Smart and Social — HootSuite Adds Social Relationship and Support Tools

HootSuite is ready to help businesses socially manage campaigns and offer assistance — all from one dashboard.

The line between customer relationship management, technical support and promotional messaging is blurring as customers seek and expect interactions across multiple channels. HootSuite’s newest update adds tools to help learn about your audience and engage them with the information they desire.

Social CRM

Filter by Influence

Drill down into your network by filtering columns by influence score. Sorting by Klout‘s algorithmically-produced score allows you to learn which followers and contacts enjoy the widest reach. Ideal for quickly identifying campaign candidates or response priority.

Filter by Keyword

Too many messages to sort through? No problem. Filter your columns on-the-fly by keyword. Type in your desired word to remove the extraneous updates and focus on what’s on your mind. Ideal for tracking topics and prospecting for clients.

Filter columns by influence score or keyword

Follower Insights

Get to know your network with the knowledge behind the “Insights” tab. Learn where your contacts hang-out online including publicly available links to social profiles, a collection of images, even occupations and title — all in one view.

Hoot to Zendesk Support

Where does social networking end and tech support begin? It doesn’t matter since Twitter updates can now become track-able tickets directly in the popular help desk app, Zendesk. This integration helps streamline your customer service and ensure quality responses.

Organization View

Since HootSuite released Team Collaboration tools, many users have added extensive networks. Now managing your colleagues is easier thanks to a new view which shows your contacts on each network, along with a simple way to add more team members.

Organize your teams and networks

Next Up, Premium Paid Packages

From enterprises to start-ups, HootSuite is pleased to help businesses and organizations reach out to spread messages, monitor conversations and track results. As you may know, we’re excited about releasing paid plans in the coming weeks.

Keep in mind, HootSuite will remain free for an estimated 95% of users based on current usage patterns. Meanwhile, premium users will enjoy access to extra features, high limits and prioritized support.

We’ll release details in the coming weeks but to preview, the paid plans will offer:

* Unlimited social networks
* Unlimited RSS feeds
* Team members on social networks
* Advanced analytics & reports
* Expedited support

Thanks to all of you who completed the HootSuite survey — we are committed to offering top quality tools for all types of users and apprecaite your participation.

Author: Dave Olson

Dave Olson has written 108 posts for the HootSource blog..

VP Community at HootSuite finding Owls everywhere and bringing them into our social programs. Also enjoy hotsprings, personal expression, art n crafts and literature.

No related posts.

Comments

  1. Jeremy A. Williams July 13, 2010 at 5:45 am

    These look like more great upgrades Hootsuite! I love the user Insights panel!

  2. A July 13, 2010 at 5:53 am

    I’m searching for and hoping you built a way to opt-out or delete available information. I have profiles listed for accounts that I thought I deleted. And I have accounts that I have for professional and personal use. Seeing them all together is not OK with me.

    Please Hootsuite, be smart about this. Otherwise, I see this as the next Google Buzz/Facebook privacy debacle. Hootsuite has a smaller user base, but I still see lots of upset.

    • A July 13, 2010 at 10:20 am

      All the comments here have been addressed except for mine. Interesting. Yes, Insights is “amazing” but it’s a bad move if you don’t offer control.

      • Dave Olson July 13, 2010 at 10:48 am

        Stand by, we’re just getting a Help Desk article post ready which explains the process to remove yourself. Alas, its either all info or no info at this point.

        • Rick July 13, 2010 at 1:05 pm

          Good, will be waiting for for the info to remove this information.

        • Steve July 13, 2010 at 1:52 pm

          100% agree with A. My personal and professional online personalities should not be linked with control.

        • Steve July 13, 2010 at 1:56 pm

          *without.

        • A July 13, 2010 at 2:29 pm

          Great! I am happy to be without any info. It blows my mind that Hootsuite would release this feature without giving a warning. Or without simultaneously giving a Help Desk article on how to opt-out. My conclusion is that it was part of the strategy. Release it. Cause a bit of a convtrovery. Get new users who want to see what their profile says. Then tell them how to get out of it.

          I’ve always thought of myself as savvy about privacy and separation of professional/personal. I’ve been careful to use my “fun” Twitter stream free of direct work references or too much revealing info. But I’ve also enjoyed the freedom of keeping it open to public. This was a good lesson for me in how that separation can be so quickly broken by careless tactics by companies.

          I think in the interest of gaining back our trust, Hootsuite should provide more detail on what they used to comb for our data. And no, I don’t think that having a profile on match.com is considering public info. Nor is having registration info on several sites, such as costco.com.

