HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

The HootSuite Translation Project spawned from a desire to offer HootSuite to users in their preferred language. But localization has some challenges!

For example, many of the words in HootSuite are Twitter/socialweb-specific with no “usual” translation, plus translating the words without context is confusing and inaccurate. So, to gather accurate translations quickly, we asked “Who knows HootSuite better than our own fans?”

The obvious answer encouraged us to ask HootSuite users for a hand to localize the social media dashboard on all platforms for their neighbors and colleagues.

Since launching on August 27th , we’ve eagerly watched the amazing progress made and have begun cheering for various countries, not unlike the World Cup or Tour de France.

Throughout the day, we take a look at the leaderboard and watch as Italian and Portuguese pull ahead of Dutch and German But hold on, Spanish is catching up too and where did the and French come from — wow!

We’ll address a few issues of style and clarity in a forthcoming post including tips for working with variable strings and we’ll be adding more language coordinators soon — thanks to all who applied! We’re certainly thrilled with the quality of the credentials and will put you to work very soon.

We aren’t the only ones who are excited about this project either — here are a few posts to share:

The Next Web – Hootsuite needs your lingua franca: Help with crowd-sourced translation of Hootsuite

Prolific tech-journalist Tris Hussey explains the gist of the project to TNW readers:

That doesn’t go far enough in a the Internet today. A huge percentage of people online don’t speak English and really appreciate when apps are in their own language. Hootsuite is already a huge hit in Japan and elsewhere, but they want to branch out. Hootsuite wants to be localized in as many languages as possible, and they are asking for your help to do this. Yep, Hootsuite is turning to crowd-sourced translation.

{snip}

Hootsuite is turning to its users, just like open-source projects like WordPress do when they need translation help, for their help in translating all the parts of Hootsuite so people around the world can feel the warmth of the owl’s feathery hug. The folks at Hootsuite are even going a set further by letting the community decide which languages get priority for development and launch.

e-Communica – Hootsuite lanza su proyecto colaborativo de traducción (Spanish)

Rallying Spanish speakers, this post “HootSuite launches collaborative translation project” which when auto-translated reads:

Once registered, users have at their disposal a control panel from which you can choose the project you work (web client, Android, Blackberry and iPhone), and language and display the number of suggestions made, reviewed, pending and accepted.

For the web version in Spanish, are pending to translate 6948 words and the time for users interested in the initiative and are working on the 8% of them. Furthermore, to certify the quality of the texts, HootSuite is selecting qualified coordinators to approve the final translations.

Il Giornale di Pozzallo - HootSuite chiede aiuto per tradurre la piattaforma (Italian)

Italian news site Il Giornale di Pozzallo spreads the word of localization in Italy in an article (auto-translated) “HootSuite asks for help to translate the platform.” Incidentally, Italian is making great progress:

HootSuite, one of the clients business more attractive to social media, has decided to offer languages other than English. Ryan Holmes (CEO HootSuite) has forwarded an e-mail to members of the newsletter to ask their help. As was the case with Facebook and Twitter, HootSuite prepared interface for localization in crowdsourcing: users will be to translate the panel and mobile applications HootSuite.

Technoblog – HootSuite pede ajuda para fazer tradução (Portuguese)

A push for Portuguese in this auto-translated post “HootSuite asks for help do translation” … and the passionate Hoot-fans in Brazil are rocking out the translations too:

The HootSuite is a very nice web interface for anyone beyond the resources so basic that Twitter offers. Currently available only in English and Japanese, the site is calling people who “speak the language geek in multiple languages to” help the translation service.

Small Words in Welsh:

Keep Track:

Follow hashtag #HootTrans on Twitter to find more people talking about the project. You can continue to follow HootSuite’s social bookmarks and/or follow @hootwatch to keep track of the news about HootSuite.

News Roundup, translation HootSuite, hoottrans, Language, localization, Project, translate, translation, tris hussey

Companies are using HootSuite in all sorts of creative ways and we truly enjoy discovering the ways you utilize social media to effectuate business or organizational aims.

Recently, we heard about a hospital who live-Twittered a surgery. The objective was to help educate patients about medical issues as well as show their innovative use of the new media.

With help from the hospital’s Interactive Media Specialist Kelley O’Brien (@kelleyob), we crafted a brief case study to share the tips and tactics used for, “finding new ways to engage with patients.”

