Welcome to episode 241 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
We’ve done a few episodes on social media management tools. In the last couple of months, we’ve done, let’s see, Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Edgar, a lot. Today we’re doing another one because these tools pop up all the time and so I test them out and I bring you facts. I will say what I believe I say in every episode, which is there are a ton of tools because everyone is going to have their personal preference.
There is no one right tool for every person. There are a ton of them, try them out, find what works best for you. The tools are only valuable if you actually use them. I know, I know. You have to actually use them, that’s tough, but that’s what makes them actually work so use the tool that you will use. Today we’re going to talk about eClincher which is newish. It’s brand new to me in the last couple of months.
I was actually having a conversation with Jen Turrell on Twitter about Sprout Social and they said, “Hey.” I had tweeted on Sprout Social and asked if they were going to do any sort of recycled content feature. I was told that they didn’t have one in their plans right now. eClincher tweeted us and said, “Hey, we have recycled content and we’re similar to Sprout Social. Check us out,” and so I did. Guess what?
I now totally use eClincher, so first of all, good example of social listening and being able to say, “Hey, we do this. Check this out.” Second of all, it’s awesome. I am going to kind of break down the 3 things I want you to know but first what I want to say is that with eClincher, I have managed to move away from using 3 tools. I used Buffer, Hootsuite and Edgar before and I now only use eClincher, so there’s that which is pretty awesome.
That’s actually not true, I take it back. That is not true. I still use Hootsuite and Buffer just not for my business. I have a second company with my partner Brandy Lawson called Biz BFF’s that you’ve probably heard me talk about on the show, and for that we still use Buffer and Hootsuite because we do. I think I might actually move our stuff over to eClincher too but anyways, that’s another episode altogether. I just wanted to be fully clear but for The Stacey Harris, we are only using eClincher for all of the things and I am all of the in love with it right now.
First thing I want to talk about is one of its features which is the ability to publish and schedule. Now, they’re still a newish software so we don’t have all of the functionality I would like just yet. With Facebook, you can publish to pages and groups. Google+ pages, LinkedIn profiles and pages and groups, Pinterest and Twitter. I really wish I could schedule to groups I admin. That’s not something I can do right now with eClincher which is one of the reasons with Biz BFF’s we’re still using Buffer because I can schedule to Facebook groups which we do with Biz BFF group.
We have our daily prompt that gets scheduled. That’s something I wish would change and it’s a feature request I’m going to be submitting. Also, we can monitor and engage with Instagram, Google+ profiles and YouTube, meaning I can see comments left, I can leave comments, I can watch my feed but I can’t post to those things. With Google+ profiles there’s not really a good tool that does that. YouTube doesn’t surprise me either, but with Instagram, that’s a functionality I’d really like to see because again, on the Biz BFF side, that is a primary network for us and so I schedule stuff to go out through Hootsuite for Instagram.
You can monitor and engage those things which works well for me in The Stacey Harris because I can engage with Instagram and monitor comments and things like that, but I would really like to be able to schedule content even to push through my phone. There is a eClincher app coming according to their website. I’m hoping that along with that app we will get the Instagram controls because we could push a notification to the app which is how Hootsuite manages it so that’s my hope.
That is not all based on information from them, that is just my hope. Let me triple clarify that, but again, you can publish and schedule to Facebook pages and profiles, Google+ pages, LinkedIn profiles, pages and groups, Pinterest and Twitter. Then you can monitor your Instagram, your Google+ profile and your YouTube. The other thing I wanted to note here is there are some analytics information coming from eClincher which is really powerful and if you listen to the social episodes, one of the things I really loved about Sprout Social is the integration of analytics.
We have that power and it’s at eClincher as well. We can look at Facebook insights for your page, Twitter insights, LinkedIn page insights and some YouTube insights as well so there’s a lot of analytics information in there which is really powerful to be able to get in one place and so that’s the first thing. That’s the first piece. The second piece and what really made it possible for me to bring everything together is that in addition to being able to publish and schedule to those places, I have the recycled content feature that I would have with Edgar meaning I have queues or libraries or whatever you want to call them of content that gets recycled out.
It goes out on certain days and then it goes, after it’s posted, it goes to the bottom of the queue and it goes again. You can shuffle those queues which is something that Edgar finally got around to adding but eClincher has it as well, so when you get through the queues you can shuffle it up and it won’t go out in the exact same order which is really handy if you don’t have a ton of content in the queues just yet, maybe you’re earlier in your podcast or something so recycled content.
