Hootsuite: More Than Just a Social Media Monitoring Tool

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Hootsuite

Hootsuite is my number one, social media monitoring tool — to say the least.

So, here’s what you’ll get in this blog post:

  1. An introduction to Hootsuite
  2. How Do I use Hootsuite for social media scheduling?
  3. How to use Hootsuite as a social media monitoring tool?

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite often considers itself as a social media management tool. Basically, it helps you to keep track and manage your social media channels.

What makes Hootsuite different from the rest of the social media dashboards like Buffer is the ability to monitor and listen to what people are saying about your brand (or your competitors). This means that you can engage and respond to them immediately.

What I truly love about Hootsuite is the scaleable plans and pricings that they have.

Is hootsuite worth it

Here’s the good thing: Anyone can join Hootsuite for free, and the Pro plan costs only $8.99 per month (if you pre-pay the full year).

The bad part: The free account comes with limited features.

Scheduling Updates Using Hootsuite

Just like any other social media management tools, Hootsuite allows you to schedule posts at any time of your choice.

If you are on the Pro plan, you’ll have additional features such as Autoschedule which is super awesome (more on this below) and a whole lot of allotments to integrate multiple social media accounts (up to 10 accounts on the Pro plan).

Scheduling updates using Hootsuite is simple, and this is how it is done:

Select an account (or more), type your content and schedule it.

If you love Hootsuite Analytics, you can use the inbuilt URL shortener. The downside of this is it is only trackable via Hootsuite.

Scheduling updates using Hootsuite Autoschedule

For the love of God, this is the biggest go-to feature for me in Hootsuite. This feature is only available for users in the Pro plan (or higher).

AutoSchedule chooses an optimal time for you to post. The AutoSchedule feature automatically queues messages for optimal times from within HootSuite.

The algorithm uses a combination of your activity and your followers activity by looking at your personal history to determine sharing patterns from your past and post content accordingly whilst also looking at your followers feedback.

How to maximize Hootsuite Autoschedule for social media marketing?

  • Create multiple lists on Twitter with specific niche and groups of people
  • When travelling or on mobile, use Hootsuite mobile app to auto schedule content of others
  • On desktop, use Hootsuite autoschedule to schedule posts from your own blog

The results?

  • Get new followers from retweeting and sharing
  • Higher click through rates (CTR) from publishing at the right time
  • More clicks lead to more traffic to blog

Hootsuite autoschedule function takes social media marketing to the next level

How to auto schedule posts using Hootsuite?

There isn’t any much difference from manual posting except enabling the Autoschedule button.

In Hootsuite, you can create streams to monitor keywords, competitors and mentions on your brand.

To take social media monitoring to the next level, you can adjust the duration of interval to fit your needs.

On the side, you can only add 10 streams per tab.

A few good examples of keywords monitoring that you can use in Hootsuite are:

#keyword
keyword
“keyword”
#keyword OR “keyword” (using either one)
#keyword AND “keyword” (both words need to be visible)

Hootsuite Analytics

With Hootsuite Analytics you can:

  • Get detailed metrics across your networks using Hootsuite Analytics.
  • Organize, visualize, and share performance data in ways that best serve your team.
  • Track team metrics to monitor customer response and resolution times.
  • Understand the impact of social media on your bottom line and optimize your social spending.
  • Drive deeper engagement by monitoring what people are saying about your brand.
  • Enter your own social profiles and benchmark your numbers against three of your competitors.

If you run a small agency or working with team members, you are going to love Hootsuite team collaboration. Basically, you can assign tasks to your team members.

Here’s an example:

I could assign the task of thanking the person above to my team members using Hootsuite and with just a few clicks.

Talking about social media productivity!

Is Hootsuite Worth the Money?

For me, Hootsuite offers scalability. You could start a free account without paying a dime to a smaller plan under $18 a month and as your business grows, you could even opt for the enterprise level package.

Hootsuite is more than just a social media dashboard or social media management tool. It is an excellent all-in-one social media tool for everything you need to manage a business efficiently and with budget in mind.

But hey, don’t take my word for it as I am already in love with Hootsuite. How about giving it a try for 30-days?

Do you use Hootsuite?

