Sprout Social, a social management and publishing tool suite, released Sprout Queue and ViralPost today, estimating that the new features will help brands increase engagement with social content by 30-40%.
Sprout, founded in 2010, offers users tools for social media monitoring and engagement, a “smart inbox” that combines social feeds, collaborative tools and analytics, among other features. CEO Justyn Howard tells me the company, which counts Nike, McDonald’s and Yahoo among its more high-profile clients, is known for its simple user interface and collaborative style.
Sprout Queue allows users to add content to a queue for automated future publication. Howard says the company original worked on Queue with ViralPost as an embedded feature, before realizing ViralPost would be better on its own.
ViralPost analyzes the users’ audience and gives the user the optimal times to deliver content based on “usage and engagement patterns, content velocity and other factors.” Similar to Queue, ViralPost automatically delivers content at the optimal time. Sprout Social says the models have improved engagement by 30% for the average user and up to 300% in some cases.
“We’re trying to solve the problem of when’s the right time to reach your audience,” Howard explains, saying Sprout Social is taking the guesswork out of reaching your target audience.
While many similar services offer free and premium versions, Sprout Social only offers a monthly subscription (although they do have a 30-day free trial).
Howard tells me they are working on an iPad app, which will be released in the coming months, and are building more tools to allow teams to collaborate on publishing.
