Loomly Review 2024: The Social Media Manager’s Best Friend?

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Friends solve problems for us. 

And if you’re a social media manager, you have all kinds of problems. 

Problems like publishing content for many brands and collaborating with your team members and clients. 

Can Loomly solve these problems? 

That’s the question I’ll answer in this Loomly review. 

Let’s meet Loomly on a personal level.

Who is Loomly for?

As I hinted earlier, Loomly will fit your needs best if you’re a social media manager who needs to collaborate with team members and clients. 

It also works well if you’re a social media consultant who needs to manage social media accounts for many clients.

However, if you want features like content curation and influencer discovery, consider ContentStudio.

If you’re a freelancer or solopreneur who wants a more affordable Loomly alternative, consider Pallyy.

Loomly key features

Here are key features of Loomly to run your social media campaigns:

Loomly dashboard

When you land on Loomly’s dashboard, you may assume that it’s a lightweight tool because of its simple interface.

But that assumption would be wrong.

I think Loomly has prioritized usability rather than a complex design.

Loomly is that millionaire friend who prefers a Casio wristwatch just because it’s more accurate than a Rolex.

First, you’ll see your calendars. As I’ll explain later in the review, calendars on Loomly are the workspaces.

Then, the status of your social media posts and the number of posts in each state. 

Beside that, there’s “On the Radar” which shows posts on queue for a particular day.

You also have the “New Post” button at the top right corner of the dashboard.

Scrolling down the page, you’ll find post ideas for your posts.

Generally, the Loomly dashboard provides an overview of your social media campaigns and a quick way to create posts.

Loomly calendar

The calendar is one of the most important features of this social media management tool.

That’s because most of the features are structured around the calendar.

Put simply, the calendar is your workspace.

You can connect social media accounts to a calendar.

Beyond that, you’ll see the post schedule for the social accounts. You can also access the social inbox, analytics, and media library for these accounts.

If you select the list view for your calendar, you’ll find details such as format and the social channels each post will appear on.

Then, you can assign a post to a collaborator and change its status.

The calendar is Loomly’s system for organizing social media accounts.

So, if you run social media campaigns for clients, you can create a calendar for each client.

On the other hand, if you run social media for an international company, you can create a calendar for each location.

This will help you separate social media account groups and their analytics and reports.

Loomly post builder

You want a post builder that lets you create a post for multiple accounts, see previews, and add media in a simple interface.

Loomly meets these needs.

First, the post builder has straightforward steps for creating a post.

You can select the channels you want to publish on and a label for the post.

Then, you can select images or videos from your computer, Loomly’s media library, GIPHY, or Unsplash.

But beyond that, Loomly provides post ideas from Twitter trends, international holidays, and your favorite RSS feeds.

Once you finish your post draft, Loomly lets you edit it for each social media channel. You can see a live preview while making the changes.

You can also add relevant hashtags from the hashtag manager.

If you want to promote your posts on Facebook and LinkedIn, Loomly has a section to define your target audience.

With the easy-to-use Loomly post builder, most of your team members will be able to create posts.

Even if they’re using Loomly for the first time.

Loomly collaboration

My favorite Loomly collaboration feature is the approval workflow.

It lets you bring clients or superiors into the publishing workflow.

So, your clients can approve a post before it goes live on their accounts. This can prevent situations where social media posts become a PR or legal storm.

Beyond approval workflow, you get most of the traditional social media collaboration features.

For example, you can invite collaborators and set their roles.

But Loomly lets you do more. 

You can specify a custom role for a collaborator. Here, you can select the permissions you want this collaborator to have.

You can also assign collaborators to social media posts and leave comments for them.

Overall, Loomly collaboration features let you work effectively with your team members and clients. 

You can also get clients more involved in the publishing process.

Loomly Interactions

The Interactions is Loomly’s social inbox.

It lets you engage with comments, messages, and taggings of your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts.

Each calendar has its own social inbox. So, the inbox is only for the accounts grouped together.

You can reply, like, hide, and even delete comments right in Loomly. Loomly also allows you to assign interactions to team members.

Loomly Interactions ensures you can engage with your audience without leaving the platform.

Loomly post ideas

Publishing social media posts every day can quickly exhaust your creative ideas.

Whenever you’re struggling with what to publish, the Loomly post ideas can come to your rescue.

