Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)

Score7.3 out of 10

148 Reviews and Ratings

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Reviews

52 Reviews

Cost effective, reliable and all inclusive

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 11, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Social Studio was used by ScS for Social Listening, scheduling and content creation. The platform did everything it advertised, and I had no issues during my time using the platform, allowing us seamless posting to social when out of the office, and first class competitor monitoring, without breaking the bank.

Pros

Social listening / competitor monitoring
Scheduling
Instagram integration
Reliability

Cons

Usability - clunky to use

Likelihood to Recommend

Social listening/competitor monitoring. Social Studio allows you to track competitor keywords within the cost of the package. Other platforms, including Hootsuite, charge a large sum for this. This is very useful for continuous improvement. Scheduling - plan ahead, knowing your posts will publish without error when you're out of the office.

Adam Keys

Senior Social Media Executive in Marketing at ScS (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Radian6 - Monitoring of Social Media

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

April 17, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Radian6 product software for one of the world leading organization who are in Fortune 500, we helped them implement the product. In the current time, social media has become one of the important aspects of any business success. To understand the social buzz and the social trends better, the radian6 was a great choice. Over the course of implementation, we loved the product and the results it has yielded us. The primary focus was to understand where are we stand and how to improve the brand.

Pros

The amount of the information that radian6 can pull from multiple social platforms is absolutely phenomenal. Its just not only the pull but the way the information can be presented in dashboards was way good. It helped us understand in various aspects of our social presence.
Multiple profiles helped us to break down the Big/Huge social buzz cloud to smaller and more manageable pieces. This helped us concentrate on the lows and helped us to plan better on turning them to highs.
Radian6 allowed us to follow thru the crowd trends with the latest information presented in a single view. This also helped us to collect the social opinion on the product releases.
The ease of use, one need not be an expert to start using this platform. The interface is easily understandable by anyone.
A keyword can be edited quickly to tailor the needs and the results were quick.

Cons

The initial setup was difficult to make it live. Despite the fact that the radian6 is a great tool, there is still a lot to improve upon with regard to the setup process.
Narrowing down the search sometimes produces glitches. I have experienced some glitches when looking up for the period time like 90 days with fewer keywords.
There is room to improve the export data functionality.

Likelihood to Recommend

Radian6 has good capabilities for social monitoring and measuring. Any Org who wants to listen the real facts stated directly out from the crowd, this is a great tool.

Mahesh Aluvala

Senior Consultant in Information Technology at Capgemini (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Jack of all trades, master of none

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

April 13, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As Social Studio has capabilities for scheduling and publishing as well as analysis, it is being used by both the marketing department (for monitoring mentions of the company in the media and scheduling of organic brand posting) and the insight team who primarily use the analysis functionality. For the marketing team it appears to be a good solution for ticking multiple boxes in-one, particularly publishing and engaging, while for the insight team the analytics piece helps us keep tabs on multiple brand searches in the media in order to evaluate marketing performance.

Pros

One stop shop: if you are looking for a tool that combines multiple facets found in individual tools then this could be for you
Scheduling posts is a breeze across platform. So this is clearly geared towards marketers or community managers who need a quick and simple way to manage communications output
Salesforce is a ubiquitous platform these days - social studio is a natural extension of this (the engage and CRM functionality plays to this strength) so for businesses of any size that subscribe to the Salesforce suite, adding this tool would make total sense
The user interface is rather simplistic which can be seen as a pro - intuitive and easy to navigate, and more quickly accessible for newbies over rival platforms which can have steep learning curves and layers of detailed functionality which take time to get familiar with

Cons

Jack of all trades, master of none: OK so this might sound a bit harsh, but while the tool accomplished three similar functions competently, and all under one bonnet, the fact that none of them are outstanding in functionality and capability in my book that also counts as a weakness, regardless of the fact they are all combined in one software suite. It would seem that Salesforce needs to think more carefully about who the target user audience is here - publishers, sellers and marketers, or insight types who work with the content - it's a bit lacklustre in all three areas
Simplicity vs total control: I mentioned previously that it has a very intuitive, accessible and 'simplistic' (in a good way) UI which makes getting to grips with the tool great for early adopters. BUT with this comes the downfall that it is rather simplistic, and the rich functionality that is available in other platforms is just not seen here. For example, the engagement scores for competitor brands (not client / owned brands) are not available, meaning you can't do deeper dive analysis on content performance for rival organizations. The ability to only export content in 90 day chunks is also frustrating
For such a large organisation, think about how much support you're going to need from Salesforce. You might have to be prepared to wing it on your own

Likelihood to Recommend

If you're tasked with publishing content to social on behalf of your organization then this tool is certainly worth considering. You have quick and easy capability to schedule across multiple platforms with drag-and-drop simplicity. It ties into Salesforce's real strength of its CRM platform so you can quickly tie social activity and leads to those already in your database. And it does a good job at monitoring and analyzing brand and competitor content across multiple media types.

