Finding the greatest Social Media Management Tool is daunting. With so many Social Media apps out there, it gets confusing. But do not fret! Here at WPStarters, we hope to solve your headaches with our Social Media Management Tools series.
In this series, we review popular Social Media Management Tools to help you battle against FOMO and make an informed decision.
Read: The Website Checklist Series
In this SocialBee review, we look at a Social Media Management Tool now offered on lifetime (at the time of writing) at AppSumo . For a measly $49, you get lifetime access to SocialBee’s Accelerate Plan which normally goes at $49 per month.
But how different is SocialBee from the earlier AppSumo lifetime deals and what are the key metrics that we should look at in the app? Let us look further in the SocialBee Review below
Notice: We are in the midst of rewriting our SocialBee Review. Please be patient as a good review takes time. However, if you’re on the fence and need to know if SocialBee is good, it is. With the new Pro50 (combining two Pro25) and Pro150 (4x Pro25), SocialBee is heading the right way. See you next week with the rewritten review. Or grab a copy first if you’re on the fence 🙂
SocialBee Review: An Introduction
With so many Social Media Management Tools out there, it is easy to get confused without a proper framework of discussion. In my opinion, Social Media Management Tools should be divided into five main categories, as below:
- Social Profiles
- Content Discovery
- Editorial
- Growth
- Social Media Scheduling
There are also Social Media Management Tools that does monitoring as well, but those are usually dedicated tools like Awario .
Read: Awario Review
By categorising tools to the various pre-defined categories, we get to see how they do compared to other Social Media Management Tools as well as what is available on the tool itself.
SocialBee’s main category is Social Media Scheduling, where it competes with the likes of the following tools:
- CoSchedule (popular WordPress tool)
- eClincher (appeared on AppSumo )
- MeetEdgar
- MissingLettr (appeared on AppSumo )
- Post Planner
- Revive Old Post . (popular WordPress tool)
1) Social Profiles
Social Profiles refer to the amount of Social Profiles and the type of Social Networks that SocialBee connects to. While the amount of Social Profiles varies by plan, the type of Social Networks usually don’t change.
At the time of writing, SocialBee provides a total of ten Social Profiles at $49/month. This is lacking compared to competitors who offer an average of twenty-five Social Profiles at the same price.
However, as for the for types Social Networks, SocialBee returns a strong five out of seven. They are:
- Instagram (actual scheduling by Buffer)
- Google+
Missing are Tumblr and Pinterest, which is an interesting decision by SocialBee. In comparison, SocialBee’s competitors are a mixed bag.
The affordable Post Planner only provides Facebook and Twitter, while MeetEdgar and Revive Old Posts provides one extra (LinkedIn). Though CoSchedule enables you to connect to all seven Social Networks, they are all handled by Buffer.
This is bad because Buffer has tightened their prices to only allow 3 free Social Profiles for the free tier. In that sense, SocialBee does well here due to the amount of Social Networks you could schedule your Social Media posts to.
Rating: 7/10
2) Growth
The Growth category measures how easily you can grow your social media following with the tool. SocialBee comes with an auto-responder as well as other features to make it easy to grow your Twitter handle. You can easily
- Remove non-followers
- Find followers who you follow
- Follow those who have followed you (but you have not followed them back)
- Search for people to follow via complex filtering system
- etc
As you can see, the list is extensive. And surprisingly, other than eClincher (who tried putting up a fight), the others in the category just don’t cut it.
If Twitter is the Social Network for you, SocialBee is a beast. Don’t get any other Social Media Management Tool other than SocialBee.
Rating: 7/10
3) Social Media Scheduling
Connecting my blog, WPStarters to SocialBee was an effortless affair. In no time, I had my latest posts scheduled for prime time via SocialBee’s calendar.
However, SocialBee isn’t just able to connect to your RSS to the queue. It comes with its own super power in the form of Pocket integration.
I can’t stress how important Pocket is, but if you save great articles (like me), you would want to populate your social media profiles with them.
But the excitement about SocialBee doesn’t stop there. Did you know that you can easily assign your one of your RSS/Pocket source as Evergreen content. That’s crazy. Rather than assigning individual posts, you now get to have all your best articles on evergreen.
That means, a lifetime of well written articles with high conversion rate circulating on my Social Media Profiles. With Facebook cutting down on post visibility, this becomes crucial in ensuring maximum returns from your painstakingly written articles.
Rating: 8/10
Other Factors
Other than the key metrics, SocialBee appeals due to its easy to use User Interface as well as strong product roadmap. With AI based scheduling on the horizon as well as WordPress and Shopify integration, SocialBee looks like a strong contender to the behemoth, CoSchedule .
And I bet, the monthly prices for SocialBee will go up.
If you have used other Social Media Scheduling Tools like MeetEdgar, Post Planner or WordPress-only Revive Old Post , SocialBee is a very strong competitor that will only get better with time.
So watch SocialBee closely! If SocialBee’s team manages to fulfil their roadmap, it will be one of the best Social Media Management Tools in the market. Can’t wait for that to happen.
SocialBee vs ContentStudio
How does SocialBee compare to ContentStudio ? For one, ContentStudio focuses on Content Discovery, like BuzzSumo or EpicBeat by Epictions. However, ContentStudio’s Content Discovery is faulty at best. I have added my blog (WPStarters.com) to ContentStudio’s sources but it still does not appear on the Discovery section after several days.
Also, you can’t easily schedule a RSS feed. Rather, you need to select individual posts and then either schedule the post or add it to queue. In comparison, SocialBee’s ability to import RSS feeds and assign them to a category ensures you get easy evergreen content.
Plus, ContentStudio only saves to Pocket, but does not pull posts from Pocket. This is a major disadvantage to ContentStudio as avid readers like myself tend to save the articles I like to Pocket.
Finally, ContentStudio does not come with SocialBee growth software. If you plan to grow your Twitter followers, go with SocialBee and not ContentStudio.
Social Review: The Conclusion
Having tried and tested twelve different Social Media Management Tools before writing our SocialBee Review, I would say that SocialBee is a really good tool for those you who plan to grow the engagement on your site via social media.
Grab yourself a license before the lifetime license expires. If you don’t, you might really regret missing out on SocialBee later on.
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