Description

A hospital demonstrated a commitment to innovation and patient education by live Twittering a surgical procedure direct from the operating room using HootSuite and Ow.ly.

This campaign included some unique challenges including ensuring patient comfort, uploading surgical photos in realtime and choosing a useful #hastag.

This case study prepared with High Point Regional Hospital in North Carolina (USA) explains the objectives behind the campaign and reasons why they chose HootSuite for the broadcast.

Additionally, the report outlines social media tactics used for connecting potential patients and medical staff for a conversation about health. Thanks to Interactive Media Specialist Kelley O’Brien.

More Studies

We’ll be creating more of these in the coming weeks and will keep them stashed on Slideshare. We will also continue to feature them in the Library section on the HootSuite Blog.

Do you have a great campaign or have you used HootSuite in an unusual and creative way? Great, let us know with a note to community (at) hootsuite (dot) com with a brief pitch and your expression of interest. We’ll then send you a questionnaire to help craft your story. We especially like stories which show measurable results, plus screenshots, photos, and other interesting elements to enhance the story.

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Cool hat club -- HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes and Tammy Camp

Replacing your RSS, one of the 20 sites to “Improve Your Twitter Experience,” and Blackberry excitement in Italy… all in a day’s work here at HootSuite HQ.

We truly enjoy seeing such great user created content about HootSuite and look forward to sharing your work with more fans. Thanks for your great work — consider adding your articles to our brand-new community forum.

Here’s a round-up of some recent accolades and tutorials and treats. As usual, keep an eye on all the HootSuite’s social bookmark stream and/or follow @hootwatch.

Tammy Camp - A Comprehensive Guide to HootSuite

HootSuite allows you to share add, edit, and share social network accounts, helping you manage your brand, or just helping you broadcast what you had for breakfast that day. If anything, unlike other aggregators, HootSuite is far more overwhelming than underwhelming.

It’s a beauty guidebook — thanks superstar Tammy!

Mashable – Top 20 Sites to Improve Your Twitter Experience

With its recent update and HTML5 support, social media dashboard HootSuite has become one of the most useful Twitter web applications not only for individual users, but teams managing several accounts. In some ways, HootSuite has the look and feel of TweetDeck with the big differentiator of it being a web-based application, not requiring any downloads.

It’s always a treat to be mentioned in Mashable — and we love their new short URLs too!

It’s Worth Noting – Replacing your RSS reader with Twitter + Hootsuite

We’re living in an age of information overload.  The difficulty isn’t finding information, but sifting through it to focus on what’s important and matters to you.

RSS feeds became commonplace several years ago and have been a great way to consolidate information sources using a RSS reader (e.g. Google Reader, iGoogle or even Outlook).  While these RSS readers served their purpose, if you’re looking for the most efficient way to sift through information or you’re just getting into this game, I suggest a Twitter + Hootsuite setup.

This is a great strategy — the RSS tool is a little bit under-known but so mighty when applied to a purpose. Cheers.

Wisnet.com – How to Connect Twitter and Facebook to HootSuite

HootSuite’s feature-rich application gives anyone the ability to post updates to their social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. This tool can be used by your business to manage multiple networks using one interface. HootSuite has many features including the ability to schedule tweets, add attachments, and shrink long web addresses so they fit nicely on Twitter – which is restricted to 140 characters.

Screenshot from: Wisnet.com - How to Connect Twitter and Facebook to HootSuite

Another great guide with excellent annotated screenshots covering a lot of material – wow!

BlackBerry Italia – Hootsuite, aperta la beta pubblica del client Twitter per palmari BlackBerry

Google translation: For those who do not know yet HootSuite essentially offers a suite of tools to manage their presence on Twitter and other social networks – like LinkedIn – and given the continuing growth of people using Twitter have thought to open enrollment to their free beta RIM BlackBerry handheld.

They are even excited about HootSuite for Blackberry in Italy — Grazie tanto!

Aubreandrus.com – Latest Social Media Obsession: HootSuite

But is it really that amazing? Yes. You can check your facebook, twitter, linked in, foursquare, and even WordPress blogs in one place. Again — all on ONE page. One log-in. One easy password.

Glad to hear you share our obsession with making amazing-ness.

