HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

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.

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While in Toronto for Sprout Up, HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes sat down with Karim Kanji of Tech Vibes to deliver his insight about the SXSW experience, Vancouver’s start-up community, how HootSuite got started, and what the company is working on next.

Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite – Interview with Karim Kanji of Techvibes

As a bonus, check out this guest appearance by Dave Olson, HootSuite’s Community Marketing Director again by Karim Kanji.

A HootSuite shout-out to Karim Kanji for these great interviews.

hootsuite news business, dave olson, HootSuite, hootsuite news, interviews, Invoke, karim kanji, news, ryan holmes, SXSW, techvibes, uncleweed, video

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

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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!

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