I’ve used HootSuite to manage my social media profiles for a while and I recently upgraded to the Pro Plan, going from free to $5.99 USD per month. The limit of 5 social profiles was feeling constricting and I was becoming more interested in the custom analytics available. I love that HootSuite is a local tech company in downtown Vancouver and that they seem to be committed to staying here. Not to mention that the owl mascot is adorable! Go ahead and “like” the Meat of the Message Facebook page and you’ll be in the loop with my latest scoop (I promise they won’t all rhyme).
Do you use HootSuite? If so, what do you like about it? If not, what’s holding you back?
Fuel Becomes You 
I used to only use Hootsuite when I managed the social media accounts for the previous company I worked for. I found it a more intuitive and user friendly than the actual Twitter page. My favourite features, other than having all of the information in easy to read columns and all in one place, is the ability to schedule tweets, and the saved searches function, like you mentioned. I also really liked that you could link certain RSS feeds to automatically post. I worked for a real estate company, so I RSS’d the CREA and BCREA news feeds directly to the Twitter account, so it was two less sites for me to keep track of!
How have you found using Hootsuite with Facebook? I really didn’t enjoy the experience, and actually reverted back to using just Facebook after about 2 days! I found you didn’t have the same interactive ability; I missed the opportunity to comment on some great posts because they didn’t show up on my feed. The other issue was that any links I posted through Hootsuite appeared as text only status updates, rather than generating the picture/link underneath the text (does that make sense?!). Facebook does prefer links/photos over text only status updates, so my posts were lost pretty quickly. I hope this has been updated! I have to admit I never went back to Hootsuite to follow the Facebook updates, as I preferred to use the website directly.
On a side note, great video edits, and I love the colour of your nail varnish 🙂
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Alison,
Thanks for the compliments! I’m getting much more comfortable with iMovie and I figure the nails give the viewer something to look at when I’m flapping my hands around.
HootSuite is a really rich and interactive service and I keep finding useful tools and tricks, thanks for sharing yours.
As for Facebook on HootSuite, I just use it to check on the feed and if there’s anything interesting I click through to Facebook and interact there. Same really with WordPress, FourSquare and LinkedIn. But, it does make a great dashboard for steering your Social Media Network.
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Great info. Julia! Glad to see someone tackled this subject. As a newbie to social media this is really helpful and informative (and nicely presented). Thanks!
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Thank you! I’m so glad that you found it useful. That’s pretty much the whole point, so thank you for the positive reinforcement.
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Hey Julia,
So nice to see another fan of Hootsuite! I personally love the dashboard, the scheduled content posts and the analytics. Everything is pretty simple to set-up as well. Do you think there are any other options out there that even come close to what Hootsuite has to offer?
One downside for me is that the pre-scheduled posts have the “via Hootsuite” and as much as I love and promote the use of the program, I feel it gives off a less professional image. I wonder if the general public and social media world really cares if it says “via Hootsuite” or not? I think Hootsuite helps maintain a professional image by having content go out on a regular basis otherwise, not to mention stay on top of our social media efforts in general.
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Thanks for your comment! I’ve only every used HootSuite for Social Media Management, but I know some people really like TweetDeck (which is owned by Twitter).
I have to disagree with you on the “via HooteSuite” tag coming across as unprofessional, for me personally, it comes across as somebody who is more immersed in Social Media, but that could just be my individual bias. 🙂
In my HootSuite feed it lists where all the tweets came from: web, android, TweetDeck, Facebook, Google, etc. So I don’t really notice it much any more. Also, it says “via HootSuite” whether it is scheduled or not.
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Thanks for your reply! TweetDeck is good as well, but I don’t think there is anything better than Hootsuite at the moment; it sure has made a drastic improvement from when I was using it years ago for my side business!
I like the positive spin on the tag and I agree about being immersed in social media. After all, we only have so much time to dedicate to our social media efforts. Thanks for the reminder of the schedule vs non-scheduled, you’re correct, the tag comes out regardless if it goes through Hootsuite – it sure has been awhile since I used it, but I couldn’t imagine not when/if I go back in to social media marketing.
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