I first heard about Vista Social a few months ago.
So, I did a little digging.
This included visiting review sites to see what users think about it.
The star ratings were great. But beyond ratings, reviews showed users love Vista Social.
I also checked the website and found extensive features.
So, I dove deeper into this tool to know what the fuss is all about.
And this Vista Social review will explore what I found about the tool.
Without further ado, let’s get in.
Vista Social Review
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Ease of use
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Features
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Collaboration
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Customer support
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Pricing
Summary
Vista Social has a great mix of extensive features and affordable pricing. And it works just as well for individuals and teams. Unless you need robust listening and content curation features, Vista Social is a social media management tool you should consider.
Who is Vista Social for?
Vista Social is for both freelancers and social media teams.
After exploring the tool, I think both user categories will find the features they need to create, schedule, and publish social media posts effectively.
If you’re a freelancer or solopreneur, you can get extensive features at a good price.
If you run a social media team, the robust collaboration features mean you can delegate various social media tasks to team members.
To be honest, very few social media management tools beat Vista Social in terms of features and execution.
However, if you want a similar tool, consider ContentStudio. Although ContentStudio lacks social listening, it has better content curation and influencer discovery features than Vista Social.
If you’re a freelancer, you can check Pallyy out.
If you’d like to use Vista Social, use the code “Gn3TMZWy” to get a 10% discount on the paid plans.
Vista Social key features
Social media post composer
Vista Social has a simple post composer.
You have your connected accounts, caption box, post preview, and channel customization lined up neatly.
In the caption box, you can write social media captions. And the AI assistant helps with that too (more on that later).
You also have saved hashtags, hashtag suggestions, saved captions, and mentions.
Apart from these options, you can upload your media files. Vista Social offers many options to add media to your posts.
You can upload images or videos from your computer, a URL, Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
One neat feature here is that you can design your images in Canva without leaving Vista Social.
Moving on, you’ll see your post preview for multiple social media channels.
But beyond that, you can customize your post for each social media channel.
This includes captions, media, and settings unique to each social media channel.
And if you want to collaborate with team members, you can leave notes for them and send posts for approval.
Generally, I found the post composer easy to use. I believe most people won’t have issues with it.
Social media calendar
While you expect your calendar to provide an overview of posts, Vista Social does more.
In addition to monthly and weekly views, you can also set your calendar to show large or small post previews.
But no matter the size of your preview, you’ll see an enlarged view if you hover over a post.
Another interesting feature here is that you can click a single published post and see its analytics.
One thing I like about Vista Social is that it imports posts you published outside the tool. So, if you start using Vista Social today, you’ll find social posts you published weeks before.
Beyond these, Vista Social provides post inspiration from holidays.
You can add fun holidays to your calendar. In addition to that, select a religion or country to see religious and national holidays.
You can also use filters or labels to sort your posts. Lastly, Vista Social lets you download your calendar to send to an external party.
Overall, the social media calendar provides the information you need about scheduled posts.
AI assistant
Anyone can suffer from writer’s block even when a publishing deadline looms.
In this case, Vista Social’s AI assistant can provide caption inspiration. The AI assistant is powered by ChatGPT-4.
Once you describe your post, the AI assistant will create a post. Of course, your results will depend on the quality of your prompts.
However, I think Vista Social can add more features to its AI assistant.
For example, Pallyy and Later let you select social media channel and tone for AI captions.
That said, Vista Social’s AI assistant can provide quick ideas when needed.
Find content
This feature lets you uncover media files to use in your social media posts.
You can find news, images, GIFs, and videos. There’s a search box for each option to find relevant media.
It’s a good way to find media, although the news option didn’t work well. For example, I searched a popular topic like “content writing,” and I got only 8 results.
However, another interesting option is collecting content from Instagram hashtags and users.
This is useful if you want to collect user-generated content (UGC) or repost them on your profile.
Vista Social also adds credit to the media owner where it’s necessary. So, you won’t run the risk of violating Instagram’s copyright rule.
If you want media for your post, you can use this option.
Smart publisher
This feature lets you automatically publish content from trending news or specific blogs.