Also, in addition to having that recycled content, which I really love with Edgar, you have the social inbox like you have with Sprout Social where all of your notifications, your new followers, your mentions, your comments come into one inbox area in eClincher and you can respond and deal with those as you need to in one place which is a huge time saver and really keeps things from getting missed.
You can also, if that overwhelms you, that number, you can jump into specific networks but it’s really, really, really, really powerful being able to engage from one point with the comments and the tweets and those kind of things that come at you. That was the second piece I want to talk about. That first piece is that you can publish and schedule to those places and then you have those analytics. The second piece of course you have the recycling content and the inbox so you have a lot of tools integrated together and that’s really powerful.
In addition, the other integration that you have that I really really liked is you have Giffy which gives you the ability to search for gifs which as more and more social networks, i.e. Facebook and Twitter, are playing gifs, you can actually add them now, or gifs, or however you want to say that. Pixabay, which is a stock photo search engine and you also have canva integration meaning you can actually create and schedule the graphics all in one place. How cool is that?
The other integration I really love is Feedly so I have my Feedly integrated. Feedly is how I manage the other content sources I like to share from so I can go in, I open up my Feedly and I can share directly into whatever network I need to all in one place, so the integrations are incredible. That’s what I really want to talk about with this second point is the amount of tools eClincher is really pulling together into one stop shopping, one place where you can go and you can deal with this stuff. That’s incredibly valuable.
For me, that was the game changer. That’s what got me away from using 3 networks, or 3 tools I should say, Hootsuite, Buffer and Edgar and really jumping into just eClincher. That’s a game changer. Here’s the really cool thing. In addition to moving away from using 3 tools, I cut my cost because the third thing I want to talk about and we’re going to wrap up on here is pricing.
There are pricing tiers and if you want to pay per year, you’ll actually save a little bit. I use the basic tier, and what I’ll do is I’ll link to the pricing so you kind of see what’s included at the different tiers, I use the basic tier which allows you to manage 15 profiles. You have unlimited posts and scheduling on all the levels. I have up to 15 queues that I can auto post so that’s that recycled content piece, and for me 15 queues is plenty.
Monitoring and engagement, the unified social inbox that I was mentioning in the second point that I made, that’s only available starting at the basic and above level so it’s worth going to $25 level. For custom and RSS feed, so feeds from websites and things like that, if you don’t want to use Feedly or whatever, you can have 100 of those in the level I use, some social analytics, up to 3 Google analytics integration, or 3 Google analytics accounts can be integrated. Another powerful integration.
The canva is included, unlimited reports. There’s a weekly backup of my content and my analytics and my settings so if something happens, there’s a backup. As I mentioned, there’s an app coming soon. Basic doesn’t allow for team members. If you want to add team members, you can go to the premier level which would be really handy if you have somebody who admins your social. We handle it all in-house here, so we have on login.
If you have somebody on your team, I would suggest even at the premier level which allows 2 members though, you’re paying $50 a month which is what Edgar costs, so when you factor in the fact that it brings in other pieces and not just that recycled content piece, for me it’s a better value. Yeah, that’s eClincher.
This episode’s super fast but I really wanted to sort of quick and dirty write down this new tool for you. If you go to the show notes, TheStaceyHarris.com/episode241, you’ll see a link to sign up, the pricing information. There is a 14 day free trial and there’s no credit card required for that free trial so you’re not have to worry about not cancelling it or whatever. Check it out. Get in there.
I will say it’s not the most attractive, the user interface is not as attractive as Sprout Social’s for example or Edgar’s for example. However, it’s not difficult to navigate. It’s intuitive which is not something I can say about every social network or social management tool. Give it some time to, because it does so many things, give it some time to figure out where the pieces are that you’re playing with but do give it a chance because it is a really, really great tool so thanks guys over at eClincher. It’s really awesome.
I’m really excited. It’s a really powerful tool. I am still going to, even though I’m using this, I will still be talking about some other tools in the future so stay tuned for more episodes like this and I will see you guys next time. All right. Thanks for listening.
Resources
eClincher Pricing (Price has increased since recording, but value is still incredible)
Connect with Me
Tweet with me and include #HittheMic
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