Need More?

Keep an eye on all the HootSuite’s social bookmark stream and/or follow @hootwatch and be sure to let us know in the comments if there is a great article we’ve somehow missed.

News Roundup mashable, news round-up, News Roundup, rss, tammy camp, tips, tricks, tutorials

Wondering how the HootSuite social media dashboard can help your business or organization engage with social networks and web conversations? Great! We can help.

Check out this first-in-a-series HootSuite Info Sheet called “The Basics” — a brief document explaining the core tools in HootSuite including tactics for spreading messages, monitoring conversations, collaborating with teams, and tracking results. Additionally, this document points out the integrated social networks, plus shares a few noteworthy clients and methods to get more help.

“The Basics” ~ HootSuite Info Sheet #1 on Slideshare

Share these info sheets with your collegues, teams, managers, etc. by downloading or embedding from Slide Share. Keep an eye out for more to come and find the growing collection in the Library section of the HootSuite blog.

Info Sheets analytics, assignments, business, collaboration, Facebook, foursquare, HootSuite, LinkedIn, MySpace, social media, social web, socmedia, team, Twitter, Twitter for business, wordpress

Email and social media are both powerful marketing channels on their own but, when by using the best attributes of each medium, you can enjoy even more successful campaign results.

With this in mind, HootSuite and email marketing company Constant Contact have announced a co-marketing partnership which will inject a bit of social-bility into your email blasts — plus provide ways to augment your social media outreach tactics with targeted email messaging.

Certainly, marketers want access to as many tools as possible so we’re excited to announce this new relationship which will add a few more implements to your mighty tool kit.

The gist of the partnership is summed up in the press release’s tag line “Partnership Increases Reach of Two Industry Leaders; Extends Marketing and Social Media Tools to Meet Broad Customer Needs.”

Read the full release: HOOTSUITE JOINS THE CONSTANT CONTACT PARTNER PROGRAM AS A CO-MARKETING PARTNER

Here’s a quick overview of some of the benefits:

• This agreement provides HootSuite with a marketing channel to Constant Contact’s more than 350,000 small business and nonprofit customers.
• A co-branded landing page will create a custom gateway to Constant Contact’s services for HootSuite’s rapidly growing client base.
• HootSuite customers will have access Constant Contact’s archive of tools, expertise, and educational programs through a partner extranet.
• HootSuite will share revenue and can utilize Constant Contact’s online reporting tools and emailing services.

Ryan Holmes, HootSuite’s CEO, had this to say about the partnership in the release:

“We look forward to working with Constant Contact as a co-marketing partner to provide more methods for HootSuite customers to spread messages and grow audiences. With Constant Contact’s stellar reputation and vast experience, we’re very pleased to add this powerful partner to our team.”

You likely know about HootSuite so here’s a little about Constant Contact in case you haven’t tapped into their services yet:

Constant Contact’s email marketing, event marketing, social media marketing, and online survey tools help small organizations grow their businesses by building stronger customer relationships. More than 350,000 small businesses, nonprofits, and member associations worldwide rely on Constant Contact’s easy-to use, affordable online tools to create and deliver personalized, professional communications that engage casual customers, members, prospects, and passionate customers wherever they congregate online — from their email inboxes to their social networks. All Constant Contact products come with unmatched education, training and personal coaching services, and award-winning technical support. Founded in 1995, Constant Contact is a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: CTCT) with offices in Waltham, Mass.; Loveland, Colo.; and Delray, Fla.; and a Silicon Valley office scheduled to open in 2010.

To learn a bit more about Constant Contact check out their site and blog. Oh, and of course Constant Contact can also be found on Twitter @constantcontact and on Facebook plus a great blog Constant Commentary.  Read more about the co-partnership agreement from the press release and let us know ways you add a bit of social to your email marketing campaigns.

hootsuite news campaign, CEO, constant contact, email, HootSuite, marketing, news, partnership, ryan holmes, toolkits, tools

Argh HootSuite buccaneers! Here’s a fresh news round-up to share more “Social Owl” feedback and reviews, plus some tasty iPhone bits too.

To all of you who are spreading the HootSuite story — thanks! We enjoy reading your remarks and gathering your feedback to make HootSuite even ummm… hoot-ier.