But Vista Social lets you choose whether to publish the post right away, queue it, or save it as drafts.
If you want to publish from trending news, it makes sense to see it before it goes live on your page. Vista Social lets you assign the post to a team member for review if you want to publish it immediately.
You can set the number of maximum posts daily. You can also add filtering keywords, that is, keywords that must appear or be absent in the content.
If you want to share your blog posts automatically, you can add its RSS feed to the smart publisher.
The smart publisher lets you automate publishing from some of your trusted blogs.
Social media inbox
The social media inbox lets you reply to messages, comments, and mentions on your connected accounts.
However, I couldn’t see LinkedIn messages because the feature is not available for LinkedIn personal profiles.
Here, you’ll see all the messages from your accounts in a single panel. You can filter based on criteria at the top of the panel.
Another good feature here is the note. With it, you can tag team members and leave them notes about a specific interaction.
Vista Social also lets you open tasks from an interaction.
So, compared to native social inboxes, Vista Social lets you do more.
Collaboration
Vista Social provides many opportunities to collaborate with team members.
Beyond team members, you can also collaborate with influencers, clients, and other people involved in your social media campaigns.
No matter who you’re collaboration with, Vista Social lets you set up permissions at the account and brand profile level.
Depending on the permissions you set, a team member can do anything you want them to do.
Vista Social also lets you create approval workflows for your posts. Here, you can add as many steps as you want and assign a team member(s) to each step in the workflow.
Beyond these, Vista Social lets you tag team members and leave notes for them in sections like the post composer and social inbox.
You can also create tasks for team members and indicate if they’re a priority.
I think Vista Social provides most of the social media collaboration features you’ll need if you work with a team.
Social listening
Understanding people’s sentiments about a topic can give you an edge in taking action for your business.
The listening feature lets you track important business keywords.
There are many ways this can be helpful to your brand and operations.
For example, you can create a listener for a combination of your brand name and a term that shows dissatisfaction.
This can be your brand name and the keyword “poor.” With this, you’ll identify dissatisfied customers quickly.
Generally, this feature helps you track your brand, competitors, and industry keywords.
Review management
Vista Social lets you reply to reviews on Facebook, Google Business, Trustpilot, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and OpenTable.
This way, you’ll understand what customers think about your service and respond quickly when necessary.
Another good thing here is that Vista Social provides review reports to see rankings and responses.
Tasks
The concept of a task is simple.
If you want your team member to take an action, you can create a task for it.
Here, you can select the team member, category of the task, and leave a note about this task. You can also indicate if the task is a priority.
In turn, the team member will see this task among their tasks.
Vista Page
Vista Page is Vista Social’s link in bio page.
Here, you can create a link in bio page by setting up buttons, blocks, and links to your most important business pages.
Vista Social lets you select a starting template to make your design easier.
Then, in the designer, you can select themes, layouts, and blocks. You also get statistics to track your link in bio page performance.
Vista Social just added its link in bio tool. So, there may be more changes to improve the feature.
Media library
In the media library, you can add images, videos, sounds, and documents.
While uploading from your computer is the most straightforward option, Vista Social gives you more options.
You can find loyalty-free photos and videos on sites like Unsplash, Pexels, and Giphy. You can also collect your files from Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
If you want to design an image quickly, Vista Social lets you do that in Canva without leaving the platform.
You can also collect media from Instagram hashtags and users.
I find the media library an easy way to organize your social media assets, especially if you work with a team.
Anyone can upload media files to the library, and other team members will be able to use them.
Even if you work solo, having your images and videos ready cuts the time to create social posts.
Reports
Vista Social provides analytics in 5 report categories:
- Social media performance: This provides information about your audience growth, engagement, brand awareness, and more.
- Post performance: This provides metrics about your posts, such as impressions, engagement, engagement rate, engagement by network, individual post performance, and more.
- Review performance: This provides more information about your rankings and responses.
- Tasks performance: This provides details about how team members complete tasks.
- Competitor analysis: Here, you can select one of your accounts and specify competitors for it. In return, Vista Social will create a report that compares fan growth, posts, publishing behavior, and more.
In addition to these, you can download these reports in PDF and CSV formats.
