Oktopost describes itself as “The B2B Social Media Management Platform.”

They then go on to claim that they are “One Powerful Platform for Social Media Management.” Bold claims indeed so lets take a quick look at whether they are justified.

Now I’m not quite sure what the difference is between being a social media management platform for B2C, (Business to customer/consumer) or being one for B2B, (Business to Business). Save for the fact that you probably don’t need a CRM if you are targeting the actual end-user customer for most products, I think that the way in which you use, and manage your social media marketing is pretty much the same. I am, however prepared to be proved wrong.

Upon looking at Oktopost in a bit more detail I found something else I wasn’t quite sure about, the lack of any kind of competitor analysis. I know lots of social media marketers but I don’t know anyone who would seriously start a social media campaign, B2B or otherwise, without having a pretty good idea as to how the competition are doing in the same space – there seems to be no facility for this in Oktopost which means you would have to subscribe to another platform in order to get that comparative data – the costs, and inconvenience, are starting to mount.

Which brings me to another thing I don’t like, lack of pricing information. Whenever I see that I have to contact the site to get a quote I get suspicious and cautious – why can’t Oktopost be transparent about their pricing? They’ll say it is because there are too many variables; fair enough, in such cases provide a couple of examples as a benchmark so that people know roughly what they are going to be into. Instead you have to waste time contacting them, listening to what is at this stage, an unnecessary pitch, before deciding whether or not to shortlist the product. Massive time waste.

So what does Oktopost do?

Well, as a social media marketing team management tool it looks pretty good. There are the usual content sharing tools. auto-posting, social media listening, and so on. Lead generation, tracking and other CRM functions seem to be a focus for the platform, all good stuff when addressing the B2B market. There is an Analytics function which measures audience engagement etc, but without the missing, essential, competitive data that I mentioned earlier, this is of limited use.

If I were looking for a social media management platform I’d certainly include Oktopost in my list of ones to try. Which brings me to another gripe – no free trial! Instead you have to register for a demo. There is, to be fair, a facility for watching a pre-recorded demo which is the option we took.

I have managed to obtain from a contact some pricing information. I don’t know how up-to-date it is but it should give you an idea. The “Basic” service starts at $65 per month and rises to $560 for professional users. Make of that what you will.

As Oktopost themselves say; “Today’s B2B marketers need to generate leads and measure the business value of their work. Oktopost tracks each lead you generate, and provides the analytics to understand which networks, profiles, and posts are most effective.” That does really ring true and it is what serious marketers want, well almost!

Despite my misgivings I still think it’s worth a taking a look at Oktopost – here’s the link.