Alternatives to Hootsuite : Socialoomph

Socialoomph is a social media management tool that can be used to automate your Twitter, Facebook, Buzz and other social media sites updates. But it doesn't end there, with SocialOomph you can also track keywords, promote yourself, manage drafts, manage your blog, etc... If you are using several social media networks at once SocialOomph can be a great place to unify all your social media accounts and optimize your social media efforts.

At a glance, SocialOomph offers you anything you need to manage your status updates on most social networks. Schedule tweets, track keywords, shorten urls, are all included free of charge. Bulk uploading of updates, autofollowing, sending automatic DM, Facebook and blog management are only included with the premium version that costs $29.97 per month. You can take a look at the full list of SocialOomph features here.

In my experience the free version is good enough if all you want is to schedule your tweets and see statistics, but if you are mass promoting your articles you'll better off with the premium subscription and the bulk uploading and recurring updates features, if only because it'll leave you more time to create content. But if you are willing to manually schedule each of your Tweets the free option has everything you need for Twitter management.

Keep in mind that with Socialoomph you cannot read other people's tweets or status updates, it's not a replacement for Twitter or Facebook default interfaces. If you are looking for that type of functionality Hootsuite or Tweetdeck are better alternatives.

Socialoomph works through a web interface, so you can access it from anywhere with an Internet browser, which makes it handy when you are stuck on an airport trying to kill time. Technically the interface works well and it's quite intuitive, but there are so many options that you may find out you only use a few of them.

There are some features that take more clicks than necessary, such as for example editing a status update that you just added to a queue reservoir. You'll have to view all the queues, then select Updates on the right one, then find your update and edit it. However, for a web interface it's still quite smooth and it's easy to get used to.

A free SocialOomph account is still full of features, and among other things allows you to schedule tweets, save and reuse drafts, see click statistics and see who's retweeting or mentioning you.

The paid account offers all of the above, plus the possibility of bulk uploading updates, managing Facebook accounts, integrate with your blogs and manage them from a unified interface, and even send social updates via email. You can even try it out for free for 30 days, and then decide if you want to upgrade or prefer the free service.

I've used both the free and paid service to promote my articles and so far I have no complaints about their customer support. My account has never been billed after I cancelled my subscription (To try Hootsuite, another social media management tool), so they are not just after your credit card details.