Of course, you can also build a customized report through the report builder. With this, you can display the most important metrics for your business.
First, you have to create a report template. Once you do this, run the report.
If you want to schedule reports to your boss or a client, Vista Social lets you do so. You can select a report, timeframe, date, and specify recipients.
In the reports, you get most of the metrics you’ll need for your social media posts and other aspects of your social media management.
Mobile apps
Vista Social has mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.
Although I’m not a fan of using smartphones for social media scheduling, the app can come in handy for some urgent tasks.
The biggest use case I see is that you can easily upload media files from your mobile phone to the library.
You’ll also see your calendar. And if you need to schedule a post quickly, you can do that on the app.
While it’s far from perfect, it’s good to have the mobile app as a backup option when your computer is unavailable.
How to manage social media with Vista Social
Create and schedule a social media post in Vista Social
Vista Social provides 3 places to create a new post. You’ll find the “Create” button on the dashboard, calendar, and sidebar.
Once you click on this button, you’ll see that Vista Social provides other options beyond just creating a post.
For example, you can create a new note, see your ideas, bulk publish, find content, or use the smart publisher.
But here, I’ll just click on “New post.”
Once you do this, Vista Social will open up the post composer. It will also select one of your brand profiles and your connected accounts.
In the post box, there are many icons to add various elements to your social media posts.
First, I’d like to highlight the AI assistant. The AI assistant helps to create captions.
You have to enter your post description in the box. The AI assistant also gives you some prompts to try.
Once you enter your description, the AI assistant will write a caption. Of course, you may have to rewrite your prompts a few times to get your desired caption.
After this, you can edit the general caption or captions for each social media channel.
You’ll see a preview for each social channel and unique settings for each. For example, Instagram settings allow you to schedule a video as a reel or story.
You can also pick a thumbnail for your video, publish the first comment, and select a location for your post.
You have many options to add images or videos to your post. You can upload from your computer, Vista Social Library, a URL, Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
You can also find them on Unsplash, Pexels, and Giphy. Then, Vista Social lets you collect images and videos from Instagram hashtags and users.
Another interesting option is to design an image in Canva without leaving Vista Social.
Not only that, but you can pick a type of image you want to create to find templates quickly.
Apart from adding images, you can use saved hashtags or find hashtag suggestions. Vista Social also provides access to saved captions in the composer.
You can make final adjustments to posts on each social media channel.
Once you do that, Vista Social gives you 4 options to move forward. You can:
- Save draft
- Add to queue
- Schedule
- Publish now
If you need to make adjustments to a channel, Vista Social will show an alert on the channel icon.
After that, click “Save” to finish your post.
Collaborate with team members in Vista Social
To collaborate with team members, you have to add them to your account. Click on the “+” icon at the bottom of the left sidebar and select “Add Team Member.”
In the popup, you can enter their details and select roles.
The admin role gives full access to the collaborator. If you invite as a restricted user, you have to select the profile groups the user can access.
In this profile group, you can also specify permissions for the user. So, you can invite a member as an admin for that group or a restricted user.
If you’re inviting as a restricted user, you have to define what the user can do in that brand profile.
Once you complete these settings, click on “Save.”
After this, the team member will receive the invitation email.
One thing I appreciate here is that team members can join your profile in just 2 steps.
Click on the invitation link and set a password. And you’re in.
Whether you’re inviting team members or clients, this is so easy.
Once they accept your invitation, you can leave notes for them in different places.
For example, you can leave a note in the social media composer for your team member.
Beyond that, you can assign a post to a team member for approval. This is useful if you work for a client and they need to see posts before they go live.
Vista Social lets you assign a post to a user or workflow.
To create a workflow, navigate to settings and publishing. Then, click on “Approval Workflows.”
In the popup, you can add as many approval steps as you want. You can also select approvers for each step.
Apart from this, you can leave notes for team members in the social inbox. For example, if a message is a customer inquiry, you can tag your customer support rep to reply.
You also have the option to create a task from the inbox.
To create a task, you have to select a user, category, and leave a note about the task. Vista Social also lets you indicate if the task is a priority.
So, these are some ways you can collaborate in Vista Social.
