The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

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By now, you are involved with many social media channels for your business. You are working all of them consistently and regularly. Individually, they take a long time to manage. However, if you use Hootsuite, you just push one button.

There are so many social media channels that are of value for your business and at times, it is very difficult to choose just a handful that you feel will benefit your business the most and will result in the most heightened success. After all, there are only so many hours in any given day. It is very important to remember that if you set up a profile on a given social media website, it isn’t enough (and it wouldn’t really be considered a proper presence) to merely have your profile sitting there. You need to actively work at consistently providing fresh content and interacting with your online connections. The more interactions you have, the healthier  your social media portfolio will be in general.

Tools to help

There are several online tools that can help you to keep your social media channels organized and that allow you to do a relatively painless amount of work in order to keep everything running smoothly. One of the most effective tools is Hootsuite. Hootsuite will enable you to maintain all of your social media channels at once, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. With Hootsuite, you don’t need to go to each individual social media channel and log in separately. You can push a single button and your updates, messages, etc, will go to all of your channels at the same time. Hootsuite also allows you to manage multiple campaigns, identify and cultivate your target audience, and effectively send messages of importance to others.  Additionally, you can view all of your channels at once and interact with your online connections simultaneously. Your updates will show up on the dashboard. With very few exceptions, you will be able to log on to all of your social media channels at once. Hootsuite is an incredible tool for managing the majority of your social media needs.

Customizing Hootsuite

Hootsuite also has customizing capabilities so that you are able to have control over who sees which parts of your content. It is at your discretion. If you are generally in the habit of posting the same content to all (or most) of your social media channels, you can send it to the channels with a mere push of the button.  If you are posting blog articles (which are automatically created directly from an RSS feed), they can be sent all at once. It is also easy to automate the posting schedule. You can schedule postings ahead of time and the content will be sent on whichever date and time you have indicated. This especially works well if you are not available to send the content out at a particular time (perhaps you are on vacation or involved with some other activity that does not allow you to be sitting in front of your computer).

Monitoring your content

Hootsuite enables you to monitor your brand and to keep a close eye on how everything is going. Your online connections can also receive notification of and access to your content without having access to any of your passwords. Your business connections can receive information, such as status updates, questions and answers, reply messages, etc, through Email that is specific to a particular social media channel of which you are all members. You can also generate customized reports (or analytics) about your social media activities, which will allow you to acquire an edge over your competitors and thus gain an advantage over them by adjusting your social media marketing strategy accordingly.

Widespread availability

Hootsuite is widely available to you. You can access it through the Internet, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, and apps.

Cost

When it comes to the financial aspect of Hootsuite, two options are available to you.  The basic plan carries no charge with it. However, if you really want something that is more sophisticated than the basic plan, you can purchase the Pro plan at a nominal cost. The Pro plan will allow you to have unlimited social media accounts, the ability to generate reports, and include one other person in your plan. Only you can decide for your business which plan will work better. Once you have chosen a plan, there is a great deal of technical support that will be available to you. You will most likely never find yourself in a position of not resolving any issues that come up for you with Hootsuite.

Conclusion

Overall, Hootsuite is an amazing tool that works extremely effectively for business people who are using social media as an important part of their marketing campaign. It will allow you to streamline your social media process and manage a great deal of information at the same time. Hootsuite allows you to easily view, network, share, monitor and manage the vast amount of information that comes to you through your various social media channels. You should definitely learn more about Hootsuite and try to take as much advantage of it as you can for your business.

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Author

  • Michael Cohn

    Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has decades of experience in IT and web technologies. Michael founded CompuKol Communications to help small businesses and entrepreneurs increase their visibility and reputation. CompuKol consults, creates, and implements communication strategies for small businesses to monopolize their markets with a unique business voice, vision, and visibility. Mr. Cohn earned a Master’s degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master’s degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.

12 Responses

  1. Pete Moore says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Linked Business
    Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    Great point – we use Hootsuite and agree that it is a very useful tool for managing your social media. Thanks! Peter

    Posted by Pete Moore

  2. Karen Ann Teeters says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: Informed Ideas For Writers
    Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    Yes, i agree! The Hootsuite Hootlet in your browser toolbart that enables you to share a web article with all your soicial followers is my favorite social connection timesaver!

    Posted by Karen Ann Teeters

  3. Donna Miller says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    Group: NJ Association of Women Business Owners (NJAWBO)
    Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    I am all for time saving efficiencies, but I have to agree with Julianne … Careful, you are trying to build community and drive relationships by posting. I often receive the same post from the same person via multiple sites simultaneously … Kind of annoying. But maybe that’s just me?

    Posted by Donna Miller

    • Liza Brazelton says:

      No you are right. The multiple posting is annoying and shouldn’t happen if you manage Hootsuite well. The irony is once we open the key to another management tool or app we have to manage it. In the end, is it saving us time or just another way to finish a task?

  4. Guy Hoogewerf says:

    Hootsuite used to be much better – all resent so called upgrades have made me think twice and http://www.MarketMeSuite.com is now the better option imo. Hootsuite went wrong when it went Freemium – it lost a lot of it’s core believers. And as Donna says above the truth is trying to manage your social media from a single place risks the effectiveness of your strategy.

    Concentrate on the services you want and do them properly and well, then you won’t even need a management tool.

  5. Martha Giffen says:

    Hootsuite is my favorite tool. The mobile app is what I use mostly. Great article!

  6. Mike Van Horn says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    • Group: Social Media For The Clueless
    • Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    Hootsuite vs. Socialoomph? I’m mostly interested in my blogs, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Just signed up for Socialoomph (free version) to schedule tweets. Any reason to do Hootsuite also?

    Posted by Mike Van Horn

  7. Linda Anger says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups
    • Group: Business Writers of America
    • Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    Nice article. I use Hootsuite, and occasionally TweetDeck. While I prefer Hootsuite, where it fails me is that I cannot see a list of those who are new followers – which I CAN see on TweetDeck.

    I make a practice of saying “Hello” to my new followers, so that function is important to me, and Hootsuite has yet to add this function although I’ve seen in a few forums that they are considering it.

    Posted by Linda Anger

  8. Larry Easto says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Small Business & Independent Consultant Network
    Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    From a marketing perspective, social media is a game-changer. It’s neither a plug-in or add-on that is simply included as part of our existing marketing activities.

    Social media can and should connect with every aspect of marketing, from research to keeping in touch after the sale.

    Also, using social media is not a one-time install…it is a ongoing process that must be continuously managed for best results. Hootsuite is a fabulous tool for helping manage our social media applications. And it’s free!

    Posted by Larry Easto

  9. Michael says:

    Hootsuite can be a great way to update multiple social media accounts at the same time. If you are getting multiple instances of the same message getting sent to your followers, that can get really annoying. But if you set it up correctly you can avoid that happening to your updates.

  10. Kathy Condon says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: eMarketing Event Group
    Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    While Hootsuite is helpful to post your content, there is a backlash starting, especially on LinkedIn. People can see that you update came through Twitter. People are looking for the human updates and bloggers are starting to point out that they feel people are going a little to far with automation. Just another point of view.

    Posted by Kathy Condon

  11. Donald Scarinci says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Small Business Network – New Jersey
    Discussion: The Effectiveness of Hootsuite to Manage Your Social Media

    I’d be lost without hootsuite. Social media has become a big part of communicating and it is important to be involved in all of it. Hootsuite makes it relatively painless.
    Posted by Donald Scarinci