Having said that, if you're into deep-dive and full functionality SaaS tools then this might not be for you as it covers three areas adequately, but not in enough detail or strength to make it a star performer

Jeremy Cowles

Senior Strategist in Professional Services at Ebiquity plc (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Social Studio, great for scheduling and analysis

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 16, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Social Studio is being used by the marketing organization to manage social media channels, including for scheduling posts and analysis. It simplifies social media management.

Pros

Scheduling posts
Tracking social media metrics
Analysis

Cons

Doesn't allow you to tag other users/accounts in scheduled posts.

Likelihood to Recommend

Social studio is well-suited for environments where multiple social media channels are being managed by more than one individual, allowing for shared access and collaboration. There's no reason it wouldn't work equally as well for an individual user without a team needing shared access.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Comprehensive and powerful to monitor your online reputation in the market

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

December 21, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Radian6 to monitor the social media buzz of our brands in the local market. It's very important for us to keep monitoring what's been said about us in general and specifically when we run local campaigns to know the social media impact and reach of our actions. Also in critical scenarios, it helps us to spot when and where we need to act.

Pros

Easy end-user graphical interface, create powerful dashboards in minutes.
Can be integrated with other tools like Salesforce.
Fast, refreshes and retrieves your queries in seconds; you can have several dashboards with your key metrics, keywords, tag cloud, etc.

Cons

Some networks are out of the tool: i.e. only Facebook open public API but not all of it, other social networks are missing as well.
Having 2 separate consoles: Engagement console and the Radian6 dashboard console (one is web-based and the other is via desktop app).
The engagement console is very powerful but difficult to set up.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited: Keep tracking of your social media brand presence, social media buzz, monitor hundred of bloggs, monitor PR mentions online, etc,
Less appropiate: small business and profesionall due to cost model.

Verified User

Account Manager in Marketing (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

A great tool for big organizations

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

December 18, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Social Studio, AKA Radian6, was initially implemented and used in our company for a big data project; also connected to the decoupling of the social profiles of our customers. After the project was closed, it was mainly used by ICT and commercial communication department to monitor some social indicators and to support the [marketing] plan.

Pros

Easy to use
Post Calendar
Collaboration Module
Nice Workflow

Cons

Learning curve
Maybe too much information to be analyzed together
Some features, that initially were available, are missing with last releases

Likelihood to Recommend

Social Studio would be great for studying all the metrics associated with your social and digital properties. It can be a valid help to schedule your posts and to evaluate their impact on your followers or on your customers. Obviously, [being] associated with the Salesforce family products, it will allow you to integrate insights across different platforms. If you need specific information related to your property on Facebook, the platform offered by the same book would be more useful.

Andrea Casano

Web Sales Manager in Sales at Enel Energia S.p.A. (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Marketing in retail real estate

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 5, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Social Studio is being used by the organization I work for. It is being used by each property's marketing department so that social boosts are individualized for all properties while still being reviewed by corporate for quality assurance purposes.

Pros

Quality Assurance
Easy to Use
Sharing Ability

Cons

Only seeing posts for one property after post is scheduled would be ideal
Live Chat would be ideal

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel as if social studio is well suited for scheduling posts; however, it would be more beneficial if it chose when to schedule posts (i.e. general weekly postings) based on when you had the most followers online for all social media. SMART technology should be added to the program.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Social Studio - Good Basic Tool, but Expensive

Rating: 4 out of 10

August 1, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Social Studio to monitor our brand presence on social media, as well as benchmark our social presence against our main competitors. We also used it to determine trending topics, discover what pieces of our content were resonating with our audience and generate high level reports for our executives, from VPs up to the president of the company.

Pros

Social listening - pulling in mass amounts of data.
Publishing - creating a content calendar and publishing to multiple platforms.
User interface - it has a fairly intuitive UI.

Cons

Analytics - the analytics are very surface level and leave something to be desired. It lags behind other tools like Sprinklr or Crimson Hexagon.
Topic profiles - the idea of "topic profiles" to power searches can be confusing and is inefficient.
Reporting - The auto-generated reports weren't very good. I generally exported raw data to Excel and created my own reports after scrubbing the data.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need some very basic analytics from a fairly good listening tool that has publishing capabilities to multiple platforms, Social Studio is a good tool for you. The publishing capabilities are probably the strongest aspect of the tool, while the analytics within the tool are certainly the weakest aspect of Social Studio. For the lack of advanced analytics, I think Social Studio is priced a bit too high, comparatively speaking.

