Since it’s inception in 2008, Hootsuite has accrued over 9 million users in 175 countries across the world. It’s fair to say, it’s something of an essential tool for businesses and social media enthusiasts alike. HootSuite has been used by some of the world’s top brands including: Virgin, CBS, and Eurostar.
So why use HootSuite and what are the benefits?
Everything Under One Roof – Gone are the days of posting to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn, etc. individually. With HootSuite, you can now save time updating and managing all your social media pages in one swoop. The free account on HootSuite can handle up to 5 different social media platforms – that’s more than enough for most businesses.
To post an update simultaneously on multiple social media platforms, all you need to do is activate your social media accounts on HootSuite, compose your message, and choose which social media account(s) you want the post to be shared to. It’s that easy – there’s no download or installation needed!
Analytics – There are personalised reports and statistics, with a range of different templates to choose from that best fit your needs. See what is being retweeted the most and see what is getting the most interaction. Marketers are always and this is a great way to see what is trending with your followers and what is creating most engagement. This is also useful as well when you are developing Call-to-Actions for your site.
Keyword Searches – Whatever the keywords are that your organisations has, add them into a stream on Hootsuite so you can monitor in real time what is being said by your industry peers and potential clients. This is a great social way of seeing what is trending.
Teams and Organisations – For larger companies the teams and organisation feature will be very handy. You have the ability to limit users to the social accounts so that only the people that are working on a particular project can access the social accounts assigned for that project. This is great when a company has multiple social media accounts for the different products being created and is great for management to have eyes into all levels of Social Media activity. This is also a great way to limit employees having access to multiple social media accounts.
Scheduling – Hootsuite can schedule your tweets based on the most best time for the tweet to go out when it will gain the most visibility, for example schedule a tweet at 1.30 when people are on lunch and could be browsing. If you have a Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ page, as well as a Twitter account, it can auto schedule on all these social media channels. Most Twitter experts agree that you should be sharing other content related to your industry, roughly 1in3 tweets should promote yourself. There is no better way to keep on top of multiple channels at once than this tool.
