanced features like brand sentiment tracking at an incredibly low price point of $50/month. Just a few years ago such features would have cost 10x as much. Sendible is a living case study of just how far our technology has come and how much it’s really worth in the year 2015.

Why this matters to us

What’s interesting is that AgoraPulse is a tool I’m pretty sure none of you have even heard of before this article. When we’re able to quantify user reviews like this we can pluck the ‘hidden gems’ out from the masses and forgo brand’s ego entirely. The average marketer is really just looking for the best possible tool for their needs not one riding the hype train on every ‘top 5’ list. Sometimes reputation isn’t the best deciding factor when it comes to picking a tool you’ll be using for the next several years of your life. This is a serious decision so it’s time we start treating it that way and base our decision on facts that count.

I’d like to share a side by side comparison from G2Crowd showing the exact differences between AgoraPulse and a little company called HootSuite. The numbers speak for themself. Marketers are craving diversity, direction and usability. The major players are going to have to undergo some drastic overhauls in 2016 or end up dethroned by the underdogs.