Jimmy Mack

Sr. Analytics Coordinator in Marketing at City of Olathe (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

View profile

Social Studio - Great for Radian 6 Users looking for a team platform!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 18, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use social studio in the client services department of our organization - in some cases, we are the account holder and in others we are simply users. For a payroll brand, we utilize both social studio and its counter-part, Radian 6. It allows us to do advanced social listening and modify the boolean searches to our liking - ensuring that we're only getting relevant chatter. This content pulls into streams, creating an efficient checklist and workflow for the social teams on the front line.

Pros

Social Listening - boolean search queries that can be narrowed down by source and language, as well as location, to ensure it's relevant to the brand.
Owned Channel Monitoring - pulling owned content/comments into streams for moderation, engagement and review.
Publishing - scheduling, drafting, tracking brand owned social posts.

Cons

Instagram Social Listening - it currently does not offer much social listening in terms of Instagram.
Instagram Owned - It currently stops pulling once an update is "old" by their standards, even if it receives recent comments. They can force pull, but you have to work with their tech team to do so.

Likelihood to Recommend

Social Studio is great for owned channels and social listening - its Boolean queries allow for true personalization. Social Studio does not work well for Instagram, or if you're looking to track social influencers easily. This would work well for brands who are looking to do web-wide searches of related content - such as auto brands etc. But would not work well for small owned businesses looking for content on a lower-profile basis.

Verified User

Account Manager in Social Media (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Social Studio is competent

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

April 5, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used to Social Studio to schedule all of our social media content on Facebook and Twitter. It was only used by our marketing department. It helped me, as the social media manager, keep track of our social calendar and our engagement. It also allowed my managers to keep an eye on our calendar.

Pros

It helps you visualize your social calendar on a daily, weekly, and monthly level. I liked seeing the days posts not just listed out, but listed in hourly blocks. It helped me make sure everything was spaced out nicely.
It lets you preview the way your content will look on each social platform.
Duplicating content was fairly easy.

Cons

I would have loved a library function for all the images I continually post on social.
I wish I could have dragged content on the calendar. For instance, if I had a post scheduled at 3:00 but I needed to move it to 5:00, I wish I could have just dragged the post on the calendar to the 5:00 slot, rather than opening the post and editing the scheduled time.
When too many posts were on the calendar, it looked very cluttered.

Likelihood to Recommend

Social Studio is great for an organization that manages many social media accounts. Not just one Facebook and one Twitter, but several Twitter accounts and several Facebook accounts. It is not as well suited for organization with a large media library they would like integrated into their social media scheduling platform.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Jack of all trades, master of none

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

April 13, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

One stop shop: if you are looking for a tool that combines multiple facets found in individual tools then this could be for you
Scheduling posts is a breeze across platform. So this is clearly geared towards marketers or community managers who need a quick and simple way to manage communications output
Salesforce is a ubiquitous platform these days - social studio is a natural extension of this (the engage and CRM functionality plays to this strength) so for businesses of any size that subscribe to the Salesforce suite, adding this tool would make total sense
The user interface is rather simplistic which can be seen as a pro - intuitive and easy to navigate, and more quickly accessible for newbies over rival platforms which can have steep learning curves and layers of detailed functionality which take time to get familiar with

Cons

Jack of all trades, master of none: OK so this might sound a bit harsh, but while the tool accomplished three similar functions competently, and all under one bonnet, the fact that none of them are outstanding in functionality and capability in my book that also counts as a weakness, regardless of the fact they are all combined in one software suite. It would seem that Salesforce needs to think more carefully about who the target user audience is here - publishers, sellers and marketers, or insight types who work with the content - it's a bit lacklustre in all three areas
Simplicity vs total control: I mentioned previously that it has a very intuitive, accessible and 'simplistic' (in a good way) UI which makes getting to grips with the tool great for early adopters. BUT with this comes the downfall that it is rather simplistic, and the rich functionality that is available in other platforms is just not seen here. For example, the engagement scores for competitor brands (not client / owned brands) are not available, meaning you can't do deeper dive analysis on content performance for rival organizations. The ability to only export content in 90 day chunks is also frustrating
For such a large organisation, think about how much support you're going to need from Salesforce. You might have to be prepared to wing it on your own

Likelihood to Recommend

Jeremy Cowles

Senior Strategist in Professional Services at Ebiquity plc (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile