Hootsuite- Social media management just got simpler.

Social media has modified the manner we tend to use the internet.

2.1 billion of 3 billion active net users are on social media platforms. And most social media platforms have larger populations than some countries. (This suggests traffic for business websites)

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There are over 1.8 billion people on Facebook alone. And most of those platforms have information of people (age, geographical location, interests etc.). People use hashtag on twitter to speak concerning bound topics and problems.

All this data makes it important for large brands and SMEs to be terribly active on these platforms.

On these platforms, you get to meet the type of people who would truly care about your brand. Over 31% of referral traffic for most business comes from social media.

The ‘social part’ of the social media implies that you would like to pay attention to your audience to grasp what they honestly care about, their interests, pain points and then on.

[bctt tweet=”The ‘social part’ of the social media implies that you would like to pay attention to your audience to grasp what they honestly care about, their interests, pain points and then on” username=”vibewebsolution”]

Posting to multiple platforms and following the discussion of prospects and audiences could mean being online all day. This is where Hootsuite comes in.

What is Hootsuite?
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that helps you manage all your social media platforms all in one dashboard. This helps you to save uncountable time and value.

Ryan Holmes started Hoot Suite in Vancover Canada in 2008 alongside co-founders Dario Meli and David Tedman.
He was looking for a tool that could help him manage the social media platform of his digital services agency. And he didn’t find the one with all the features he needed so, he decided to build one.

Hootsuite solves the social media management challenge

If you fall among these set of people then you should consider using Hoot suite:

1. You are an SME and Brand that have multiple social media platforms to manage.
2. You want to save time in posting to multiple networks
3. You have various contents you want to post or promote but can’t be online all day.
4. You want to listen and engage people of certain interest and topics
5. You want to be more efficient, effective and productive with your social media strategy

General Overview of dashboard
Basically, the dashboard comprises of message box and the menu bar.

Message box
This is located at the top left of the dashboard. This is where you post your messages.
Simply compose your relevant message and post in the message box.

Here are some features that comes along with the message box

#1 Word counter
Notice that there is limited number of words that you can post into each social network. Hence, you have to be mindful of this if you are posting into all the networks at the same time.

Here is the maximum number of words you can post on each network.
Twitter: 140 characters
Facebook: 2000 words
LinkedIn: 689 words
Instagram: 2200 words

Not to worry, there is a word counter indicator just below the message box. This would make you know if you’ve exceeded the max amount of words.

When you exceed the limit, It would turn to red and negative. So, if you see -173 by the twitter indicator, it means you have exceeded the limit by one hundred and seventy three words.

If you click on send or schedule, you’ll get a notification that you’ve exceeded your limit.

You should have selected a social media network on the left for the counter to be displayed.

Okay, now let’s talk more about the social networks on the left.

#2 Social Networks

First, you need to connect a social media with a particular profile on your Hootsuite.

Here is a short video of how to do that

At the left of the box, you can select the social networks you want to post to. You can select multiple platforms by simply clicking on the one you would like to post to.

You can only post in three networks at the same time with the free version. To do more, you have to upgrade to Hootsuite Pro. (Actually, the free version now allows up to five networks)

#3 Link Shortner

You can also shorten links you want to include in your message. Simply paste your link into the URL shortner box.

The shortened link would appear in the message box. It’s usually called the owl link (ow.ly).

An example of a shortened link is http://ow.ly/Yd0Sy (click the link). If you wish, you can remove http:// before publishing.

#4 Location

You can add your location too.

#5 Picture Box

Add pictures by simply dragging and dropping into the image box or click select folder to pick your pictures to upload from your computer.

#6 Save Message

You can additionally save your message as a draft and check it later within the publisher section.

#7 Schedule

Simply schedule the time and day you want your message to go out. This feature really saves you the stress of being on your social media platforms all day.

Click on the Scheduling tab. It would expand downwards. Then, set your day and time. Do not forget to choose either am or pm.

This would afford you the time to do other meaningful task during the day or at most simply monitor, engage or respond to people who engaged with your post.

Set your date and time for scheduling.

Hootsuite also has an Auto schedule feature. If the Auto schedule feature is on, Hootsuite would choose the best possible time to post your content across all the social media selected.

Menu Bar

This is located on the left part of the dashboard. From top to bottom, you have the following: Profile, Stream, Publisher, Analytics, assignments, Campaign, Contacts, App directory, Setting, Tools and Help.

Now let’s consider some features and what you can do with them.

Stream
With the stream menu bar you can create various tabs monitoring different contents on your various networks.

You can even rename the tab if you want by simply clicking, highlighting and renaming.

So, you can add different streams from any social network within a tab. You can use this stream to monitor various things like mentions, retweets, and scheduled messages, hashtags, posts to page and so on.

Publisher

Check the list of what you can monitor on the left. Check your drafts, scheduled messages, past scheduled messages, messages that require approval.

So, if you scheduled a message, you can quickly edit before it goes out at that time. You can also change the time and remove a social network from a scheduled message.

Analytics and Reports

This tab helps you measure your activities across all your social networks. You can also enjoy Facebook insight and Google analytics right here.

You can only enjoy this maximally with the Pro version. Here you can create reports of your social media activity which comes with a template or create your own custom version.

Here is how to create a report

Promote Ads
Create lazar targeted ads based on the objective you want to achieve. Hootsuite would give you suggestions based on the objective you fill in.

Apps Directory

You can synchronize various apps with Hoot suite- free and paid apps. This includes storify, youtube, YouTube analytics, daily motion, google drive, gmail, reddit keyword monitor, flikr, social files and more.

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Currently there are 156 app integrations in the app directory. Compared to other social media management tools, Hootsuite has the largest amount of useful integrations.

Support and Customer Care

I once had a problem with my billing. I contacted them and they responded within 24 hours. I’ll give them thumbs up for that. They have an excellent customer service at least from my experience.

So, are you ready to start managing your social media platform with greater efficiency and effectiveness?

Start using Hootsuite today

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