These post ideas come from Twitter hashtags, holidays, and your RSS feed sources.

By the time you go through the ideas, you’ll find inspiration for interesting content.

But beyond that, you can set your own post idea. So, if you want to use a post idea in two weeks, you can set it up for that day.

If you click the post idea (lightbulb) icon, you’ll see post ideas for each day in your calendar.

This feature ensures you always have content to engage your audience on social media.

Loomly media library

You can upload your images and videos into the Loomly media library.

You can also import photos from Unsplash.

Not just that, but Loomly allows you to edit images in its editor.

The Loomly media library exists for a simple reason: to make your post creation easier.

So that while creating your post, you can pick an image or video from the library.

Loomly analytics 

Creating social media posts or running campaigns is not an end in itself.

You do this to create awareness, drive web traffic, or achieve other goals.

Getting the right metrics from analytics can help you determine if you’ve achieved these goals.

Loomly has basic analytics, which is available on all plans. 

This provides metrics such as:

• Engaged users
• Comments
• Clicks
• Reach
• Likes
• Shares

But there’s more in advanced analytics.

In Loomly’s advanced analytics, you’ll get metrics like:

• Days your fans are online
• Hours your fans are online
• Likes by age and gender
• Likes by city
• Likes by country

However, you have to be on at least the Standard plan to access advanced analytics.

Apart from having metrics for a period, you can also compare two periods.

This can come in handy if you want to see the difference in performance over two periods.

Loomly analytics provides an overview of your social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can see your best and worst performers.

But most importantly, you can get insights to improve your future campaigns.

Loomly reports

If you want to deliver analytics to your boss or client, you can use the reports feature for that.

By clicking on the download icon in your calendar, you’ll see the option to export analytics or schedule a PDF report.

You can export analytics in PDF format for your personal use.

However, if you have to deliver reports to clients at intervals, you can schedule reports.

Loomly provides the option to send monthly or weekly reports. 

So, all you have to do is select reports and the email address you want to send them to.

Every week or month, Loomly will send a report to the email address.

This can help you show the proof of your performance. And you don’t need to lift a finger to send these reports.

How to manage social media in Loomly

Here, I’ll explore 3 important aspects of social media management in Loomly.

Set up a calendar in Loomly

Everything on Loomly starts with creating a calendar.

To create a calendar, click “Add New Calendar” on your dashboard.

After doing this, you can create your calendar in 5 steps.

First, you have to set calendar details such as name, time zone, and industry.

On the next page, you can connect your social media accounts. Loomly allows you to add accounts from all the traditional social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.

But beyond those, Loomly lets you activate a custom social channel. 

This can include Tumblr, Reddit, WeChat, and more.

After adding your social media accounts, you can now set up your calendar workflow.

Your workflow will depend on the number of collaborators you have for this calendar. 

Loomly has 3 preset workflows for no collaborator, one collaborator, and more than one collaborator. You can also create a custom workflow.

These workflows help you set the stages your posts will go through from draft to publish.

In the next step, you can set your post ideas preferences. Here, you can select the location for Twitter trends and enter RSS feeds to track.

Lastly, you can invite collaborators and select their roles. You can also set up a custom role, which I’ll explain later in this review.

Once you complete this step, you’ve created your calendar.

You can now create your first post.

Create a social media post in Loomly

Just like creating a calendar, creating a social media post on Loomly is easy.

You can follow the prompt to create a post after creating your calendar. 

You can also create a post from the dashboard by clicking the “New Post” button at the top right corner of the page.

Alternatively, you can go into a particular calendar to create a post.

If you’re creating a post for the first time, Loomly will show prompts to guide you through the process.

In the first step, you can set your post details. Here, you just need to specify a scheduled time, post subject, and select a label.

Labels help you categorize your posts in Loomly. And you can also use labels to filter metrics in analytics.

After doing this, select the social channels you want to publish your post on. 

At this stage, you can also select other calendars the post should appear on. 

This works if you want to post the same content for a business with accounts for various locations.

In the third step, you can define your generic content. Here, you’ll write your caption and add media for all your social channels.

You can upload images (or videos) from the media library, your computer, Unsplash, or GIPHY. Loomly provides tools to edit the images if you wish to.

