Hootsuite Review: Best Social Media Tool?!

Hootsuite Review: Best Social Media Tool?!

Hootsuite review. Hootsuite is a social media tool where you can manage all your accounts within one dashboard.  The tool was built to integrate all the different platforms in one manageable location.  It could be a powerful to help businesses optimize their social media campaigns and engagement.  It’s essential to have a social media account on all the major platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  It provides people, brands, and companies a way to monitor the success rate of their content, products, or future products.

With all the platforms, Hootsuite provides a solid tool to efficiently management all the different platforms.  If not, it’s a constant battle between switching between different windows or apps.  There are so many people, or businesses, who have multiple social media accounts and they usually a abandon a few because it becomes unmanageable.   This is where Hootsuite solves the problem because the tool consolidates everything under one dashboard.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

How efficient is Hootsuite?  How easy is it to organize everything under a single dashboard?  Do they provide analytics?  Can you post content?  What exactly can Hootsuite do?   There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

We decided to write a thorough Hootsuite review and provide you an honest opinion whether it’s worth using or not.

Hootsuite Review: Background

Hootsuite is a Canadian company.  Its headquarters is in Vancouver, Canada, and they have eight offices around the world.

How many people use Hootsuite?  Worldwide? It’s about 12 million users, which includes Fortune 500 companies.  Hootsuite enables marketing teams to manage, collaborate, and execute marketing campaigns on social media.  They can implement the same campaign across the different platform to see where it performs better and further optimize where it doesn’t perform well.   However, it’s not just for companies.  Influencers and regular people can use it too.  Anyone can register with Hootsuite for a free account to explore all its amazing features.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

The key to Hootsuite is efficient time management.  With a simple button, you can push all your content to all your social media accounts.  In other words, you can set it then forget it.  The basic plan meets most needs for a small business, Influencer, or a normal person.  However, the premium features is where you can fully take advantage of Hootsuite.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Hootsuite Review: Integration

Once you create an account, you can choose to connect over 35 different social media platforms.  In addition, you don’t have to download any software or extra application on your computer.  It’s fully web based.  When adding the account, you will be ask to login into the respective social media account.  It’s a necessary evil to use Hootsuite.  However, you have my assurance that it’s completely safe and you don’t have to provide your passwords; they provide every single detail to what you’re allowing them to do.

For Facebook, you can choose which Facebook business page Hootsuite will be given access if you have multiple business pages.  If you decide to connect more than one Facebook page, each will be consider a social media profile.  With the free plan, you are only allocated three profiles.  If you need more, you can always upgrade to Pro.  The best part about Hootsuite is you can manage your Google+ business pages.  There isn’t many services out there with Google+ as an option.   There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Here is a short list of Hootsuite’s social media platforms integration:

• Instagram
• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Google+

In addition, Hootsuite provides a laundry list of other extensions and integrations.  Here is the full list here.

Hootsuite Review: Dashboard

From first impressions, Hootsuite’s dashboard fairly clean.  However, it can look a little overwhelming but it becomes easier once you start to poke around.  The features are pretty straight forward.  The layout condenses all the controls, tool groups, and services in a slide-out menu.  The header contains different profiles, a compose message option, or post scheduling.  The dashboard’s has the ability to open different profiles on multiple tabs and they provide intervals for auto-refresh or manual refresh.  The intervals can be set from every two minutes to half an hour.

Hootsuite’s work area is where “Streams” and social profiles are added.  It’s where you display each social media’s activity.  Great part about the dashboard?  You can fully customize your “News Feed” with whatever you want to see.  For example, with LinkedIn, you can see your your own updates, scheduled posts, messages, or your home page feed.  With Facebook, you can add scheduled posts, messages, events, pages, and other things.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Hootsuite helps you with customer feedback on Twitter too.  You can have your customer service respond and monitor replies to help improve your customer’s experience.  In other words, Hootsuite has the ability to turn your social media profiles into customer help desks.  Your team of social media managers can monitor everything with ease.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Hootsuite Review: Content Scheduling

Hootsuite makes content scheduling a breeze.  When publishing posts, you have the ability to pull content from multiple cloud storage sources like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive, and so forth.  You can also upload YouTube videos from your channel. In fewer actions, you can attach videos or pictures to your posts; you can also schedule them for a later date.  For businesses, you can grant access to workflows, approved content, and so much more.   There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

With content scheduling, you’re able to access Hootsuite’s most powerful feature, which is the ability to post across all of your social media profiles at once.  In other words, you no longer need to manually post a content on Facebook then post it on LinkedIn and then go to Twitter to post it.  Everything is easily scheduled with them Hootsuite to keep your content consistent across all your social media profiles.  All you need to do is compose the post then simply select when you want Hootsuite to push the post across all platforms.

In addition, the scheduler informs you whether you’re over the provided character limit for each platform.  This is extremely useful because you’re able to ensure your captions will meet each platform’s requirement.  Furthermore, you won’t be left with awkwardly incomplete captions especially when it comes to Twitter’s 280 character limit.  On top of that, Hootsuite will notify you if there was a problem with your schedule posts on a particular platform.  They also notify you if your social media profile needs to be reactivated or the connection session is no longer valid.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Hootsuite has a feature called “auto-scheduler”.  It’ll automatically post your content at the most optimal time, so you can get better engagement for the post.  There’s a location tag for posts too; plus, there’s a Twitter Targeting option to share posts with a particular audience.  There’s a similar feature for Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn; it’s the “privacy option”.  Lastly, Hootsuite has a link shortener option via ow.ly, owl.li, ht.ly or htl.li.