          I can see the benefits of the Insight tab for companies using Hootsuite, especially those paying a lot for the soon-to-be launched pro edition. And I really hope that going pro doesn’t mean they got to see the info of the people who opted out.

        • Declan July 14, 2010 at 12:37 pm

          Any news yet on the release of an opt out option for Follower Insights?

          • Dave Olson July 14, 2010 at 4:32 pm

            We will have an opt-out form in the next day or two — just waiting on a bit of info to compete the form and tool. Thanks for your patience, we are working diligently to effectuate this change.

      • Rick July 14, 2010 at 12:01 pm

        It has now been 24 hours and no help desk article has been posted yet. This is a very poorly implemented feature that has put a lot of people who try to have some separation between work and life in general and this “Feature” has violated just that.

        Maybe it’s time to get EPIC and EFF involved in this.

    • laura July 13, 2010 at 2:00 pm

      I second that request, I’m very interested in learning how to remove some of these Insight associations as well. Don’t be another Facebook please. I’d be perfectly fine with a “Disable Insight” option, don’t need granular control or anything.

      • Apocalypso Facto July 13, 2010 at 8:52 pm

        “I’ve been careful to use my “fun” Twitter stream free of direct work references or too much revealing info. But I’ve also enjoyed the freedom of keeping it open to public. This was a good lesson for me in how that separation can be so quickly broken by careless tactics by companies.” —> +1
        I’m really baffled to just having realized my employer’s name and occupation is out there for anyone to see… Twitter is not Linked.in!
        Please, give us the option to opt out from this “insights” feature, at least until we get some control on it.

  3. Edgar Sánchez July 13, 2010 at 6:12 am

    Hi there,

    1. HootSuite will remain free for an estimated 95% of users based on current usage patterns. // Do you mean that you will charge Heavy users although it´s not a commercial account??

    2. Follower Insights

    Get to know your network with the knowledge behind the “Insights” tab. Learn where your contacts hang-out online including publicly available links to social profiles, a collection of images, even occupations and title — all in one view // How do you get these data? How is that for some of my followers I can see several social profiles + pictures + links to the company website where they work and I only see my FB profile as Insight in my account? Do you use APIs for these? Could you clarify?

    BR

    @edgar_sanchez

    • Dave Olson July 13, 2010 at 9:48 am

      thanks Edgar,

      1) We’ll pricing tiers will be based on factors like number of social networks, number of team members, number of RSS feeds and support needs regardless of commercial nature or not

      2) This info is pulled via an API and we don’t control the data per se. The data displayed is the publicly available info pulled via this API so some people will have a lot of info, others will have little or none or even incomplete info.

  4. Elena Baxter July 13, 2010 at 6:50 am

    I think this is great – I love hootsuite. I am confused, though… is this a paid plan?

  5. Hannah July 13, 2010 at 7:08 am

    Is there a step by step guide to integrate Hootsuite and Zendesk? I’ve been digging around but can’t find anything obvious to link them up…?

  6. Sterling July 13, 2010 at 7:13 am

    I love hootsuite… these new features look really cool. I want to know more about the Social CRM.

  7. Lori Henely July 13, 2010 at 8:23 am

    I am an entrepreneur who has specialized in the hospitality industry. I’ve utilized websites to drive business since 2004!

    HootSuite is GREAT! My success in any business venture has always been relationship based offer free services with passion of “what can I do for you?”
    HootSuite now makes it even faster & easier for me to give more in 2010 with the same 24 hours we all had in 2004.
    “No such thing as time-management, only events-management”
    Thank you HootSuite and keep up the good development work and offerings.
    Lori

  8. Kelly Marsh July 13, 2010 at 8:59 am

    I’m new to hootsuite and love it. Thanks for the great free tool!

  9. Jesse Doogan July 13, 2010 at 9:06 am

    Can you clarify what you mean by “team members on social networks”?
    Does this mean that team-managing Twitter will become a paid option?

    Otherwise, I love the changes. Hootsuite has pretty much become Twitter for me. It’s a great service. Keep up the good work!

  10. Alvaro Pereyra July 13, 2010 at 9:46 am

    It clearly seems like an improvement for the best. However, I’m a bit concern on privacy issues.

    Sure, the Insight tab gathers publicly available information, but I’d like to have some control (what sources, and if I want or not to be a part of it).

    Is there any capacity built right now to adjust such measures?

  11. Afkarweb July 13, 2010 at 10:12 am

    Cool,
    was already using hootsuite a lot… and as a community manager I understand the extras (advantages and prices) you’re offering… Thanks!

