Sprout Social Professional

Social Response Management

Ability to respond in-band to social media posts; ability to execute post-time optimization.

Social Media Channel Integration Outbound

Ability to publish to social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.

Dashboards and Visualization

Ability to visualize data and create analytics dashboards.

Social Post Archival

Ability to archive social posts and platform activity to create an audit trail.

Campaign Execution

Ability to manage social and media assets: tools for social campaign execution, reporting, and analytics.

Social Media Channel Integration Inbound

Ability to monitor social media services, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.

Social Moderation and Workflow Management

Ability to create end-to-end routing and escalation workflows from social content.

Sentiment Analysis

Ability to analyze and uncover insights from attitudes and opinions expressed on social media.

Trend Analysis

Ability to monitor trends and traffic on multiple social media sites.

Ease of Implementation

Successfully implementing new software is necessary to realize its full value and promote end user adoption. This data indicates whether or not the product is easy to implement.

Ease of IT Administration

This data indicates whether IT personnel will be able to resolve issues and perform configurations efficiently and effectively.

Business Value Created

Software needs to create value for employees, customers, partners, and, ultimately, shareholders. This data expresses user satisfaction - or lack thereof - with the product's business value.

Usability and Intuitiveness

End user learning curves cost the organization money. Pay attention to your end users' technical ability to determine how important UX is in your purchase.

Availability and Quality of Training

Effective and readily available training enables users to get the most out of the software you've chosen. Use this section to make sure your vendor's training programs and materials measure up.

Ease of Data Integration

Use this data to determine whether the product will cause headaches or make data integration easy.

Breadth of Features

Users prefer feature rich software that enables them to perform diverse series of tasks. This data expresses user satisfaction with the product's breadth of features.

Quality of Features

Feature quality is just as important as quantity. Use this data to determine if this product will do what you're purchasing it to do, easily, intuitively, reliably, and effectively.

Ease of Customization

Don't get bogged down in a difficult customization; use this data to make sure you can easily achieve the functionality you need for your particular situation.

Vendor Support

The importance of vendor support will vary for each organization depending on internal capabilities, but there will always be issues that only the vendor can resolve.

Product Strategy and Rate of Improvement

Vendors who don't stay on top of emerging needs and trends won't enable you to meet your business goals. Use this data to separate innovators from imposters.