Detailed Comparison Between Hootsuite and Zoho Social

 

The rise of social media has been more of a game-changer for many businesses and content creators. It has offered an easy way to market a brand and various products or services. Well-planned social media marketing plans help in increasing organic traffic and boosting sales. However, social media marketing is not so much of an easy endeavor.

The process of managing social media marketing can be somewhat time-consuming for small to medium-sized businesses. An effective solution to this is social media management platforms that help in centralizing and automating social media posts. Two of the most popular social media management platforms in the market are Zoho Social and Hootsuite. They help in planning, scheduling, and posting with a calendar which then sorts the posting process.

The right use of social media platforms can help in building and creating posts including adding branded content and customized photos to articles. You can centralize and automate posts for many social media applications which makes social media marketing so much more efficient without limiting your reach across platforms.

The platform chosen by a business depends on its needs and marketing plan. In this blog, we will see a detailed comparison between Hootsuite and Zoho Social to get a better explanation.

Zoho Social and Hootsuite – An Overview

Hootsuite and Zoho Social are two different products that come with different features, prices, and functionalities. Where on one hand, Hootsuite stands out for being oriented towards complex needs and multiple teams of an enterprise-level business, Zoho Social comes with basic functional capacities needed to manage social media presences.

Both the social media management platforms help in bossing the social following. They also allow staying on the top of the client’s list and prospects in an efficient way. These tools are powerful for reconfiguring the social media approach in case your current one is failing to reach marketing goals.

Below, we will have a look at Hootsuite and Zoho Social in detail to understand what they can bring to the table.

What is Hootsuite?

A dominant social media management tool, Hootsuite helps its users to find prospects, serve customers, and do much more with social media. It also enables the service seekers to handle prominent social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Many customers consider Hootsuite to be one of the most comprehensive social media marketing tools.

It is a tool that comes with an organized dashboard and customizable layout. By using the unique social media dashboard of Hootsuite, teams can collaboratively schedule updates to various social networks. It is also possible to integrate existing marketing tools, streamline workflows, track campaign results or trends, and quick-adjust tactics accordingly.

Hootsuite comes with multiple attractive features as well. It contains collaboration features, cooperative writing, and editing, contact management, content management, project management, and many more. There are other useful software features as well such as social media marketing features, reputation management features, and social media monitoring features. Using Hootsuite, people can easily share engagement streams with their teams. Moreover, it is also possible to control multiple communication channels with this collaborative platform.

Features of Hootsuite

1. Monitoring Social Media Streams

One can say that a compelling feature for using Hootsuite is that it enables a brand to manage multiple social media networks all in one place. There is no need to remember all the passwords anymore or even go to each website individually.

With the use of Hootsuite, it is easy to post, update, review responses, and connect with the target audience on all the popular social media networks. In addition to using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, it is also possible to collaborate via third-party apps such as Tumblr, Evernote, Slideshare, MailChimp, etc.

2. Schedule Posts

Another significant reason for using Hootsuite is that it enables one to schedule important messages all across important social media platforms. You can create a social media strategy that includes crucial times when postings are most often read and get more followers to see your content.

All you have to do is just pick the day and time that suits your needs in the best ways. This enables you to view the scheduled posts in easy to read calendar format.

3. Viewing Analytics

The social media dashboard of Hootsuite comes with many analytics features that give you an in-depth view of how well your social media strategy is working. This is a tool that comes with the ability to track all your favorite platforms while delivering them in an easy-to-read series of charts.

In addition, Hootsuite also provides an extensive range of monitoring and reporting features that enables you to create professional-looking reports on the social media progress page.

4. Sharing Information

Hootsuite comes with a bookmark plug-in feature that helps in sharing content across the internet with your followers. This is an add-on that sits on the top of your browser toolbar for easy access.

When you discover that something on the internet is important that must be shared, all you have to do is just click on the Hootlet button. The application will shorten the URL and insert a small snippet of important text from the site into the social media message. It is a plug-in that makes adding Hootsuite to your social media arsenal worthwhile.

5. Tracking Important Phrases

A great way to connect with your customer base is through social media listening. You have to see what most people on social media are engaging in while bringing in your company’s value to the topic or trend.

Hootsuite comes with features that help you track key phrases and terms across the posts of other uses while determining when your expertise can be beneficial. This is an excellent way to bring in new customers by just being in tune with their needs.

6. Managing Customer Service

Another reason why many companies do not adopt social media management platforms is that it becomes difficult to manage customer service on them. With the use of Hootsuite, it becomes easy to view questions in a single place without checking multiple social media websites.

Moreover, you can also store draft messages for posting when a customer asks a frequent question such as store hours or directions to your business location.

