While Twitter is like a chick in the social media world, Hootsuite acts like a wise old owl!!
Hootsuite is a social media platform that enables you to manage all your social media presence. It is cloud-hosted, so there is no need to download software to your computer (unlike other similar platforms such as Tweetdeck).
Hootsuite has a number of key worthwhile uses that can really help you to organise your presence and work more effectively on social media:
1. Scheduling messages
Messages can be scheduled to all the major social media platforms. So if you only have time to go on at 6 in the morning or 11 at night, you can schedule a presence throughout the day. Just ensure you don’t put any timebound updates out there, such as weather comments!
2. List streams
Yesterday’s blog was all about the importance of using lists. Well Hootsuite lets you do this much easier than Twitter. You can create streams within Hootsuite called lists. You can then add your lists or even create them through Hootsuite and run them alongside each other to quickly go to the tweets of the people you want to hear from .
3. Search streams
The other way I use Hootsuite is to create searches and monitor what is being said on Twitter with my keywords. Searches are so valuable on Twitter so make sure you’re running them! You can find a bit more about searches here.
4. Team roles
If you have more than one person working on an account Hootsuite allows you to work as a team (paid account only). You can then see what other team members are posting and scheduling and also assign tasks.
5. Manage all in one place
You can add Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook profile, Facebook fanpage, Foursquare, WordPress, Myspace, Mixi and Ping.fm to your Hootsuite account. Much easier to manage everything under one roof!
6. Shortening links
When posting long URLS, Hootsuite allows you to shorten these to reduce the character uptake. These create ow.ly links.
7. Analytics
Once you’ve created an ow.ly link, the analytics will then tell you how many people have clicked on that link! Very useful to know!
So, definitely get yourself on Hootsuite!! Free for up to 5 social media accounts! Go to www.hootsuite.com to set up your account!
