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Social media management can be an overwhelming responsibility for business owners and agency teams alike.
Content creation processes, including content review, approvals, scheduling, and publishing can be time consuming and tedious if not done in an efficient manner, especially if you are managing numerous clients.
Many digital agencies are always on the hunt for new tools and processes to optimize their performance and streamline their workflows and this makes social media management tools a must for digital agencies.
We have previously explored HeyOrca in a tool review and so we wanted to take this opportunity to do an in-depth review of a similar tool, Planable.
What is Planable?
Planable is a social media management tool designed for social media managers and agency owners to help them manage multiple social media platforms from one visual dashboard. It allows everyone involved to collaborate, plan, and manage social media campaigns and brands across different projects.
Planable was created with one goal in mind: to solve the challenges of managing multiple social media accounts simultaneously.
In the dashboard, you can set up workspaces, which Planable defines as “a collaborative space for your brand’s social media content.”
Each workspace is used for a different brand which works especially well for agencies that manage multiple companies and brands as you will be able to seamlessly manage all of the content in one place.
From each brand’s dashboard, you can connect to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, which are the four channels that Planable is integrated with.
How does Planable work?
From the Planable dashboard, you are able to upload social media posts for each of your brand’s channels. From there, your team members can edit or comment on each post, allowing for a collaborative approach to content creation.
The real attraction to Planable is its carefully designed user interface. It's clean, simple and professional, unlike that of many competitors.
The dashboard has been built similarly to the social media channels that many already use which makes it intuitive to use with less of a learning curve for new users.
You can directly make comments and edits on the side of the content so everyone can see what changes need to be made. This easy-to-use functionality was created with the end-users in mind. Nicely done here!
Workspace Setup
The initial setup is visually appealing with an interactive screen walking you through each step of the onboarding process. When you first log in, you will be prompted to upload your company name and logo then you will be instructed to select whether you are a brand or an agency.
From there, the dashboard will walk you through the process of creating a workspace where you will be asked to enter the email and the name of your team members who will be working on that brand.
Once the workspace has been set up, you will be prompted to connect the brand’s social media channels; Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or all of the above.
Workspace Usability
Post schedule and calendar is another well-designed functionality. At one glance, you get a clear overview of all the scheduled content.
This suits the needs of social media managers who need to manage multiple brands. You can select between feed view, calendar view, list view, and grid view. This is where you can easily drag posts between days and display them by week or month.
Overall, Planable provides everything you will want in a social media management tool at a reasonable price.
Definitely, a worthy consideration if you have been shopping around for a tool.
But there is more to this review, we want to see how Planable compares to MixBloom.
Plans and Pricing
Pricing depends on the number of workspaces and users you need. You can easily calculate it from their pricing page.
You'll need one workspace per client, and at least two users per workspace (the client, yourself or a team member) so the costs will quickly add up.
If you served 25 clients and had only two users per workspace, you'd spend $1,080/month on the basic plan (more than enough for most needs) or $1,780/month on the Pro plan.
If you're serving small business clients and charging less than $500/month for social media management, you might find these costs a bit difficult to stomach. If your clients are paying $1,500 and up for your social media services, then you can probably accept this as a reasonable expense.
Still, you'll wonder if there's better alternatives?
What if you need more than just a social media management tool?
If you, like most digital agencies, are also on the hunt for help creating social media content at scale, in addition to a social media management tool, then MixBloom may be the best choice for you!
MixBloom vs Planable
The most important difference is our content creation service. We're a service first of all, but one that comes with the benefits of a white label social media management platform.
Here at MixBloom, we have an expert team of social media managers, talented copywriters, and creative designers dedicated to creating original social media content for your clients.
Working with us is like having your own in-house content creation team, without you having to lead and train a whole new department.
In addition to content creation, all of our clients also get access to our unique white-label dashboard.
From the dashboard, you will be able to review, edit, leave feedback, and approve content to then be published across a number of social media channels.
Your client dashboard can be customized with your brand colors, logo, and name, and will live on your own domain.
Our unique dashboard takes you nearly out of the equation, allowing for seamless communication between us and your client, completely white labeled.
Once your client reviews content, any feedback or edit requests will go directly to our team, allowing us to implement changes in a timely manner.
The dashboard also allows our team to notify you when new content is ready for review or when edits and changes have been made. All in all, the dashboard streamlines the entire content creation, review, approval, and publishing process allowing you to focus your attention on more lucrative business tasks.
MixBloom price plans start at $249/month for content creation and access to our dashboard with upgrades based on the number of monthly posts needed.
Find more in-depth information about our plans and pricing here.
We are here to help you deliver original social media content to your clients with an effective, streamlined process, sure to help you scale your business and serve more clients. If you'd like to know more check out a recorded demo of our software or book a free consultation.
(If you're a marketing agency, get in touch to know about agency discounts and MixBloom's white label social media offer).
