HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

Big times here at HootSuite HQ as I arrived in the office yesterday and jumped right in with the ace team of developers and designers. No relaxing after the big announcement around here – instead the crew is on full throttle to continually improve the beloved social media dashboard.

But I’m not the only new face around here – over the coming weeks, I’ll introduce you to the versatile bunch who are diligently evolving HootSuite into what YOU want it to be (probably anyhow ).

I’m DaveO, Say Hello

Rather than introduce myself awkwardly in third-person, here’s what TechVibes published yesterday:

Dave Olson joins HootSuite as Community Director

“One week after announcing that they raised $1.9 Million from VCs and Angels, HootSuite is putting that money to work and have hired Dave Olson as their new Community Director.

Olson will be responsible for overseeing marketing, outreach, and support for HootSuite and already has a number of educational and aspirational campaigns planned to evangelize the social media dashboard to content makers.

Olson was an early user of the initial Bright Kit tool and has actively used HootSuite for promoting his own projects – so this appears to be a perfect fit on both sides.”

Naturally, you can follow me on Twitter @daveohoots ~ ping me with your ideas for outreach and community building activities (and yeah, I tend a blog called Ephemeral Feasthouse). Of course for support-centric inquiries, please use HootSuite Support on Get Satisfaction and follow @hootsuite_help.

Creating Content Compulsively

I truly enjoy creating and publishing content to an audience using web tools – and I enjoy teaching others how to share their musing and creations with like-minded enthusiasts the world over (perhaps you’ve caught my shtick at SXSW, Northern Voice, WordCamp Whistler or various media outlets?)

Since my earliest days, I’ve created fanzines, newsletters, chapbooks and audio programs. When I “discovered” the web living on the island of Guam in 1995, my jaw dropped as I learned anyone can post words and pictures, in color, for free or cheap. The next day, I began publishing my essays, stories and collections on the web and never looked back. A barrage or citizen reporting, podcast documentaries and a Twitter stream-of-consciousness all followed suit.

In previous professional incarnations, I’ve used HootSuite as, well … a user, so in my brief tenure, I’ve shared ideas about features, tune-ups and tweaks to add even more functionality. Stay tuned for more frequent announcements about what’s changing, plus I’ve learned a few new tricks which I’ll share in the coming months.

What’s on Tap?

On this blog channel, look forward to a variety of helpful discourse about enjoying this powerful paradigm where “regular folks” can have impact world events and share musings from recipes to revolutions.
Case Studies – analysis and knowledge sharing about unique HootSuite-powered social campaigns
Featured Users - all sorts of people and orgs are Hooting ~ from governments to rock bands ~ we wanna tell their stories
Tips and Tricks - think you know it all? betcha we can show you features and tactics you haven’t found yet – or perhaps will you show us?
Webinars – want to exchange experience and best practices about campaigns? great, we’ll schedule online sessions to discuss & teach
Meets the Owls - the devs behind the screens are the unsung heroes of tech-centric companies – we’ll introduce the folks who makes your tools
On the Road - with financing and a growing user base, we’re traveling to conferences and events to extol the HootSuite message ~ and meet the true believers

How do you Hoot?

I get a thrill from coming across projects using HootSuite in ways I’d never thought about before. Are you doing something unique and innovative with HootSuite? Are you running social-media-powered campaigns using HootSuite? Working for social change at a NPO/NGO? Maybe you are a record label managing multiple bands and fans? Drop me a note to share your kung-fu with the HootSuite nation.

Photo Credits:

Dave Olson in old-timey hat by kk+ Flickr
Dave Olson at WordCamp Whistler by Ianiv in Flickr

hootsuite news community director, community manager, community wrangler, dave olson, daveolson, HootSuite, hootsuite news, hootsuite staff, meet the owls

You asked for it… and here it is: We just introduced Ping.fm integration on HootSuite.com.

What’s Ping.fm? Think of it as your social network glue.

A Ping.fm account lets you send a single update to multiple networks simultaneously: Facebook, Wordpress, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more. And now you’re able to send those updates through HootSuite to take advantage of scheduling, clickthrough stats, and all the sweet goodness HootSuite has to offer.

Here’s how it works:

1) Sign up for Ping.fm:

2) Hook all your social networks up to Ping.fm:

(Don’t worry about adding your Twitter account to Ping.fm — HootSuite will handle your Twitter updates.)

3) Add some custom triggers to Ping.fm, if you like.

Triggers let you specify a subset of social network accounts that you’d like to post to. For example, you could create a trigger called “status” and have that trigger only send updates to Facebook and GTalk, for example.


4) In HootSuite, as an admin, click on “Settings.” At the bottom of the “Account” tab, you’ll see a Ping.fm section.


5) Paste in your application key, and add a trigger if you like. (If you leave the trigger field blank, it’ll try to send to all your Ping.fm networks.)

6) Choose which Twitter profiles should send data to Ping.fm.

…And that’s it! Any tweets sent from the selected Twitter profiles will be sent to Ping.fm.

This is an early release of this feature, and we’re super excited about the possibilities.

A few things to be aware of:

* DMs are not sent to Ping.fm. Any tweets starting with “d username” or “dm username” are considered DMs.

* Any RSS feeds you’ve set up in HootSuite will not be sent to Ping.fm. This helps us avoid issues where a Ping.fm-enabled blog is linked via RSS to HootSuite, which sends to Ping.fm, which sends to HootSuite… eventually destroying the Internet.

* Your tweets are sent to Twitter by HootSuite, then sent to Ping.fm. If you have your Twitter account linked to Ping.fm, don’t worry — we won’t send to any Twitter accounts linked through Ping.fm. This helps avoid duplicate postings.

* We’re not currently parsing the tweet itself for triggers. Ping.fm’s API requires triggers and message text sent separately. Rather than worry about parsing on our end, you’ll need to set up a trigger through the Settings page if you want to use one.

We’ve already got some ideas about how we might improve Ping.fm integration… here are a few things we’re considering:

1. Allowing you to select a trigger for each tweet — so you can more easily control where your messages are going on a per-tweet basis.
2. Allowing you to set up multiple Ping.fm keys (for example, if certain Twitter profiles should send updates to one Ping.fm account, and others should send updates to another).
3. More-better-izing. =)

Your feedback is, as always, much appreciated!

Twitter, features, hootsuite news, social media hootsuite news, ping.fm