7. Collaborating Effectively

It becomes easy to manage your team with Hootsuite. It is a social media management tool that allows you to add different team members to the social media accounts of your choice and see first-hand who is posting what information and who has scheduled posts.

The effective collaboration that is offered on Hootsuite also makes it easy for you to assign tasks, add collaborators, and edit posts just as you see fit. Basically, the entire process of social media management becomes streamlined in a way that all the stress is removed.

What is Zoho Social?

Zoho Social is a cloud-based social media management platform available in the SaaS version which can be run on multiple devices. This is software that helps users in monitoring social media channels, perform multi-account management, and encourage multi-user collaboration.

Social media performance analytics and data-driven insights are also offered with Zoho Social that helps in making informed decisions. With this software, you can easily manage and track content while ensuring much better customer engagement. It is also possible to monitor keywords and schedule multiple posts with Zoho Social. You can create content and publish it automatically with the use of this social media marketing tool.

Zoho Social is used to schedule content in various ways, monitor metrics that matter, and create intelligent reports. It also empowers you with all the features needed to create a renowned brand on social media. It is basically a modern and organized interface for social media management and analytics. It is a solution that is focused on the needs of small and medium-sized businesses with advanced analytics, a post scheduler, and an integrated message center.

In sum, Zoho Social is packed with features that are built for all social media needs. You can schedule content in various ways, monitor all that matters, and create intelligent reports.

Features of Zoho Social

1. Scheduling Posts

Zoho Social comes with a content pipeline and an intuitive social media scheduler. You can control when and how you wish to reach out to your brand’s audience by choosing from a wide range of scheduling features. You can plan, schedule, and publish easily. All the publishing tools that you need are in one place.

By using Zoho Social, you can schedule posts, drag and drop to reschedule and manage the content pipeline from a single screen only. You can also create a posting schedule with different time slots, or depend on the SmartIQ predictions for posting content when the audience is most active.

Zoho Social helps in building a posting pipeline effortlessly. It is easy to use content creation tools such as RSS and zShare browser extension that can pair with the social media dashboard.

2. Monitoring

Zoho Social comes with monitoring features for businesses and agencies. You can monitor the important keywords, product reviews, brand hashtags, and much more. In addition, you can also discover new leads and see what people are saying about the brands you manage across your social channels.

With the social media management platform of Zoho Social, you can create listening columns for tracking the brand reviews, mentions, and brand keywords. You can also easily discover all important trends, and participate in industry conversations.

Other than this, Zoho Social also comes with a live stream of your social engagements in just one dedicated tab. You can also respond to engagement and get more context on important brand interactions. Lastly, you can reply to inline messages on Facebook and Twitter while checking out the social profile information of engagers and other important responses. This will help you in sending timely replies to requests and messages with real-time notifications.

3. Collaboration

Zoho Social is a social media management platform that comes with many smart collaboration features. It allows a number of people to work together on different social things. You can discuss popular posts, share custom reports, and plan a campaign together.

You can also make quick decisions and save time while collaborating with the team from Zoho Social. Zoho Social helps in having important conversations with teammates. You can discuss engagement, reports, and work collaboratively on the drafts with chat, audio, and video calls.

Even if someone in the team has a new content idea, they can discuss it and get approval on the drafts, and share copy ideas all from one tab. Zoho Social also brings your team on board with a specific role for all team members that are invited. You can choose from the available roles or create new roles of your own. It is easy to decide which brands, features, and social channels each team member can access. 

4. Analyzing

Zoho Social is a social media analytics tool that measures all that matters to a brand. You can analyze the impact of a social media strategy with this tool. It is also easy to create insightful reports that help in understanding your audience and tracking your social media performance.

You can easily discover where your followers are from, the kind of content they like, what they are saying about you, and get key metrics for analyzing the brand’s performance. Zoho Social also lets you choose from a wide range of analytics for your social channels. You can add more visual appeal to your reports with graphs and charts, set up a schedule, decide a frequency, and automate reports to be delivered to your team at a time of your choice.

5. User-Friendly and Intuitive

While Hootsuite and Zoho Social come with similar features, Zoho Social is preferred by many because it is extremely intuitive and user-friendly. This benefit avoids a learning curve even when you do not have experience using social platforms. You can pick things up and learn from wherever you left.

Once you get the hang of things, it becomes easy to come on board and train others. Hootsuite is focused on a larger business which is why it involves more time on setting things up and more time on training employees for using the platform.

Conclusion

Zoho Social and Hootsuite both can be used for tracking the effectiveness of social media campaigns and change the strategies accordingly. Based on the differences that are mentioned above and the needs of your business, you can choose a social media management platform that enables you to gain a wide reach.

Our Zoho CRM consultants have been offering the best consultancy services to many clients across various industries. If you want any more guidance or support on Zoho Social implementation, feel free to get in touch.