In this post, you are going to learn about Hootsuite. Hootsuite is an alternative to buffer.
Don’t know what Buffer is ?
Read out,our review on buffer
Coming to today’s post. I am going to introduce the following things in this post.
You may be familiar with some of them. If so, directly Jump out the section you want by just clicking it.
Table of Contents:
- Introduction about/what is Hootsuite
- History
- Important features
- How to use Hootsuite
- Hootsuite apps (Third-Party apps)
- Advantages
- Hootsuite Vs buffer
- Prizing plans
- Conclusion
- Related QNA or FAQ
Introduction about hoot suite/what is Hootsuite?
Hootsuite is a social media management tool with 16 million active users, which allows you to manage your different social media accounts from a single dashboard.
In this era of rapid digitalization, an average individual uses different social media networks and it is not an easy task to maintain different Networks, here this situation created a need to develop a tool like Hootsuite.
It integrates with 35+ social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, etc.,
Now-a-days, each and every business use a special social media account for their business.
For example, you can see that, the big companies like Coco-cola and Nike also use their social media networks actively to stay connected with their customers.
As they are big companies and have a huge base of customers around the world. And we have 50+ social media networks. It is a must for those brands to be active in different social networks.
As I told earlier, it is a tough task to maintain and stay active on different social media platforms. And here Hootsuite’s dashboard allows you to manage all these platforms from a single place.
History of hootsuite:
Hootsuite was started in 2008 by Ryan Holmes. He wanted to manage his social media accounts of his company invoke Media.
And he found it complicated to manage all his social media platforms manually and there are no other ways to manage.
So, he decided to develop a new platform that serves the function of managing different social media networks through a single place.
Then Ryan Holmes along with Dario Meli, David Tedman, and Invoke Media team worked and launched a social media management system on 28 November 2008 with the name of Bright-Kit.
After finding so many businesses in the world also facing same issues, he wanted to introduce it to the world.
In February 2009, Ryan announced a contest with prize money of $500 to rename the Brand-Kit and selected the name Hootsuite.
Important features of hootsuite:
Now let us look at some key features it offers:
Post Scheduling:
As the name says this feature allows you to schedule posts for your various social media platforms.
Steps to be followed for scheduling a post on Hootsuite:
- First, you need to select the platforms in which you want to schedule posts, those platforms must be integrated with
- Then you have to write your post
- You are also allowed to add media to your post
- And the best thing here is, you can see a preview of your post, how it looks on your social media platform.
- Finally, you need to set the date and time of the post.
After scheduling your posts, they will show up in your planner tab and you can use automatic scheduling feature which will optimize time by its algorithm and finds out the best time for scheduling your posts.
Streams:
Streams feature allows you to monitor and track the interactions on your posts on different social media platforms in one place.
With the help of this feature, you can respond easily, if you have any mentions. And it serves as a time-saver for you.
Analytics of hootsuite:
This is another best feature that shows how well your social media accounts performing. This tab shows the data related Key metrics like:
- Fans and Followers,
- Posts and Tweets,
- Engagement and Traffic,
- Performance by post,
- Inbound messages with sentiment analysis,
- Total clicks per country,
- Page content clicks, and
- Engagement by type
Hootsuite Team collaboration:
This feature of hoot allows your entire team to manage the social media platforms of your organization.
In simple words, your entire team has given access to your Hoot suite account.
This feature helps if you have more and more followers and more queries from customers
Content Library:
This feature allows you to setup templates
How to use hootsuite:
After knowing all these details, the next step is to learn how to use it for yourself. Follow the below steps to learn it,
- create a Hootsuite account
You need to open the Hootsuite website and click on the Sign-up button at the top right corner.
