Gain Social Media Review

Gain is a fantastic social media approval tool, offering inventive solutions to difficult problems. But how does it stack up against the competition for social media publishing and content creation?

Gain (formerly "GAIN app") begins with an enduring problem, then provides a number of novel solutions.

The social media world is all about speed. However, businesses are slow to move. Many still use the same old processes for creating, approving, and publishing content. Social media is big business, too, so a lot of decision-makers want to have their say before content goes live.

By the time marketing, content, legal, design, and product teams have all had their say, the moment has often passed.

No matter how advanced social media software is, it typically doesn't change that fact. Most of these tools offer time-saving benefits such as automated posting and reporting, but they do not simplify the bureaucratic realities that hold so many teams back.

Gain takes a different approach.

Your content approval process can be managed from within the platform, with no need for stakeholders to sign in to the platform to review content. This removes unnecessary friction from the content approval process, which will make many social media managers and strategists quite happy.

Gain provides an elegant set of responses to a complex reality, including a highly intuitive dashboard and customizable approval flows.

However, it's worth noting that Gain does not offer social listening, analytics, or conversion tracking. Gain focuses on a select list of social media capabilities and delivers on them well, but it does not compete directly with Sprout Social or Hootsuite, which both offer a more comprehensive suite of social media tools.

Who is Gain for?

Gain has a specific set of strengths that will primarily benefit big businesses, marketing agencies, and social media teams working in highly regulated industries.

For marketers that spend most of their time in cumbersome spreadsheets and convoluted email chains, Gain will have a clear and compelling value proposition. It removes the need for unwieldy administrative tasks and keeps everything contained within one social media approval tool.

Gain also features social media publishing capabilities, so marketers can move from content creation to approval to publishing in the same interface.

Nonetheless, Gain is not an all-in-one solution for larger social media teams. Many will feel the need to pair Gain with other platforms to add advanced capabilities such as brand monitoring and performance reporting.

Gain excels as an innovative solution for social media content approval. Image source: Author

Gain's features

The highlights of the Gain platform center on workflow automation, collaboration, and social media content scheduling.

By maintaining this narrow focus on resolving common workflow issues, Gain can provide more innovative and nuanced solutions. Its social media content calendar and customizable approval processes are just two of the standout features.

Gain has a comprehensive set of features to help complex teams get their content live. Image source: Author

Content approval process

The flagship feature on Gain is the content approval tool. Once you draft a social media post, you can share it with the relevant parties within the platform, where they can approve or comment on the proposed content.

Content is organized in folders within Gain, and you can set permission levels for different departments and teams. For example, the legal department may only need to review and approve certain assets, while the design team may need more hands-on access to most content.

Users can store files within Gain, then share them with their colleagues for approval and comment. Image source: Author

You can also communicate with your team within the platform, and it's easy to notify a colleague to request their input.

The workflow automation tools really help Gain stand out in a crowded social media software field. Users can design their own approval flow, and Gain will move the content through each step as the defined conditions are met.

Designing and implementing an approval flow is simple and highly effective in Gain. Image source: Author

This is a significant improvement over the email-based approach many companies still rely on today. Content reviewers can view assets without logging into Gain, further streamlining the process.

Sure, this isn't the most glamorous aspect of social media strategy, but practitioners will know just how welcome these features are for complex organizations.

Content publishing

Aside from its core strength as a content approval tool, Gain also provides excellent social media publishing capabilities. Users can publish directly to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn from Gain, although it doesn't integrate with Pinterest yet.

There is a photo-editing feature to help create image assets within the platform, and the post preview tool allows users to see what the content will look like once it's live. Gain offers other handy features, such as a file converter that will convert GIF files into the Instagram-friendly .MOV or MP4 format.

The Gain Notify app also makes it simple for team members to move content through to publication with just a few taps. It can send push notifications to content reviewers on their smartphones, but fortunately, this function can be switched off at times when you'd rather not be bothered.

The Gain social media post previewer shows what your content will look like once live. Image source: Author

Social media content calendar

Gain's social calendar application is intuitive and aesthetically pleasing. Video assets autoplay within the thumbnail previews, too, making it easy to scan the upcoming strategy from the audience's perspective.

The drag-and-drop functionality is a breeze to use, and the content filters allow users to search by content type, approval status, or social network. You can also create your own tags based on social media campaigns you're running, or different products you plan to promote, for example.

Gain's social calendar application links seamlessly to its content approval tools. Image source: Author

The color-coded labels will help social media managers stay on top of their schedules and identify any upcoming publication dates that require attention. If publication is imminent, and an assigned reviewer has not yet approved the relevant content, it's also possible to override the reviewer and push the content live if needed.

Gain users will spend a lot of time in this interface, and it has been designed to make their jobs at least a little easier.

Gain's ease of use

Given how difficult it can be to manage multiple levels of approval within a social media strategy, it's laudable that Gain is so easy to use.

It automates many repetitive manual tasks, such as alerting team members that their input is required, and it moves content seamlessly from editing through to publication.

The sign-up process is straightforward, walking the user through the core features of the platform. Helpfully, there is a demo account already set up to showcase how the different tools should look once they are up and running.

This is a feature rival platforms would benefit from, too. The empty interface of a brand-new account can be daunting for new users, who might have little idea of what "good" looks like. Once more, Gain identifies this pain point and creates a pragmatic solution.

Gain's ease of use is a particular highlight of this social media software.

Gain's pricing

Gain's pricing is refreshingly succinct when compared to the competition.

There's a free 30-day trial (no credit card needed), and a subscription costs $99 per month for up to 10 users. It's an additional $10 per month for each user beyond that.

This is clearly a response to the rest of this industry, which often burdens its audience with intricate subscription options and fine print.

Gain's approach to pricing is creative in its blunt simplicity. Image source: Author

In the past, Gain did offer various subscription levels, but it has made the decision in the last year to run with this new approach.

Rivals would, with some justification, counter that it is easier for Gain to take this stance since its platform contains fewer features than theirs. For an all-in-one social media tool, the price point would need to be much higher than $99 per month to offer access to all features and cover the extensive development costs.

It would also be highly prohibitive if a content approval tool such as Gain restricted access based on pricing tiers. The nature of the product lends itself to a one-off fee for full access to all of its capabilities.

That said, we can still applaud the simplicity on offer. If you want to sign up to Gain, you know exactly what you're getting.

Gain's support

Gain offers extensive support, with a live chat option, a help center, and a contact email address available.

The live chat is the easiest way to get answers about specific issues, and Gain has taken the decision to use "real-live humans" rather than chatbots. I have used this feature a number of times and typically receive a response within a few minutes, which compares favorably with similar platforms.

The live chat function is usually the best way to reach the support team at Gain. Image source: Author

The help center is organized logically around popular themes, and the articles contain handy, step-by-step processes.

The Gain blog is also highly practical, highlighting ways to get the most out of your subscription.

Benefits of Gain

The selling points of Gain are neatly defined.

It's an invaluable tool for large marketing teams, or those that operate within strict regulatory environments. Gain's solutions straighten out many of the labyrinthine aspects of getting content approved and online.

In this regard, it's the best software on the market. No other social media management platform deals so effectively with the content approval process.

Furthermore, Gain software has a variety of customer-centric features that can make your working life a little bit easier. The post previews are easy to digest, and the automated workflow tools remove the possibility for human error.

For businesses that just need a social media publishing tool, without the layers of approval and collaboration, there are cheaper and more effective alternatives on the market.