We’ll keep the news round-ups coming in the days ahead but if you need more, check out HootSuite’s social bookmarks stream and/or follow @hootwatch for the first notices.

Now, here’s your fresh dossier:

The BizCATS – REVIEWS: HOOTSUITE – How to Manage Your Social Network Marketing

Tim McMahon – We’ve watched Hootsuite for some time as well as being an active user. One thing that’s impressive is that in their ultracompetitive product space, the company consistently brings out improvements and enhancements – even to the free version! Their latest announcement brings some great new features in the Social CRM arena that will be of real interest and value to many of us.

Macworld and PCWorld – HootSuite Adds Foursquare Integration, IOS 4 Support

HootSuite, an app aimed at Twitter and Facebook power users, now features Foursquare integration as well as support for iOS 4’s app switching features, thanks to an update by Hootsuite Media that arrived on the App Store this week. Version 1.1.5 of the iPhone app also promises performance boosts, and customizable re-sizing of fonts.

National Post – Amber Mac: Social Media for Authors – The Tools

Amber Mac was a recent guest presenter on a HootSuite U webinar. Amber had some great things to say about HootSuite is this article:

HootSuite – Don’t be fooled, social media does take time.  Fortunately, HootSuite can save you time.  What I love about this service is that you can use it to send a status update to multiple social networking sites at once.  For example, I use HootSuite to send a post to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter at the same time.  You can also use this tool to schedule messages, just in case you’re going on vacation or don’t want to forget a certain date, and it will allow you to measure your link traffic.

CalvinAyre.com – Why I’m switching from Tweetdeck to Hootsuite

With all of the noise in the Social Media space lately it is nice to see a company providing tools that simplify the needs of individuals and business. I look forward to using Hootsuite moving forward and seeing the company grow. I’m sure Invoke Media will be launching some more interesting tools and applications in the near future and I will be sure to cover them here on the Tablog.

Mobile Knots – Hootsuite for iPhone gets Foursquare Integration and iOS4 support

This update, which is applicable to both Hootsuite Lite (Free) and Hootsuite for iPhone ($2.99) includes the much requested Foursquare integration, customizable fonts re-sizing, ability to choose between twitter’s native RT style or the original RT style or both and support for iOS4 features like App Switching etc.

Cynthia Markets for Today – How I Love Hootsuite!

So with all this social media that I do for fun, how can I post all my information for all of you in an efficient and effective way to use my time wisely?  You guessed it:  my friend, Hootsuite. The best friend a social media strategist could have.

With Hootsuite, you can have more control over your content updates AND you can track click statistics with Hootsuite’s built in analytics.

More

Remember: check out HootSuite’s social bookmarks stream and/or follow @hootwatch for the first notices for all the news.

News Roundup elf owl, foursquare, hootsuit, hootsuite news, ios4, iPhone, News Roundup, social media

This Owl is Social

Another release from HootSuite? Yes, you heard us right. We have called this new release Social Owl and have added even more features to help manage your customer service, relationships, and filter by keyword and influence.

There are already some posts about Social Owl floating around so we thought that we would bring them to you.

Twittercism – HootSuite Adds Influence And Keyword Filters, User Insights And Announces Premium Paid Packages

Shéa Bennett writes: Some new updates from HootSuite today, which already was (in my opinion) the closest thing we have to a perfect Twitter client, and with each upgrade gets that little bit better. These new features – which the company has termed social relationship and support tools - aren’t going to change your world, but they’re welcome and for some users will have value.

Dannybrown.me – Hootsuite Just Took the Lead in Third Party Twitter Apps

Danny Brown writes: The company had already made a substantial update recently, with the introduction of HTML5 compatibility on its Twitter client. This update included site analytics via Google, geo-search options for local tweets, drag-and-drop image uploads and InstaLoad for better performance issues all round. Now, however, it’s upped its game considerably and offers the best Twitter experience for business and personal use.

Svartling – The best Twitter desktop client HootSuite Adds Customer Relationship and Support Tools

Svartling writes this all the way from Sweden: I’ve used Hootsuite for a long time now, and it gets better and better all the time. I’m a bit worried about the coming “premium” features though. Let’s hope the free version still will be good..

Note: Don’t worry about the free version Svartling. HootSuite will continue to be free for about 95% of users while the premium users will enjoy access to some extras like features, high limits and prioritized support — at a thirty price.

