Managing Your Social Media Using Hootsuite

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Hootsuite, definitely so if one of your tasks is to maintain the social media for your business. If you’re not yet using social media for your business then I’d highly recommend starting soon as it has many fantastic benefits, not least of which is helping with search engine optimisation (SEO) by improving your website ranking. But I’ll get on to other benefits of social media in my next article.

So back to social media management and for me the one tool that has saved me bundles of time is Hootsuite.

Hootsuite allows you to update and manage several social media accounts at once. You can quite honestly sit down on Monday morning with your first coffee of the day and get the majority of your social media scheduled for the entire week.

Why use Hootsuite?

1. Efficiency. It’s simple and easy to use, so doesn’t take hours of ‘training’ to get started. With a clear layout, you can easily find the account and social media channel you want to review or update.

2. Manageability. If you have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ account (and possibly more) it can be time consuming changing between each one. Hootsuite allows you to have tabs for each different channel as well as the ability to update each of them in one hit. Not only that but you can customise the columns for ease of use within each network to keep tabs on your keyword tracking, search terms, mentions, lists, and messages.

3. Scheduling. Hootsuite has a very easy to use publishing feature. This is where the organisation on a Monday morning comes into play! You can compose a message, set the date, time and social media channel for the week, month, and year ahead. Each of your schedules are listed on one page so you can refer to it throughout the week, which is great if something crops up and you wish to make some last minute changes.

At this point I should also say it’s important to publish breaking news relevant to your industry, which therefore means social media should also play a role on a daily basis. But overall using Hootsuite will still greatly reduce your time spent each week on social media.

4. Analysis. Hootsuite allows you to analysis data in both basic and detailed formats, although for the latter it is a paid for service. So depending on the type of information you need you can get insights to your Twitter Mentions by Influencers, Twitter Follower Growth, Facebook Daily Likes, Facebook Daily Page Activity, Google Analytics: Twitter to Web Conversion, Traffic Sources, and more. These analytics can be automated into email reports for you daily, weekly, bi-monthly or monthly.

5. Mobility. Hootsuite works well for iPad, iPhone and Android mobile phones users as well as laptops and netbook users. So no matter where you are you can always be on top of your social media marketing.

6. Productivity. Hootsuite increases productivity by incorporating an easy team workflow option which is great if you have an extended team working across your social media accounts, and with its scheduler, analytics tracking and SEO benefits it can even play a part when making strategic business decisions year-on-year.

Of course if you don’t have time for social media but realise the benefits it will bring to your business, hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you.