If you want to insert a link into your post, you can use Loomly’s shortener (Loom.ly) to save space. An added advantage is that you get link metrics if you use the shortener.

After that, you can edit your post and settings for each social media channel.

For instance, on Instagram, you can select whether to share your posts on feeds or stories.

You can also preview your Instagram post in post or grid format.

When you finish fine-tuning your post for social media channels, you can move on to the next step.

This is an optional step to promote your post on Facebook and LinkedIn.

This step lets you set up your target audience and other details.

Once you’re done, you can create your post.

You have the options to save as a draft, submit for approval, schedule, or publish immediately.

Collaborate with team members in Loomly

Collaboration is one of Loomly’s strengths. And there are many places to add collaborators in the tool.

The first is while creating your calendar. 

In the last step of creating your calendar, you can invite collaborators.

Loomly’s preset roles include:

• Editor
• Client
• Contributor
• Viewer

Beyond the preset roles, you can also set up a custom role. 

In the custom role, you can define what the collaborator can do in your calendar, post, ad, comment, post state, and ad state.

This puts you in control of the permissions you want a collaborator to have.

Second, you can also add a collaborator from inside your calendar.

All you have to do is click the people icon at the top right side of your calendar.

After adding collaborators, how can you work together?

You can engage collaborators in your approval workflow. 

Apart from the 3 preset approval workflows, you can set up a custom workflow. This lets you set triggers to assign your collaborators to take action.

Once you complete your setup, you can assign posts to a collaborator in your calendar.

You can also change a post’s status. Keep in mind that selecting some statuses will automatically assign a post to a collaborator.

For example, if you change a post’s status to “Pending Approval,” Loomly will assign it to the collaborator in charge of approvals.

If you want a collaborator to see the whole calendar, you can notify them through the people icon at the top of the calendar.

Another way to collaborate is through comments. You can see this in your calendar’s list view or post view.

This lets you tag collaborators and leave specific messages about a post.

You can also collaborate with other users in the media library. You can copy an image URL and share it with a collaborator.

Lastly, you can collaborate in Loomly’s social inbox. For example, you can assign interactions to your team members.

If you have a dedicated customer support rep in your team, you can assign interactions to them.

Loomly pros and cons

Every tool has its good and bad side. And whenever you’re going for a tool, you want to ensure it meets your needs.

Here are both sides of Loomly:

Loomly pros

• Easy to use
• Robust collaboration features
• Responsive customer support
• Support for all major social media channels

Loomly cons

• Lacks content curation feature
• Lacks listening feature
• Lacks link in bio tool
• Limited integrations

Loomly customer support

Loomly offers customer support through:

• Chat
• Email
• Tutorials
• FAQs section

If you face any issues while using the tool or have burning questions, you can use any of those 4 channels.

Loomly pricing

Loomly has 5 pricing plans:

• Base: On this plan, you get access to 2 users and 10 social media accounts. You also get core features like the media library, post ideas, approval workflows, and interactions. This plan costs $42 monthly ($32 if you pay annually).
• Standard: This plan comes with 6 users and 20 social accounts. You also get advanced analytics and content export. The Standard plan costs $85 monthly ($64 on an annual plan).
• Advanced: This plan comes with 14 users and 35 social media accounts. You can also schedule analytics reports and set custom roles and workflow. The Advanced plan costs $175 monthly ($131 on an annual plan).
• Premium: You get 30 users and 50 social accounts on this plan. You also get custom branding for your pages and PDF exports. The Premium plan costs $369 monthly ($277 on an annual plan).
• Enterprise: This plan provides over 30 users and 50 social accounts. You have to reach out to the Loomly team for a quote.

Loomly provides a 14-day trial for the plans. So, you can take it for a run before paying for any of the plans. 

You can also check Loomly alternatives for more options.

Conclusion

Loomly was built with the social media manager in mind.

You can create social media calendars to organize your campaigns for clients.

Then, Loomly integrates collaboration into most of its features to work effectively with team members and clients. 

While Loomly has extensive features, it’s easy to use for even a first-time user.

However, Loomly lacks advanced social media management features like content curation and listening. 

If these are critical features to you, you may have to look beyond Loomly.

That said, Loomly offers a 14-day trial for its plans. 

So, explore your preferred plan for 2 weeks and decide if Loomly is the best tool for your needs.

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