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Archive for August, 2009

Why use scheduled tweets?

August 28th, 2009
HootSuite can schedule your tweets -- and make life easier

HootSuite can schedule your tweets -- and make life easier

Few of us have the time to be on Twitter all the time. In this post, we explain how to make the most of a well-known HootSuite feature: scheduled tweets.

Improving visibility
If you send more tweets, your Twitter handle and your content become more more visible. Scheduling your content to come out at regular intervals during the day translates to improved visibility, and has the additional benefit of being less interruptive. Many business and power users have told us that scheduling content in advance allows them to focus on other Twitter experiences such as retweeting, sourcing new content streams or having conversations.

Sending time-sensitive tweets
Some tweets need to go out at specific times: announcements, promotions, and customer service responses. This is especially true when your target audience lives in a different time zone than you. In Los Angeles, if you’re starting your workday, someone in London is finishing theirs. With scheduled tweets, you’re able to ensure your followers are reached at the appropriate time.

Controlling content flow
Nobody likes to be inundated with a torrent of tweets. Many Twitter users have a lot to say but do not want to come across as spammy. Instead of sending 20 tweets in the span of 5 minutes, why not send 20 tweets over the course of 10 hours? By staggering your tweets, your messages reach the world in a more cohesive, less obtrusive manner.

Optimizing for traffic
If you know that your links are more likely to be clicked at a particular time, HootSuite lets you schedule accordingly, to maximize the penetration of your content. Public relations people or media workers familiar with Jack Shafer’s news cycle theory will see the benefit of this feature immediately.

These are all good reason to schedule your tweets. But everyone has their own reason for using this HootSuite feature. What is yours?

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HootSuite and Toucan: Birds of a Feather

August 20th, 2009

HootSuite now integrates with Toucan, the official Twitter application for Salesforce CRM.

HootSuite users can now import all their profiles into Toucan, thereby fusing the powerful features both platforms offer. With Toucan and HootSuite, you can generate leads and contacts from Twitter followers, communicate with sales prospects via Twitter, and respond to Salesforce support cases through tweets. Together, Toucan and HootSuite users will also have access to advanced statistics from the ow.ly URL shortener thereby delivering quantifiable return on investment (ROI) for social networks integrated within Salesforce.

This union proves that birds of a feather really do flock together. Ca-caw.

You can read more about the merry union here.

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HootSuite recovers from Twitter’s DOS attack, some early upgrade info

August 14th, 2009
Hello Hootsuite users,

We’ve been busy since we opened up early upgrades to Hootsuite 2.0, responding to questions, listening to your ideas, working out kinks, and dealing with a major denial of service attack on Twitter.

Some of you have noticed some glitches with your columns for search terms and groups. We have implemented some improvements on our end, and Twitter has assured us that we can expect to have everything working on their end by Monday. Check out the Twitter Blog page for more info on the attack and Twitter’s response.

Also, a reminder: If you’re not one of the thousands that has already done so, you’re still invited to tweet for an optional early upgrade to Hootsuite 2.0. Soon, we’ll be opening Hootsuite 2.0 to everyone, with no upgrade tweet required. The choice is yours: tweet your love, and get all the features of HootSuite 2.0 today, or wait a little bit and get them later.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to check out HootSuite 2.0 and provide us with your thoughts and ideas. Here’s one of our favourites.

Moni
Team HootSuite

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