I hope you do and leave a comment to tell me what attracted you to it. And if you are not, don’t worry! Tell me why you are not

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14 Responses

  1. I think it is a real cool tool! However it does have its limitation and certain upgrades can be quite hefty. Like to use the vanity url you need to pay like US$40 per month? :/

  2. Hootsuite is very helpful tool for bloggers or digital marketers, specially for social media marketers. I have been using this tool and must say, it is a must have tool for every social media marketer. Thanks for in depth post.

  3. Great Post! The Pro account that features Autoschedule is definitely awesome. All you need is to be a little hardworking to create a post and hit Autoschedule. The rest, let Hootsuite do for you!

    Can’t ask more of that from any social media monitoring tool out there!

  4. We’ve been using Hootsuite for all (ours) and our client’s social media plans. It’s been really great, but we are always looking to get the most juice out of our SMM plans. We just started using Buffer, and personally, I think I like it a bit more so far. Only time will tell if it’s great enough to trump Hootsuite!

  5. I was deciding hard between Buffer and Hootsuite (plus, reading over a dozen articles on reviews).

    Here’s what I think. Hootsuite is an excellent tool for monitoring and engaging. Buffer is better for scheduling and analytics. So, what happens when you utilize both of them for your social media marketing strategy?

    You get a super-duper social media tool (in this case, tools) :)

    Works for me and my team though!

    Thanks for your input once again. Looking forward to see you here more often!

  6. Geraldo Lowe says:

    Hootsuite has always been one of my most favorite social media management tool. The social sharing feature that it has is one of the most. For Blog Engage, I use Hootsuite heavily to market my client’s content.

    I also love it’s auto schedule feature. It’s really helpful and saves a lot of time on manually marketing your content.

    Thanks for sharing these tips on Hootsuite.

  7. Hootsuite is pretty awesome for engagement, monitoring and yes, the auto scheduling part.

    However, one challenge I always face with Hootsuite is the analytics part.

  8. Jess Malone says:

    Hootsuite is always one of my favorite tool for managing the social media accounts. Hootsuite has so many features to use which are very helpful to consume less time. When I write a post on Twitter tools, Hootsuite grab first position.

    I generally use this this tool for scheduling the tweets of Success Druggy, and for url shortening also, which helps me track the clicks on my tweet.

  9. Vilma Osborn says:

    Hootsuite is really powerful. Most of the time, we fail to see the ‘advantages’ using it. In terms of monitoring keywords, search terms etc, Hootsuite can really dominate your social media marketing strategy.

  10. Lee Harvey says:

    I’m a self-admitted Hootsuite fanboy. I recommend it every chance I get, and you’re 100% right. It’s much more than “just” a social media monitoring tool. The analytics are a nice touch, But one of the things that I use it for that a lot of people overlook is to find new content ideas. By setting up Twitter streams with advanced search strings, you can find out the type of content that your audience wants. People are always tweeting about issues they’re having, questions, and their pain points. Hootsuite lets me track all of these different conversations in real time. Nice post!

  11. Oh yes, thanks for sharing the advanced search strings. I use that all the time and trust me, it rocks!

    Powerful way to get traffic, leads and sales. Greta minds think alike huh?

  12. Grace Patel says:

    I do have Hootsuite, but am I using it properly? No. Am I going to start back on it Yes because of this article. You pointed out to me the effectiveness that I needed to hear. You also explained how Hootsuite can use the keyword search. Hmmm you have me thinking.

    So far I have the free plan and maybe that’s why I don’t use it as much. But going to the next level will do me good. I’m Sold!

    Thanks so much for giving me the push I needed to make my life a little easier.

  13. Alvaro Pugh says:

    I have yet to use hootsuite. But one thing that you mentioned that caught my eye was the autoschedule feature. Right now to send out posts, I’m using Revive Old Post, but autoschedule sounds like it bases what posts it’s going to send out on the interest of your target audience. If that’s the case then I may have to add hootsuite to my arsenal!

    Thanks for sharing the review! Have a good one!

  14. Hootsuite is no doubt an amazing social media monitoring tool but there is a problem with it . “The custom Url Shortner ..

    Its expensive !! This feature of hootsuite sucks ! It cost $49.99 a month . This is something which annoys me .Thats the reason i Use GrabInbox

    Otherwise , we cant deny that hootsuite is a wonderful tool but great potential and is worth using .

    Thanks For this mind blowing !!!

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