Joint product review with Normand Bourque

My colleague and I were on the hunt for a new social media management tool. Like many, we've been using industry-veteran Hootsuite, but tedious product limitations you'd expect to see fixed (20 tab limit on your dash, five account scheduling limit, search limitations, unnecessarily small icons, uninspiring UI) still remain years later.

I really wish @hootsuite had the built in Twitter Retweet available like the "Reply All" option. Just don't take the old school RT away.

- John Lynn (@techguy) February 12, 2015

We knew there had to be other SMM players in town, and in walked SocialDraft. It's a fairly new platform with high hopes and a great plan to becoming your one-stop shop for everything social media management.

SocialDraft is built from the ground up by social media managers who grew tired of toggling between different platforms to complete their goals. The developing team's main goal was to invent the dashboard as a place for more fluid broadcasting and interacting, as well as offer a social media platform that is both robust and easy for anyone to understand.

The SocialDraft Difference

SocialDraft knows that their are many players in this market, so what makes them different? First off they listen to their users; any issues or suggestions are taken seriously and a plan is put in place to make any necessary updates or changes to the platform. I discovered this in anonymity, through a couple Q&As, before choosing to review the product. The SocialDraft team want their users to feel as if they built the platform themselves.

The platform does not disappoint it is beautifully designed and is very easy to navigate. Most of the features have a built in video tutorial to walk you through the features, and each time I've tried, I've found someone available via chat.

Editorial Calendar

The greatest product appeal is the calendar format it offers for clear and simple scheduling and posting on all your media platforms. Just click on a day write your post with included hashtags and images, and away you go. If you need to enter a web address, there's no need to manually shorten your link (like you would on Hootsuite), as Socialdraft it automatically shortens it for you.

You can even duplicate that post and move it to another day and time on the calendar.

Integrated Image Search

You can search for images for your posts with Instagram right on the dashboard, which is super handy, considering Facebook posts with images get up to 53 percent more clicks!

As a user, I also love how I can manually select the time of day to post or I can hit TrueTime and it will post on a time that your audience in most engaged, eliminating guessing games on to when my updates will reach the most people.

Cross-team Collaboration

SocialDraft also offers a team collaboration tool, ideal for large teams or agencies. Whereas setting up teams and users is a veritable nightmare in Hootsuite, this platform boldly identifies users and rolls, and intuitively allows for changes. SocialDraft was built to support multiple clients and media platforms, without clustering and confusing the user experience.

Another useful feature for project segmenting, is network grouping. Let's say you have a client that has two Facebook and two Twitter accounts, all four can be grouped together and with a click of a button it will publish to all accounts. Saving precious time and ending Hootsuite-like frustration or having to individually select social media accounts.

What's Next?

Right now SocialDraft is available for Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin with a small, but growing funtionality on Instagram. I'm told, further enhancements as well as Google+ and Pinterest integration are in the works. Also on the product roadmap are RSS feeds, alerts and baked-in, analytics.

Recommendation

The way they are constantly updating their platform based on feedback and their own personal experiences makes SocialDraft a tool authentically built by its users. Still in its infancy relative to industry stalwarts like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, SocialDraft's dashboard is a compelling switch to manage all your social media needs with a new set of tools. If you're tired of Hootsuite's slower, never-updated dashboard then SocialDraft is worth giving a try.

SocialDraft offers a 30-day trial period then, like most dashboards they give you different pricing options based on account volume. The amazing team reached out to me and offered our readers a great deal: Use Promo Code: "Tech100year" you will save $100 off any level of a yearly membership.