Website Magazine - Social Smarts and Hootsuite

Peter A. Prestipino writes: Social media dashboard Hootsuite unveiled some smarter, more social tools which aim to satisfy the blurred lines between marketing, support and technical messaging as Web users increasingly conduct their interactions across multiple channels.

More to Come

We’ll round up more news in the coming days. Don’t blink because there are more announcements coming up. Keep on hooting!

News Roundup CRM, filter, influence, insights, keyword, klout, News Roundup, social owl, Support, zendesk

Global Owl

HootSuite is truly an international social media dashboard and we love it that way. Why? Because we find fulfillment from seeing the actions and activities of users all over the world who are helping one another learn how to use the social web to spread messages to audiences from anywhere.

We’re working on providing more people a personalized experience in their own language with translation and localization on both iPhone and web versions for HootSuite which is exciting enough to celebrate on your vuvuzela.

While we keep working at our tasks, here’s a fresh news round-up with a sampling of what people are saying about HootSuite in their countries to peruse while you watch the finals of the FIFA World Cup — after which Twitter traffic may even return to “normal.”

The original posts are translated from the native languages using the wonders of Google Translate to give you the gist of what they say.

Let’s get going:

TwitterSmash (Germany) – HootSuite im Unternehmen

HootSuite in the company – This post comes from Germany and the author describes why they have chosen to use HootSuite. They go through the advantages (Vorteile) and disadvantages (Nachteile) of the social media dashboard. Danke for the feedback.

Descary.com (French Canadian) – HootSuite5, l’un des meilleurs tableaux de bord pour réseaux sociaux

HootSuite5, one of the best dashboards for social networks – Benoit Descary is from Montreal and writes that he wasn’t the biggest fan of HootSuite until the introduction of HootSuite5. He goes on to describe many of the new features in the HootSuite5 release and calls HootSuite “a true dashboard for social networks.” Merci Benoit!

Internet Watch (Japanese) – Twitterウェブクライアント「HootSuite」が日本語化、HTML5対応の新機能も

Twitter web client “HootSuite” of Japanese language , HTML5 support new features – Japanese users are excited about the localized version for their language and in this article, they extol the virtues of HTML 5 including “drag and drop” ability and improved performance along with the Japanese-i-fication.

Midia boom (Portuguese) – HootSuite | Nova interface em Html5 e recursos aprimorados para Redes Sociais

HootSuite | New interface and enhanced features in HTML5 for Social Networks – In this post, Chico Montenegro writes about some of the new features such as geo-location and themes from the HootSuite 5 update. We hope this is helpful for HootSuite fans in Brazil.

GeeksRoom (Spanish) – GeeksRoom Review: HOOTSUITE renovado: Lo bueno, lo maluco y lo pésimo

GeeksRoom Review: HootSuite renovated: The good and the bad – In this frank review of the HootSuite 5 update, Eduardo Wheeler writes that he likes the improved profile view, the themes, as well as the not so new scheduling feature.

Eduardo balances the good feedback with the bad and mentions a few other things that he would like to see improved. In the end, Eduardo remains a daily user and recommends HootSuite to professionals managing multiple social media accounts.

elNuevavodia (Spanish) – No dejes que la tecnología te esclavice

Do not let technology enslave you – In this provocatively titled post, Leanne Italie shares life-hacking productivity tips from former Google exec and congnitive scientist Douglas C. Merrill incuding using HootSuit to manage your social interactions so they don’t get out of control and control your day. Not much about HootSuite but interesting nonetheless.

TechVibes – Hootsuite’s Vorsprung durch Technik

Techically written in English but TechVibes’ Jeffery Simpson has some fun with Google Translate in writing about HootSuite’s localization: Forgive Babel Fish’s shoddy German, but it just did not feel right to title a post about the addition of localization support to Twitter manager extraordinaire HootSuite without at least trying to make it multilingual.  Localization support for Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and German joins the previous translation services that the application offered in its last update.

More HootSuite

Remember, you can catch all the HootSuite news via the social bookmark stream and/or by following @hootwatch for the full firehose feed of media mentions.

News Roundup french, german, HootSuite, international, japan, news, news round-up, translate, Twitter

This time around, the news round-up finds some new developments in business, partnerships and politics with dispatches from California to the Kremlin (well Washington DC anyhow).

