With recent news about adding funding partners and the newly-released social media iPhone app, the web is brimming with articles about HootSuite. But of particular interest to us are the people and companies who are using the social media dashboard in inspiring and interesting ways – plus teaching others how to spark social media-powered campaigns designed to grow audience and spread messages.
With this in mind, here’s a round-up for reviews, tutorials, punditry and accolades from the past fortnight.
Mashed up for Business
First off, a double does of Mashable and American Express Open Forum – the wise minds and info curators @mashable contribute knowledge to AmEx’s space for SME’s and entrepreneurs to share tips and tactics.
Mashable’s Barb Dybwad (perhaps the coolest Twitter handle ever) shares Essential Social Media Tools for the Small Business which includes CoTweet as well as HootSuite:
If your small business has a presence on Twitter, you’ll want to look into two great and free tools for managing your account: CoTweet and HootSuite. You can think of them essentially as Customer Relationship Management tools for Twitter.
Both services offer a similar core functionality, allowing you to manage multiple individual accounts, give multiple authors access to individual Twitter accounts, search for keywords and monitor saved searches over time, and get message notifications based on certain criteria. Beyond that, each service has its own custom features — and which app is right for your business will depend on who in your organization needs to use it and what functions you need to access in your business.
Another @mashable writer Leah Betancourt contributed 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Avoid Social Media Panic which appear on Mashable and Am EX Open Forum and provides practical tips for busineses to get over the glassy-eyed feeling when adding social media-powered campaigns to their marketing mix – of course her tips include using HootSuite for tracking.
The notion of getting into social media might seem overwhelming for any small business. Spending time upfront before launch to create a plan with goals that includes how to translate that social media presence into dollars will go a long way toward achieving success.
Some examples of metrics to look at are: How many visitors came to your site from a social media site; Conversion (i.e. how many people clicked through to your site and then bought a product or service), Falls said. In minimal terms, be able to say something like: I spent X dollars and was able to track X amount of revenue (or percentage).
Link shorteners can help track click throughs on Twitter. Twitter tools such as Seesmic (
), TweetDeck (), HootSuite () and others can help users track mentions, direct messages and @replies.
Hoots for Growth
Inc.com published Lori Highby’s experiences building her web design business in How to Use HootSuite for Business (article is dated Feb 1, 2010 which is in the future ~ whoa) – again practical advice for entrepreneurs:
I use HootSuite to streamline the process. It lets me manage multiple accounts on one dashboard. I can schedule tweets in advance instead of logging on every time I want to send one. When I write a new blog post, HootSuite automatically sends a tweet to my followers. If I’m reading an interesting article online, I can click on the Hootlet feature in my browser’s Favorites bar to send out a tweet with the story’s name and URL. A stats feature lets me see how many people clicked on any given link so I can tailor future tweets accordingly.
I also use HootSuite to keep track of tweets containing certain keywords. Anytime someone mentions Keystone Click, for example, it appears on my HootSuite dashboard. I sift through the responses at the beginning and end of each day, tracking both positive and negative feedback and reaching out to potential customers. I use the search term Web design company to scour Twitter for prospective clients.
BtoBMagazine’s Rich Karpinski addresses businesses looking to gain a foothold with their outreach methods in Twitter tools for teams – As Tweeting evolves into a group activity, applications offer options – and includes a comment from the Chief Executive Owl:
While many marketers still use standalone clients or even Twitter.com for their tweeting, the convoluted workflow requirements for keeping up with Twitter, not to mention all the other social networks, scream for a more capable tool. HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes, for instance, calls his company’s app “the ultimate social media dashboard,” and in recent months has added LinkedIn and Facebook postings to its Twitter core. HootSuite counts Dell, Fox and MSNBC among its customers.
Author Holly Reville created a video about how to use Hootsuite to Manage Multiple Accounts & Schedule Tweets – Holly Reville is a humanitarian, an entrepreneur and an author and founder of Xpressive Marketing, specializing in corporate training, cause and social media marketing. (Note: Subscribe to Holly’s YouTube channel for more). Here’s the set-up:
Let’s face it in today’s busy lifestyles we can all use a little help making it easier to keep up with our Social Media efforts. Hootsuite.com is a valuable tool for doing just that. It gives you the ability to manage multiple twitter accounts and schedule tweets ahead of time. Check out this video to learn how!
Helping Haiti
from United Nations Development Programme's Flickr photostream
Speaking of humanitarians, Brad came up with a plan to use HootSuite to schedule reminders to encourage followers to donate to Haiti even when the stirring images fade from the TV broadcast on Lawn with Gnomes post: Hacking Haiti Donations.
I gave to Haiti, did you? While I did give, it just felt like it wasn’t as much as I would like to or can afford at the moment. I thought maybe I’ll take time to work in a local charity? Reality of course set in, the reality that I’m a full-time student and hold a part-time job.
So what’s the idea/hack? It’s simple; 1) Sign up or sign into Hootsuite.
Love that first step and best wishes for your noble quest to help Haiti. BTW United Nations Development Programmer are using Twitter
Quick Hoots
The Marketing Tech blog’s pundit Douglas Karr offers some gentle copywriting advice: Dear Tech Marketers: Stop Marketing Features over Benefits and was kind enough to follow up to my comment:
Congratulations DaveO on the new digs! You’re working for a company with an amazing product. I especially love your iPhone app, I believe it to be the best on the market. Hopefully you can get this post over to your web marketing team, I believe it will help you improve your penetration of the enterprise market. Thanks for coming out and responding – it says a lot about HootSuite!
Blogger James St. John lends a hand to HootSuite’s support efforts with a re-cap of key features including using lists plus adding Facebook and Linkedin in The Professional Twitter Client, for serious marketeers
In addition to all of that, you can also add columns that track search keywords that you like. Those columns will update in real time and show you tweets that contain your favorite keyword that you choose. There are also many other features that I will leave for you to discover. Hootsuite.com is definitely worth using, check it out!
Seeking More?
Something else awesome that we missed? Great, give me a heads-up @daveohoots and we’ll include in future news round-ups. For even more HootSuite related blog, news, tutorials, reviews, follow
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HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes is San Francisco-bound to speak on a panel at 
The busy times keep rolling with some powerful improvements to click-tracking with 
