For those who don't know, I like to maximize my productivity, and part of maximizing my productivity is utilizing social media autoschedulers to make sure all my posts go out in a timely manner. In 2019, I ran across Social Oomph. It was one hell of an experience, and I do not recommend it. Below is an account of that experience.
My Social OOmph Experience
I fill out the lengthy account creation app for Social Oomph and signed up. Yes, they sent a verification email, and I had ot click on the link. Thanks spammers for making life more difficult, but anyway. Once I'm in, I start scheduling posts. I use a 24 hour cycle. So, I have between 72 and 96 posts per day, and they run every 24 hours. There's no problem with that scheduling. I've done it with Woop. No one complains. Twitter is cool with it. What Twitter wants to make sure of is that you are not spamming the same post over and over again and irritating your followers. I get it. I've had that warning when I accidentally double-clicked the Tweet button. It really is to stop back-to-back posts that could quickly become obnoxious.
I start scheduling posts by the day, and I get through 2 rounds of them. So, I have 2 posts scheduled for the next 31 days. It's 5:pm. I need a faster way. I have 8 hours left before all feeds go silent. In desperation, I click the "Try Pro for 168 hours" checkbox. This is going to give me the ability to post 1 post and recycle it for every day at the same time. The immediate problem that I see is that after 168 hours, this could all fail. It's a free trial. However, the hope is that in the next 7 days, I can find something more permanent.
It takes me 3 hours to schedule all those posts, even with the repeater checked, but I get it done before my feeds go silent. YAY! It's done at least for the next week. I can relax.
Except: I didn't Pay Attention to Something
When I signed up for that 168-hour free trial, I ignored a warning that was right below the 168 free trial button. That warning said that spreadsheet uploads and the ability to schedule more than 12 posts an hour was not available in the free trial due to SPAMMERS. I should have paid more attention to that, but my immediate thought was - who the hell wants to schedule tweets every 8 minutes? What that really says is that their platform may have Twitter blocks on it, and their rating with Twitter may be junk. I ignored this when I should have ran away quickly.
Saturday at 2:AM
I had been keeping a close eye on my posts all day Saturday. Everything was working fantastically. Posts were going out every 20 minutes. I wasn't getting instability errors. It's looking good. Then, long about midnight, I notice nothing has hit my Twitter feed for 3 hours. What? There were no emails alerting me to the fact that these posts hadn't gone out. I logged into Social Oomph to see what the problem was. I had all kinds of warning everywhere about not being able to post the same thing within 48 hours. What? That's not a Twitter problem, but just in case Twitter had changed something between Feb 28 and March 2nd, I copied out the last failed scheduled post and manually posted it. No problems. Social OOmph has some issues to work out. Their standing with Twitter is definately on shakey ground if Twitter has this type of limitation on thier application. Since I had already had numerous posts fail, I quickly deleted everything that was already scheduled. Whatever this platform's problem is, I don't want it affecting my account. Then, I quickly scheduled 3 or 4 posts with TweetDeck for the overnight and went to bed. Far fewer that what should have been going out, and I paid for that in the morning when I looked at my account stats.
Sunday Take 2
Sunday morning, I get up late, knowing full well all my feeds are silent. This is exactly the scenario I was trying to prevent Friday. I checked WoopSocial. They're still broken, so my option is to retry Social OOmph on a 48 hour repeating cycle. Keep in mind, that I only have 168 hours of pro available total, and their issue Saturday night has caused me to be unable to use at least 8 of those hours. I very quickly schedule 3 posts to cover 11:20AM to 12:20PM just so I can get moving on the feeds and start to reschedule on a 48 hour timeframe. I reschedule for about an hour. Then, I checked my Twitter feed. Nothing has gone out. I look on Social Oomph, same errors. Same 48 hour problem.... I deleted everything I had just scheduled because really - something heinous is going on with this scheduling platform. I've never come across this, and I've been doing 24 hour rotating posts for several months now.
I Emailed Customer Service
At that point, I went over to Hootsuite, which I really cannot stand and scheduled the maximum allowable posts - 30. This is the last thing I wanted to do. 30 posts buys me 8 to 10 hours. That's it. Once I had that done just so I could get rolling again, I contacted Social Oomph's customer service. I explained that I was trying out their system, and why I was trying it out. Then, I detailed everything in that post that I have paid out here, because it's not normal.
They got back to me within 30 minutes. Fantastic! Maybe I can get some insight. I opened the email, and what they had written was not suitable for anyone's eyes. Yep, it was that inappropriate and unprofessional. In fact, I won't even post it here, but suffice to say, the comment was pretty much what I expected after all the hell the site itself had caused me. They do not care about their business or anything else to do with it. Personally, I cannot recommend them at all, and I would warn you to stay clear. Luckily, it doens't look like thier Twitter problems have manifested on my Twitter profile or feed. I can still post, and it doesn't look like anything is being "shadowbanned", but we'll see. I'll have to keep a close eye on it.
Other Reviews for This Scheduling Platform
As I dug deeper, I realized, Social Oomph's problems have been going on for quite a while.
From g2Crowd:
"Unusable interface led me to better, cheaper competitors"
What do you like best?
At the time it was the most affordable product that offered the "infinite queue" — that is, queuing up content that would repeat itself once everything was posted.
What do you dislike?
The user interface was so terrible, clunky and confusing that I couldn't remember how everything worked. Plus, other services ended up being cheaper and way more easy to use, like PostPlanner or RecurPost.
Recommendations to others considering the product
Go use PostPlanner or RecurPost instead. They have the same recycling posts feature and are way easier to use. I also liked SmarterQueue too.
What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
I wanted to be able to queue social media content up once and forget it. That saved me a lot of time and worry.
"Social Oomph - Great While it Lasted"
What do you like best?
Social Oomph was the most affordable social marketing tool I found for multiple social media accounts.
What do you dislike?
After using it about a month, Facebook deleted the app and told me if I used it again I would lose my Facebook account, so evidently Facebook considers it spam.
Recommendations to others considering the product
It is very economical, a little confusing to set up. But almost got me kicked off of Facebook.
What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
Economical way to post on multiple social media accounts. Saved time and money
End Comment - Avoid at all costs. It's not worth it, especially since it looks like it may actually cause harm to your social media accounts if left i nplace long enough. Facebook considers it spam, and at this point, I'd say Twitter does too.