  12. Cheryl July 13, 2010 at 11:08 am

    this all looks very good. im looking forward to downloading these updates, although im still trying to work out how to get the updates from before. help? :) Thanks

    Cheryl

  14. RC Lations July 13, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    As we move closer to legitimate social media CRM solutions, you guys are doing a fantastic job of pushing us there. Thank you for streamlining my work week.

  15. Kevin E. Schlabach July 13, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    I like the new filter by keyword functionality… but I also want the reverse (an “anti-filter”)… I monitor certain keywords, but want to remove the tweet that’s been RT’d by 500 people today because it went viral. I need to see the other stuff, but the noise sometimes gets in the way!

    • laura July 13, 2010 at 2:04 pm

      Same here! List filters would be great, would’ve loved to have all the World Cup, iPhone 4, and Lebron James tweets removed from my streams last week.

  16. Hisham July 13, 2010 at 7:46 pm

    The information on the Insight tab is wrong for me and contains dead or no longer active accounts that were deleted months (or years) ago in some cases. How do we go about contacting the people behind this “API” so we can get this information updated and/or removed. In some cases, the wrong information can be damaging to our reputation because we didn’t choose to have the information put there nor does the insight tab doesn’t mention the information may contain errors because it is automatically collected.

    While I can see the idea behind the Insight tab being useful, it would be far more prudent to let us decide what information we’d like to include. Until this can be implemented I would like all the information on the Insight tab removed from my account and I’m sure others would concur.

  17. Jim Shankle July 14, 2010 at 4:11 am

    Very impressive drill-down capabilities. Love the “local option” Curios though – how wide is the net from my location? Can it be adjusted to cover a larger/smaller area? Great product.

  18. Kapil Apshankar July 14, 2010 at 9:24 am

    Dave and the HootSuite team –

    The new HootSuite rocks! Loving it, and am sold on what it means for me and my social media interactions.

    I ran a featured post on HootSuite on Social Media Notebook this morning, talking about why I am raving about it.

    Two things though –
    1. I am not sure of what the premium and paid accounts will bring to the table when they come – and what they will take away from me.
    2. I thought the $2.99 price point for the iPhone app was a bit surprising shift from the default 0.99$ pricing. I’m pretty sure the price delta isn’t contributing to revenue in a big way, but might definitely get in the way of adoption.

  19. Rob Bell July 14, 2010 at 10:23 am

    My first experience of the Insights tab, as I imagine most people’s will be – clicking on myself. Apparently I am no longer Rob Bell of Wakefield, England, I am now Abhishek Porwal from New Delhi, India with all his networks and information.

    Can I suggest there might be a problem with Insight?

    • Rob Bell July 14, 2010 at 10:29 am

      trying out a few more ‘Insights’ on celebrities in my list, comedienne Sarah Silverman is now Eric Katowitz from California, director Kevin Smith is Amanda Campos, British comedian Russell Brand is now Natalie Johnstone.

      It doesn’t seem very accurate… certainly not Gist!

    • Dave Olson July 14, 2010 at 10:47 am

      Hello Abhishek err … Rob,

      Yes you may suggest that ;-).

  20. bunnyhero July 14, 2010 at 9:02 pm

    filtering by a single company’s idea of “influence” seems dubious to me, possibly even offensive.

  21. Meucci Cam July 15, 2010 at 10:10 am

    Any word on an opt out for the Insight tab yet?

    • Meucci Cam July 15, 2010 at 11:15 am

      Actually I suppose I can just close out my HootSuite account since there is still no fix for this. Too bad it was a nice site while it lasted.

      • Apocalypso Facto July 15, 2010 at 8:16 pm

        That’s an option I’m truly considering now… that “opt-out” solution hasn’t solved anything yet, I’m seeing my professional and Web2.0 info all mixed up in there.
        Do I have to make my Twitter profile closed in order to prevent the Insights tab from showing my personal info? What a shame…

  22. anon July 15, 2010 at 3:42 pm

    Any word on setting up an opt out for insights? Or at least control over what is shown?

  23. Jack July 16, 2010 at 12:09 am

    I’m form the Eu, The Netehrlands to be precise. We have here a lot of activity with Xing, Ecademy and Hyves when do we have the opportunity to integrate them in our Hootsuite?Hope soon we love it here also. gr Jack

  24. Dave Olson July 19, 2010 at 11:05 am

    UPDATE:

    We’ve added an easy way to opt-out of the Insights tool so your data will not be shown within HootSuite. Please follow the steps detailed at: http://ow.ly/2dxFn

    In brief, click on your personal profile card > choose the Insights tab > click “What’s This?” > click Opt-out > confirm Opt-out

    Your data be instantly removed from HootSuite.