- Select Suitable plan
Select the plans which fit you and then fill up required details
- Connect your social media accounts
You need to connect your social media networks with your account, and to do that,
Open your account dashboard and select the streams tab
Click on Add Social Network
Select the social network from the list and click connect and authorize your accounts to connect them to your dashboard. - Set up tabs and Streams
Each social network offers a unique style of the stream. And to do that,
Select the Streams from the launch menu and click on Add tab, Inside each tab, click on add stream - Publish a post
Next, you have to know the procedure of publishing posts and click on Add New Post and then fill up required details
- Install the required apps
Know about apps provided by the Hoot-suite apps directory, it provides the third-party apps which are used to extend the functionality of Hoot-suite
Open the Apps directory
Select and install the required apps - Download extension
Download an extension named Hoot let, It is a free extension which allows you to share the content on your social media from anywhere on the web
You are also allowed to download the Hootsuite apps on your mobile devices. Both the iOS and Android versions are available. - Finally, you can use the account with your Team members
So, this is the small introduction of how to use the Hoot suite. Along with this guide, you can also refer these Free courses
Hootsuite apps (Third-Party apps):
It uses different apps and tools to increase the effectiveness of control and to sustain in the market competition. Now let us look at some apps that you can use:
123 form builder:
Used to create any type of web-form
Adobe Stock:
Allows you to share adobe stock assets within Hootsuite
Ad view:
Monitor and reply comments on Facebook and Instagram ads
Blogger:
Monitor and manage your Blogger pages and posts from Hootsuite
chat fuel:
Automate your Facebook inbox for bot marketing
Daily motion:
offers a mix of individual videos, channels and professional content
Google My Business:
Publish posts, reply to reviews, and answer questions on your Google My Business listing.
Google Translate:
Allows Translate social messages within Hootsuite
Hootsuite:
Allows to run and monitor ads and campaigns
In sense:
content from 35,000 influential creators to use in your social profiles
Lucidya:
Manage and monitor social media efficiently in one place.
Mail chimp:
Allows you to easily share and track your email campaigns from within Hootsuite
Social Safe Guard:
Extends social risk management to the Hootsuite dashboard
Spotify:
View and share tracks, playlists, albums and artists directly to the Hootsuite Composer
Along with these, it also use many more other apps to improve user experience.
Advantages of hootsuite:
These are some advantages
- Easy interface for users to maintain
- Supports 35+ different social media platforms
- Provides the statistics of your results related to your social networks
- Allows scheduling of posts
- Collaboration with your team is possible
Hootsuite Vs buffer:
| Features | Hootsuite | Buffer |
| Third-Party Integrations | 154 apps | 64 apps |
| No of scheduled posts | 30 for free plan | 10 for free plan |
| Integrations | 140+ | 60+ |
| Ease of use | Not so easy to use for beginners | Simple interface provides good user experience |
| Preview of post | Yes | No |
| Advertising Support | Yes | No |
| Analytics | Basic analytics for free plan | No analytics for free plan |
Hootsuite Pricing Plans:
This platform offers 4 different types of plans, they are
Individual:
- Free plan
- 3 social media profiles
- Limited resources.
Professional:
- ₹1260 /month
- 10 social profiles
- Unlimited scheduling
- 1 user
- 30-day free trial available
Team:
- ₹6600 /month
- 20 social profiles
- Unlimited scheduling
- 3 users
- 30-day free trial available
Business:
- ₹45000 /month
- 35 social profiles
- Unlimited scheduling
- 5 users, up to 10
Enterprise:
- There is no official list of prices of this plan
- 50+ social profiles
- You need to contact their team for more details regarding this plan
Conclusion:
Hoot suite is one of the best tools over there and as it offers a free plan with unlimited validity you can use it without any prior doubts
Refer the tutorial link that I provided to learn more and better utilization of it.
Related QNA or FAQ:
Yes, you can use it for Instagram
Yes, you can use it for scheduling.
It is located in Vancouver
Hootsuite academy provides a paid course worth of $99, which will give an certificate after completion of this course.
It was founded back in 2008.
Plenty of tools are available as an alternative, some of them are:
scheduGram,
Sprout Social,
Buffer,
social pilot,
sendible, and
eClincher
