Hootsuite and Social Media

By now, those of you who have started to investigate either social media in general or, more specifically, with a tool such as Twitter, have begun to realize something.

And that is, you begin to very quickly produce a lot of volume both in terms of social media apps as well as volume in terms of transactions within those apps. Many of my clients describe using Twitter for the first time as “drinking from a fire hose.”   (Actually, I consider this to be a good start.  But, more  on that later, let’s stay with today’s topic for now.)

Another problem that users complain about is the lack of a common look and feel across the various social media apps that they’re using.

Sound familiar?

Don’t be embarrassed, I was there myself once.

The problem is what to do with all these apps and all the volume that they produce.

Fortunately, there is is a solution to this problem.

It’s called a social media management tool (App or system is used interchangeably, it all stands for the same functionality.)

The major player in this space and the one that I use and recommend to my clients is Hootsuite.   

Hootsuite was launched in December 2008 and presently has over 9 million users in over 175 countries.  (Source: Wikipedia) 

The app utilizes a dashboard format similar to an Excel spreadsheet.

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and WordPress are supported in addition to several others.  (Does anyone really use MySpace anymore?)

Hootsuite works on a freemium model with the basic service being free and additional features have a cost.

The free nature of the basic service attracted me initially to Hootsuite but I stayed for the features.  Also, I find the premiums to be reasonable and am investigating them for my own use.  (More on that in future articles!)  This is a genuine free service and not simply a free trial period as some products use.

What I appreciate about the tool is being able to see at a glance multiple activities on one page from one tool such as Twitter.  With Twitter especially, I like how individual hashtags (#) can be segregated which helps greatly in trying to understand the flood of tweets which i receive. This also permits participating in Twitter chats very easily which I’ve done on a number of occasions.

Another useful feature is that LinkedIn and Facebook are in a similar format with their own tabs.  Moving among these various apps is relatively straightforward and I have control over what appears and in what order.

Perhaps, the single most important feature of Hootsuite is its ability to permit the scheduling of posts which allows for activity to be posted when we’re otherwise engaged in some activity like sleeping!

To summarize, I recommend using a social media management tool and Hootsuite is a solid choice from both a features and a price perspective.

Other tools such as the reader Feedly can interact with Hootsuite but there is a reasonable charge for that.

If you’re using social media actively then you have nothing to lose by trying Hootsuite!

Please share your experiences with us back here in the comments section!  I’d love to hear them!

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have.  I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

Remember!

I work with social media for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me.  Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.

I can also be reached at conpsweeney@someddi.com.

My Twitter handle is @conpsweeney.

Stay well!