As usual, catch all the HootSuite news via the social bookmark channel and/or follow @hootwatch for the firehose feed.

Aria Systems – HootSuite Selects Aria Systems to Monetize Twitter and Other Social Media

The folks over at Aria Systems issued a press release via wire and blogpost today talking about impending partnership plans with HootSuite.

HootSuite recognized an opportunity to develop recurring revenue streams for premium features and services that provide additional value on top of HootSuite’s core free client. HootSuite needed a revenue automation platform that supported a “freemium” business model, provided secure payment card handling and immediate service activation for paying customers, as well as automation for downstream billing and collections processes.

Given HootSuite’s historical agility and rapid evolution, the company also recognized that they needed a “future-proof” monetization platform that could enable their current model while providing complete flexibility for the future. Finally, the system had to integrate easily with HootSuite’s backoffice accounting systems. HootSuite chose Aria after reviewing several SaaS billing alternatives.

Great Aria! We look forward to seeing what we can come up with together with the SaaS.

The Atlantic Wire – Twitter Brings White House, Kremlin Together

You probably caught the news of the Russian President’s foray to Silicon Valley to visit entrepreneurs and execs from Google, Apple, and Twitter who helped him set up his own account. Of course, in true diplomatic fashion, the White House replied to the Kremlin’s translated tweet and chose (the Canadian made) HootSuite to deliver the tidings.

On Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev toured the headquarters of Twitter. Besides having a fruitful cultural exchange with Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, he also fired off his first tweet.

You can keep up with both Russian President Medvedev’s English Twitter as well as The Whitehouse Twitter.

The Washington Post – Obama discovers ‘Twitters’ …

Of course each word from the White House is monitored whether by mouth or by web and this Twitter exchange was no exception with the pundits piling on the gaffe. Mixing Twitter and Hooters to get HootSuite? Well, not exactly but we encourage all politicos to use the tool no matter their command of the lexicon.

Twitters? This sounded like either a nervous condition or a cross between Twitter and Hooters. Actually, there already is a cross between Twitter and Hooters: It’s called HootSuite — from which Sharron Angle, the tea party celebrity hoping to dethrone Harry Reid in Nevada, tweeted this on Thursday: “We have now passed Harry Reid in number of Facebook friends on our “sharronforsenate” page! Let’s keep this growing!”

Who says great political oratory is dead?

Confused? This video shows the usually loquacious President Obama fumbling name of the almost-ubigitous micro-update tool for the amusement of geekerati everywhere:

(video)

Video posted by CQblogger

BIV Business Today – Ryan Holmes Profile

Speaking of Presidents, The HootSuite CEO was profiled in Business in Vancouver newspaper in an interesting article about HootSuite’s origins and direction.

Curt Cherewayko writes: The success of Invoke and other ventures on Holmes’ entrepreneurial scoresheet suggests that HootSuite will be another innovative online revenue generator to emerge from the funky work-play space in Gastown that Holmes and the Invoke-HootSuite team call headquarters. {snip}

The company is attaching a “freemium” model to the service in July, which means that users will be still be able to use HootSuite freely but will have to pay for additional bronze, silver and gold standard services offered within it.

“HootSuite has big potential in terms of the amount of traffic it’s pushing,” said Holmes from an Invoke boardroom down the hall from the head office he shares with his dog.

He explained that HootSuite, which manages one million social media accounts for about 400,000 unique users, will try to monetize the 3% to 5% of accounts that are most active.

Those accounts are generally owned by large brands from the media and retail space including Conde Nast, AOL, Banana Republic and Dell.

They use HootSuite to dig up analytics about, and to monitor and add to, the larger conversation in the social networking spheres of Twitter and, more recently, Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Those people are thoroughly entrenched,” said Holmes.

“The free users will either always stay free or they’ll at some point find some features that are worthwhile for them to upgrade to.”

WSJ.com – How Twitter and Facebook Can Get You Better Service At Hotels

The Wall Street Journal shares some tactics for hotels helping guests. In this example, the manager of a Marriott Hotel in Orlando uses HootSuite for real-time monitoring of guest sentiment as well as prospecting for new customers. The nuances of the job are illustrated in this comic strip:

Sarah Nassauer writes: At the Orlando World Center Marriott, Mr. Long and Ms. Pribila track what is said about their 2,000-room hotel every day, and often into the night.

