Why A Leading Agency Switched From Hootsuite to Vista Social

Do you want to save 2-3 days’ worth of agency work each week? That’s exactly what prompted The Venandi Group to switch from Hootsuite to Vista Social.

When it comes to efficiency, The Venandi Group does it right! They’ve thrown out the old agency model of long onboarding processes, poor communication, and slow results for a new breed of agency workflow based on efficiency.

Their model is possible because of the systems they’ve developed and adopted that allow for breathtaking results, seamless approval workflows, and strategic optimizations based on detailed analytics, instead of guesswork.

Want to learn more about their story? Keep reading to find out how their top-rated agency utilizes Vista Social daily to scale on social media without breaking the bank.

The Current Struggles with MarTech for Agencies

As a Meta Business Partner, The Venandi Group needed a tool that would align with its mission of efficiency and scale. But, found that most other social media management tools on the market had:

• Slow rollouts of new features or limited abilities (i.e., notification scheduling workarounds).
• Expensive pricing packages for agencies when adding new accounts.
• Lengthy onboarding processes for new clients.
• Complicated interfaces that required a learning curve for all stakeholders.
• Buggy systems that weren’t reliable.

Although they were using Hootsuite, a well-known social media management tool, they didn’t find that it was helping them save time and scale. Plus, with the expensive plans, it wasn’t an efficient or sustainable option.

This prompted them to look for a more modern platform that could provide solutions for how social media exists today and not in the last decade like most other well-known tools.

Enter, Vista Social. 

Collaborating With Seamless Workflows 

89% of The Venandi Group’s clients’ inquiries come from social media. So, they needed a platform where they could not only schedule their posts but be able to manage comments, mentions, and messages across a number of entities and social profiles.

With Vista Social’s Social Inbox tool, they could stay on top of important interactions and quickly turn followers into customers. 

For their agency, the Social Inbox’s core features gave them the ability to work collaboratively with clients in one unified dashboard, so nothing ever gets missed.

The Venandi Group’s Favorite Social Inbox Features in Vista Social:

• Task Assignment: Delegate messages to specific team members (or clients) and measure users’ efficiency based on tasks assigned and completed.
• Internal Notes: Create internal notes and mention team members or clients within conversations.
• Message Tagging: Label and sort messages to easily access communications related to marketing strategies, business objectives, and specific workflows.
• Engagement Features: Engagement with messages right from the inbox with features to like, dislike, delete messages, and block users.

By being able to unify all connected networks and profiles of their clients into a single stream, it gave them more time to focus on growing other areas of their agency.

Out With The Old Way of Monthly Reporting

A key focus of The Venandi Group’s strategy for their clients is making optimizations based on logic instead of guesswork.

With 95% of The Venandi Group’s client’s website traffic coming from social media, they needed their reporting to be in-depth and quickly tell them what’s working — and what isn’t. 

However, they found that Hootsuite only offered basic reporting and lacked the strategic insights they needed. This resulted in time-consuming data dumps into spreadsheets. 

With Vista Social, they were able to take back their time and gain access to unique features such as competitor analysis reporting.

This allowed them more accurate benchmarking and the ability to discover key insights into their competitors’ social media strategies. By monitoring their client’s competitors, they could quickly find gaps in hashtags which allowed them to reach new audiences.

“The reporting is great for me to add another incentive to my clients, and provide them with a comprehensive overview of the work we have done for them that past month.”

The team performance report in Vista Social was a total game-changer for them as an agency. Now, they could show client’s how often their agency replied to social messages and completed assigned tasks to measure their productivity and provide their clients with an improved digital experience for their followers.

The Venandi Group’s Favorite Reporting Features in Vista Social:

• Competitor Analysis Reporting: Track competitor performance across social networks and profiles to benchmark against your own and to identify new opportunities in your industry.
• Customized Reporting: Customize every aspect of your reports. Add your own logo, title, and description for each report. 
• Automate Delivery: Schedule reports in advance to be delivered to teams and clients. 
• Export to PDF: Create amazing-looking PDF reports that can easily be shared with your team, manager, and stakeholders.

So, Why Did The Venandi Group Choose Vista Social?

When evaluating which social media management tools would be best for their agency, they needed a platform that would allow them to:

• Easily add new social media profiles and entities to their account.
• Quickly switch between clients, social profiles, and networks in a unified, easy-to-use dashboard.
• Customizable reports that had detailed analytics that could easily be shared with their agency team members, clients, and other stakeholders.
• Manage their client’s social media marketing without breaking the bank.
• Provide their clients with solutions to modern social media needs such as Carousel post scheduling (without notifications or mobile app workarounds).
• Save them more time and money, so they can focus on growing their agency.

Vista Social vs. Hootsuite

Account Setup

With Hootsuite’s Business plan starting at $739/month, businesses get access to resources on how to use the platform. Any plan before that doesn’t offer any training resources which are necessary for getting set up. 

Vista Social’s onboarding was very simple and didn’t require any additional training sessions or onboarding calls. The Venandi Group was able to get started themselves and were up and running in minutes!

Content Scheduling

Vista Social offered more detailed features for various social networks, such as organic targeting and tagging users in photos. This eliminates time spent opening up each social app after the post has been published to make those adjustments.

Additionally, by having capabilities such as organic targeting, the content reaches the right audiences to drive results. 

Reporting & Analytics

Hootsuite offers very limited analytics options to customers on the lower pricing plans with limited flexibility to customize reports.

All Vista Social users have unlimited reports and the ability to customize and automate report delivery. 

Modern Solutions & Capabilities

As a modern agency, The Venandi Group needed a tool that could support the latest social media marketing needs. They were surprised to find that although Hootsuite had been around 14 years longer than Vista Social, Vista Social was first to market for many new features, such as Instagram carousel post scheduling.

This was something that they were currently struggling with on Hootsuite, which only offered notification scheduling. Additionally, they couldn’t believe all of the social network integrations Vista Social offered compared to Hootsuite.

Price

For an agency, they needed to be able to connect a number of social profiles and have not only their team but their clients be able to access the dashboard. To allow a minimum of 5 users, Hootsuite required a plan that started at $739/month.

The Venandi Group was surprised to see how simple Vista Social’s pricing was in comparison. With only 2 plan options (free and paid) and only $3/social profile with unlimited users, social profiles, and post scheduling — it became a no-brainer to switch!

The Venandi Group quickly found that Vista Social provided them with everything they were looking for in a social media management tool. 

Despite being a newer platform in the market, Vista Social has been the first to offer a number of solutions, such as TikTok direct publishing, Carousel post scheduling, and Instagram Reels auto publishing. 

Has Vista Social Made a Difference?

Before Vista Social, Joshua and his team spent around 2-3 days getting their client’s social media pages queued and ready for the month. Vista Social has allowed them to cut it down to just 1 day, giving them more time to focus on other areas of their agency.

But, does using Vista Social result in real growth for their client’s social media performance? The Venandi Group reported that since the start of the client partnership, there has been a 1000% increase in social following from using Vista Social. 

When The Venandi Group Founder, Joshua Hunter-Atencia, was asked what he has to say to other agencies considering Vista Social, this was his recommendation:

Sign up for Vista Social today, and see why award-winning agencies trust us to manage their social media marketing. A modern tool that’s first to market, with simple pricing and strategic integrations, is right at your fingertips!