Use social listening to track important business terms
To use the listening features, click on “Listening” at the left sidebar.
On the next page, Vista Social will select your connected accounts for listening. Here, LinkedIn is unavailable because Vista Social doesn’t support listening for LinkedIn personal profiles.
However, I can listen on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok.
Moving on, click “+ Add listener” at the top of the page to start tracking keywords.
This is how it works.
The listener name works like a group for a purpose. Inside each listener, you can add keywords to track and those to exclude.
You can choose to have all or any of the keywords in a mention.
After adding your keywords, click “Save.”
Once these keywords are mentioned, Vista Social will show the post in this section.
This is very useful to gather information about your business, competitors, and industry.
Vista Social pros and cons
Vista Social pros
- Easy to use
- Great customer support
- Simple and robust social media composer
- Good social media calendar
- Robust collaboration features
- Good AI assistant
- Good analytics
Vista Social cons
- Limited content curation
- Limited customization in AI assistant compared to competitors
Vista Social customer support
Vista Social provides customer support through:
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Email/Contact page
- Help center/knowledge base
- YouTube videos
- 1-on-1 training and troubleshooting
Most times I needed help, I got it through their knowledge base articles or YouTube videos.
I also like how they program their contact page. Once you enter the subject of your message, Vista Social will show its help articles relevant to that subject.
That way, you may even get help before sending a message to their support team.
Overall, Vista Social’s support team provides most of the information you’ll need to use the tool effectively.
Vista Social pricing
Vista Social has 4 pricing plans:
- Free: This plan comes with 3 brand profiles and 1 user. Many features are limited or absent, as you would expect.
- Standard: This plan costs $39 monthly ($31.2 on an annual plan). It gives you 8 social media profiles and 1 user. You also get AI assistant, reports, and Vista Page link in bio tool.
- Professional: This plan costs $79 monthly ($63.2 on an annual plan). Here, you get 15 social media profiles and 5 users. It also comes with bulk scheduling, report scheduling, collaboration tools, listening tools, and review management.
- Advanced: This plan costs $149 monthly ($119.2 on an annual plan). With this, you get 30 social media profiles and 10 users. It also comes with advanced scheduling, advanced workflows, advanced reporting, integrations, unlimited AI assistant, and advanced Vista Page features.
- Enterprise: This plan costs $379 monthly ($303.2 on an annual plan). It comes with 80 social media profiles and unlimited users. You also get a dedicated account manager, onboarding and training, custom integrations, and quarterly account reviews.
You can also see the Vista Social product roadmap to see upcoming features.
Vista Social offers a 14-day free trial for its paid plans. So, you can go through that to see if it fits your needs.
You can also use the code “Gn3TMZWy” for a 10% discount.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Vista Social
Is Vista Social free?
Vista Social has a limited free plan. But to enjoy its extensive features, you have to go for a paid plan.
How much does Vista Social cost?
The cost of Vista Social depends on the plans you go for. The Pro plan starts at $15 monthly. You also have a 14-day free trial to check the plans out.
Can social media teams use Vista Social?
Yes, Vista Social has many collaboration features to aid social media teams. You can invite team members, set up permissions, create tasks, and leave feedback for them in various sections.
Can freelancers and solopreneurs use Vista Social?
Yes, freelancers and solopreneurs can use Vista Social. You get a good blend of extensive features and affordable pricing that freelancers will appreciate.
Is Vista Social suitable for local businesses?
Yes, local businesses will find Vista Social effective. In addition to social publishing features, local businesses can use review management to engage with their customers.
Conclusion
Overall, based on what I’ve heard and seen, Vista Social is an excellent social media management tool.
Of course, Vista Social hasn’t reinvented social media management.
But most users never ask for that.
They just want a tool that executes tasks as promised.
I’d say Vista Social has excelled in this respect.
If you’re looking for a social media management tool as a solopreneur or team, I definitely think you should consider Vista Social.
Try out its 14-day free trial and see if it fits your needs. You can get a 10% discount on the paid plans by using the code Gn3TMZWy.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. This means if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you). I only recommend tools I use and/or believe will provide value to you.