Hootsuite Review: Content Engagement 

Hootsuite understands social media.  Social media is about engaging with other accounts.  Hootsuite helps users address this challenge via aggregating content within your niche or industry.  It can be done by setting your “streams” to do hashtag searches to populate content where you can engage with.  The streams will help you improve your content and it’ll provide a way to attract more eyes on your social media accounts.  In addition, you can retweet directly from your dashboard.  It’s a powerful tool to help you maintain a strong social media presence.

Hootsuite Review: Analytics

Hootsuite helps in the analytics department too.  It offers a dashboard with aggregated KPIs in a single place.  The tool is essential to understand how your campaigns are performing overall and it’ll help you optimize your posts for better engagement.  If you don’t know where to start, Hootsuite comes with multiple KPI templates to help you get started.  However, the Facebook and Twitter feature is only available for the Enterprise plan. I think it would serve them better if they provided for the Professional plan.   There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Once you become a KPI pro, you can customize your reports with Hootsuite’s report builder.  You can add things like charts, logo, labels, and more.  The reporting can be delegated to team members.  Unfortunately, you’re allocated a certain amount of reporting features.  If you need more, you have to pay for them. The only good news is you get your “points” back if you decide to delete a report or module.  The “points” will be credited back to your balance.

The reports are pretty detailed.  It’ll give you an account overview; plus, a detailed analysis of the change in your followers.  It’ll also aggregate your most popular posts.  In addition, you can benchmark your social media profile against other accounts in your industry, or niche.  Lastly, Hootsuite is slowly expanding its capability to help sales teams by integrating customer relations management and finding easier ways to identify valuable influencers.   There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Hootsuite Review: Upgrade To Pro Or Not?

Hootsuite’s professional plan is pretty solid.  You can auto-post via RSS Feeds to more than two profiles.  In addition, you have a Vanity URL option where you can include your domain in shortened URLs.  This helps maintain your branding whether you’re a blogger, business, or enterprise.  The Professional plan offers detailed reports for your each of your  social media profiles.  The reports include Google Analytics, Detailed Twitter Engagement, Facebook Aggregate, Facebook Insights, Twitter Aggregate, ow.ly (URL shortener) click statistics, and more.  See the full list here.  The detailed reports can be comprised with over 30 modules and you’re free to share them with other users.

The Professional Plan allows for collaboration among team members.  You’re able to grant access to multiple people, so they can manage the same or different social media profiles.  This is extremely efficient for agencies and businesses because you can delegate responsibility to a team.  You can assign different “streams” and messages to teams or people.  They can check messages with the “Assignment” section.

Hootsuite’s app directory offers a solid range of apps for integration.  There are integrations for Salesforce, SoundCloud, Google Drive, and many more.  With the Salesforce app, your sales team can use Hootsuite to interact with your clients.   There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Now, I would suggest trying out the free plan before committing to a Professional or Enterprise plan.  You get to connect three social media profiles for free.  You can schedule posts across multiple social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. In addition, there are basic analytics available to see how your campaigns are performing.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Hootsuite Review: Client Support

Hootsuite provides the basic support forums where you can search for resolutions.  They also provide free online social media crash courses to help develop your social media management skills.  In addition, Hootsuite has a free six class online program to help you learn about the fundamentals of social media marketing where you’ll receive a certification.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

Hootsuite Review: Pricing

There’s a free plan for personal use.  However, this is their current plans:

Hootsuite Review: Pros and Cons

Pros

• Perfect for businesses with multiple social media profiles
• Single dashboard for custom content “streams”
• Ability to aggregate relevant content via hashtags
• Analytics to help you monitor social media campaign success.
• Web-based tool and can be access via Android or iOS app or web browser
• Free plan for personal use
• 30 Day Trial for other plans
• Large apps library for integration
• Ability to manage multiple YouTube accounts
• Free online courses and certification
• Ability to schedule posts across different platforms at one time
• RSS feed option to auto-post blog entries
• Chrome Extension for easy posting while surfing the web

Cons

• You have to reconnect your social media accounts periodically
• Credit card required for 30 day trial
• Free plan only allows three social media profiles
• Dashboard can be intimidating at first
• Add users can get expensive really fast

Hootsuite Review: Conclusion

Hootsuite is a solid tool to manage all your social media profiles.  The free plan is sufficient for anyone looking for a single dashboard for their main social media profiles.  I personally use it myself to manage the Big 3, which are my Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

However, it’s an essential tool for businesses looking to efficiently manage their social media profiles and provide customer service support via social media.  With so many integrations, it’s hard not to give Hootsuite a try, so you can easily manage all your profile in one dashboard.  The delegation feature is crucial to tackle the influx of social media responses or complaints.  Lastly, it’s the only way to schedule posts across all your social media profile to maintain consistency.  There is no Hootsuite coupon or Hootsuite discount on the internet.

You can read our other social media articles here.