One recent afternoon, Mr. Long peered at the computer in his small windowless office and opened up HootSuite, a program that lets users organize the millions of comments passing through Twitter at any given moment. He scanned the lists he has permanently set up on the software: current guests, past guests, people tweeting about Orlando hotels (so he can send notes to try to drum up business.), people tweeting about his specific hotel, and people tweeting about a conference currently at the resort. He checks HootSuite at least once an hour on his iPhone, often glancing at it while roaming the sprawling resort dotted with palm trees.

Via the hotel’s @TheFrontDesk account on Twitter, he and Ms. Pribila chat with future, current, and past guests. They answer questions and confront complaints. Then Mr. Long moves on to FourSquare, a website where people can use their mobile device to broadcast their physical location to friends, known as “checking in” at a location. “We monitor these people as well,” says the 28-year-old.

Small windowless office? Sounds like Mr. Long needs a room upgrade! PS We’ll be down to visit if summer doesn’t arrive here soon!

More HootSuite

Remember, you keeners can catch all the HootSuite news via the social bookmark channel and/or by following @hootwatch for the full firehose feed.

News Roundup customer service, Entrepreneur, Facebook, Hotels, Medvedev, monetization, Obama, SaaS, Twitter, Twitters, Whitehouse

Indeed, there are a several other companies building tools for publishing to Twitter and other social media publishing platforms. And of course, each has a distinct focus, feature-set, and an audience of enthusiasts.

While we concentrate on building tools to help spread messages, monitor conversations and track results, several sites have put HootSuite head-to-head with other social tools to give the tale of the tape.

We’ve dug up a few recent (and one older) comparisons to share… kicking it off with a fun one which is a few months old, but worth the wait:

FlowTown: If Twitter Clients Were Action Stars

What would Chuck Norris do if he had to take down some chumps in a new and unfamiliar landscape? He would march in like he’s been there a million times and take care of the job. And then he’d tweet about it…undoubtedly via HootSuite. Similarly, HootSuite runs entirely online, allowing you to manage your networks with ease and style no matter where you happen to be and whatever Internet-connected operating system you are using.

ZDNet: CoTweet vs. HootSuite: Battle of the business Twitter apps

Who wins this battle? It’s really a tough call, as neither is a silver bullet in its current form. In the end, however, I need to recommend HootSuite as the free Twitter business application of choice. Its intuitive analytics, customizable dashboard, ability to integrate other social networks, and tweet management are overall superior to that of CoTweet.

Nate Bal: The Difference Between TweetDeck, HootSuite And Seesmic

Different programs = different features. Though all of these programs are real-time browsers that connect you with your contacts across multiple social networks they don’t necessarily have all the same features. See the graph below.

Nate Bal: The Difference Between TweetDeck, HootSuite And Seesmic

Articles Base: Social Oomph Or Hootsuite Is The Question!

After some in depth comparisons of Social Oomph and Hootsuite I decided that the following features were the best to bring  up on both programs: Social Oomph or Hootsuite will both do what you want them to manage your Twitter account and automate it for you.

Dragon Blogger: Comparing HootSuite to TweetDeck

Keep in mind that Tweetdeck is an Adobe Air application that installs on your desktop while Hootsuite is a completely web based application that doesn’t need to install so this leads to some difference from how the applications work. So without further chatter, I present to you the pros and cons of both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck and you can decide which works best for your needs.

Stephanie Burt: Product Review: Tweetdeck vs. Hootsuite

For me, the clear winner is Hootsuite. My multiple account management started in Tweetdeck, but I feel its more for users that have one or two account to manage. In Hootsuite, the ability to preschedule tweets/status updates alone is a lifesaver. Its an everything, but the kitchen sink type of product, which gets my 100% support. Now only if it really did the dishes.

Baby Boomer Entreprenuer: A Review of Hootsuite as compared with TweetDeck

I mostly like Hootsuite and will probably keep using it, but I don’t think I’ll give up Tweetdeck entirely, if for no other reason than to keep up with new followers. I think it’s easier to update my Facebook profile and page from Hootsuite and I really like the schedule later feature.

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