If you manage social media accounts for a business or other organization, software like Agorapulse can bring a level of automation and sophistication to your efforts. I’d like to share why I chose Agorapulse over the myriad of other platforms, its capabilities and drawbacks, and whether or not I recommend it for you.
What is Agorapulse?
I use Agorapulse to…
- create and schedule social media posts
- share social media calendars with clients for approval
- manage every social media platform’s inbox and comments
- generate monthly analytics reports.
An overview of all Agorapulse features can be found here.
Why Did I Choose Agorapulse?
Believe it or not, prior to purchasing Agorapulse in May 2021, I did not use any paid programs to manage or analyze social media. I used the free version of Hootsuite for LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as Facebook’s built-in tools for Instagram and Facebook, which are also free. To analyze client accounts, I manually gathered analytics from each platform.
(Yes, manually! Between myself and a dedicated team member, we spent hours every month creating reports. Looking back, I can’t believe how much time we spent on these efforts! It certainly wasn’t wasted time, since reports are really important, but investing in software allows automation and hours of saved time.)
When Hootsuite changed its capabilities for free users (and I didn’t really care for the platform, anyway) I realized that I needed a better solution.
I spent about two months researching paid social media management programs. I asked Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Society group for advice, and the two platforms that stood out to my fellow social media professionals were Agorapulse and Sprout Social. I eagerly set up demos for both and learned that they had almost identical capabilities.
I’ll admit, Sprout Social had a more hands-on and supportive sales and onboarding process, but the kicker was that it does not allow you to manage personal LinkedIn accounts. I provide this service to many of my clients, so I chose Agorapulse for this extra feature. After asking to switch sales reps with Agorapulse, I also experienced a much better customer service experience.
What I Love About Agorapulse
Two big reasons: Time and service. I save so much time and provide a much better service to my clients with this all-in-one platform.
Platform Integration
I use Agorapulse to manage Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn pages, and Instagram business accounts. You can also use Agorapulse to manage Facebook groups, Google My Business accounts, and YouTube channels. You cannot use Agorapulse to manage Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, or personal Facebook/Instagram profiles.
Community Management
I love that I can log into one dashboard and view all notifications at once. When there’s a wayward comment or inbox question that needs to be addressed, I can quickly handle it or pass it along to the client as needed. Most comments and questions can be answered right in Agorapulse, or I can toggle over to the platform for direct management.
Scheduling and Calendar Sharing
It’s really easy to create a social media post and adjust it for each platform. For example, when I want to publish something similar on both Facebook and Instagram, but need the post on each platform to look a bit different, I can write the post once, then toggle over to each platform and customize it.
Within this screen, there is also an option to insert saved hashtag sets. You can even design in Canva directly through Agorapulse – I love this for grabbing stock photos!
And once scheduled, the post can be easily viewed, edited, or moved to a different day/time on the handy calendar. I can choose to share this calendar with clients to view and offer feedback on their scheduled posts, too. Clients do not have the ability to change posts directly.
Organization
It’s simple to group client accounts together in Agorapulse so you don’t have to manually select each one. I put my groups in alphabetical order so I can easily find the client I need to work on.
Reports and Analytics
It’s great to creatively manage social media for clients, but if we’re not measuring progress and making adjustments, we’re not really being as effective as we can.
So my biggest timesaver with Agorapulse is the reporting features – and I’m sure I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible. I have automatic reports set up to send to my email inbox every month. From there, I create a custom cover page for each client to summarize the results, suggest strategy adjustments, and pitch new social media ideas for the next month.
What I Wish I Could Change About Agorapulse
There are a few features that I wish Agorapulse would add or change, to eliminate the need for workarounds.
Keep in mind that some of these are limited by the social media platforms’ APIs – meaning, no software can currently perform these functions. Still, if you’re reading this blog because you want a realistic picture of what Agorapulse can and cannot do, you need to go in with both eyes open!
1) More Capabilities for LinkedIn Personal Profiles
You cannot manage LinkedIn inboxes, schedule videos on LinkedIn, or view any analytics for LinkedIn personal profiles. My team and I still have to manually perform all these functions.
2) Expanded Options for Instagram
You cannot schedule more than one image in a single Instagram post or schedule Instagram Stories – unless you want Agorapulse to prompt you to do so manually from your phone. The prompting works fine for those carousel posts but I still use the Business Suite app on my phone to schedule Stories.
3) Additional Video Options
You cannot add captions or video titles in Agorapulse, so I still use the native platforms to achieve these video features on behalf of my clients. I also have not been able to add videos to playlists through Agorapulse.
4) Image Compression Capabilities
It takes longer to schedule a post in Agorapulse because the platform doesn’t automatically compress images like the native platforms do. If you’re using an image over 5 Mb, you need to resize it outside of Agorapulse (I use Photoshop) before you can upload it. Here are all the media requirements from Agorapulse.
5) Billing Options
This is a personal pet peeve, but because Agorapulse is based out of France, I have to call my bank every time I want to upgrade my Agorapulse account to add additional social media profiles. Then, I work with my helpful Agorapulse account manager to get the accounts added. My bank also charges a fee for the overseas charge. It would be great if there were a stateside billing option!
Do I Recommend Agorapulse?
I highly recommend Agorapulse to any business owner or social media manager who has reached capacity in their business. It is a very professional platform with sophisticated capabilities. Despite the cost investment, I have definitely made money with Agorapulse because it replaced so much time-consuming work in my business.
But don’t use Agorapulse if…
You can’t afford it.
The cost can be prohibitive – I paid just over $5,000 for my initial package (with a discount for paying in full for the year) and have had to add more profiles (and pay more money) since June 2021 – so I honestly recommend sticking with the free programs as long as you can.
You don’t have a lot of accounts to manage.
I really like Creator Studio for Facebook and Instagram, and that hasn’t changed with this transition to Agorapulse. I still use Creator Studio for some functions, including video and carousel post creation. If you’re a smaller organization and use Facebook and/or Instagram the most, stick with Creator Studio.
I’ve tried the free TweekDeck for Twitter and didn’t care for it, but you can get by on Twitter for free by using TweekDeck.
YouTube Studio is really slick and I use that instead of Agorapulse for my clients’ YouTube channels.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t have a scheduling capability built into its platform, so unless you want to live-post on LinkedIn, you’ll need to make some kind of software choice.
Note: I am a proud Agorapulse Partner Program member and the links contained in this article are affiliate links. Learn more about Agorapulse here!