Using HootSuite to grow your business and collaborate with teams is an easy way to maximize your social media efforts. The dashboard is chock full of features and tools to help you make the most of your social media management. Plus, we’re always adding more.To help get you acquainted with the various functionalities, or just give you a refresher, we have a new #HootTip all about a handy HootSuite feature.
Adding a Team Member
Expanding your business can be exciting and hectic at the same time. Every self-starter knows how difficult it can be to manage all your tasks and prioritize your needs. To streamline your social media campaigns, you need help dividing tasks and focusing on what you do best. We all know, two Owls are better than one.
In this #HootTip we’ll show you how easy it is to add a team member to any of your social profiles, and collaborate with them using HootSuite. Read more…
Reach the next level of social media management with HootSuite’s newest publishing tools: Publisher views, Limited Permissions and Profile Picker.
Social Media Scheduling
HootSuite was the first social media tool to offer message scheduling, now with the new publisher tool, you can plan your updates with greater ease. Slice and dice the destination profiles for each message and drag-and-drop your updates into timeslots to match your editorial plans.
While the whole power of daily/weekly/monthly calendar view is available with Pro and Enterprise plans, everyone can take the advanced scheduling functionality for a spin to see how calendar views can manage complex campaigns.
HootSuite Publisher Calendar View
This publisher tool takes the place of the former Pending Tweets column – to get started, click the paper airplane in the Launch Bar and plan (and edit) your posts across networks.
Limited for Control
Have an intern who’s not quite ready to take the reins to your corporate social profiles? With new Limited Profiles, Enterprise teams can prevent gaffes and stay on course with a “read & draft” account.
With this designation, your collaborating interns, contractors and new recruits can share search streams and compose messages, but are limited from broadcasting directly to valuable corporate profiles. Instead, drafts are held for approval in the calendar view until a qualified Team Member pushes to the send queue. It’s ideal for ensuring accurate and appropriate updates. This feature is the latest in a swath of social media security features added to the dashboard.
Smarter Selections
Increase your publishing IQ by selecting profiles – one, several or all – in the new Publisher view with a convenient auto-complete text field for broadcasting messages.
Save time by creating a list of favorite profiles which are ready at a single click plus select your frequently updated account as a default. You’ll feel like a genius with all the time you save.
Articles with Answers
The diligent Support Owls have updated the Help Desk with operational articles about these tools. Wing by for screenshots and step-by-steps about your new tools. Have more ideas? Share your thoughts or vote up other suggestions on the HootSuite Feedback Channel.
(La versión en español de este artículo, la encontrarás más abajo)
HootSuite is a powerful tool for large teams and organizations managing multiple contributors. But it’s also a valuable resource for small teams with a lot of social networking on their hands.
To illustrate this scenario, we have a new Case Study fresh from Spain. Find out how Play Television used HootSuite to successfully manage real time audience engagement in a unique experience called the Twittersodios.
HootSuite is pleased to announce the release of the all new Secure Profiles feature – a tool designed to prevent high-profile brands from accidentally posting personal updates from valuable corporate profiles.
Slide to Protect
The integrity of your messaging is crucial to your brand’s reputation. This is especially true online where errant messages can be picked up and re-broadcast to a world-wide audience before you realize the message even exists. But in this fast-paced, always-online business climate, mistakes can be made — and this is a concern for large brands with multiple social media contributors.
Now you can get in front of PR conundrums before they even occur. HootSuite Secure Profiles have been designed specifically for organizational teams so that:
Account owners can designate chosen social profiles as “Secure”
Team members are prompted to confirm or cancel messages before sending
Secure Profiles are available on web (iPhone, Android and Blackberry available shortly)
Message Mishaps
When you’re dealing with humans, mistakes are inevitable. Even the most experienced and fine-tuned social media teams can find themselves spending valuable time and resources to undo or deflect split-second mishaps.
A team member who isn’t paying attention might accidentally select the wrong profile to publish their personal message to. Before you know it, you could have a Tweet expressing views on anything from driving skills to drinking preferences which may not be reflective of your brand.
This tool was built in response to incidents in which personal messages were broadcast over official brand accounts including @ChryslerAutos, @redcross and @marcjacobsintl. Each of these unique situations caused marketplace confusion and affected brand sentiment – and they were all preventable.
While some of these errant updates were elegantly mitigated, in each case, HootSuite’s security-focused tools could have prevented the distracting media attention.
We’ve closely watched the recent stories about unintended Tweets and wanted to help companies prevent social media mishaps. With HootSuite’s Team Provisioning and Secure Profiles tool, organizations can continue using social media to promote their brand confidently while maintaining a high degree of security.”
– Ryan Holmes, HootSuite CEO
Enterprise-Ready Security
The value of using social media to broadcast messages, engage audiences and monitor your brand online is immense. The social web is an incredible forum for building community and brand awareness, so ensure that your efforts are not undone by simple mistakes.
The Secure Profiles feature is available exclusively as part of HootSuite’s Enterprise plan. Designed for large organizations with multiple team members, the Enterprise plan includes access to comprehensive tools to monitor, engage and measure your social media ROI. Visit hootsuite.com/enterprise to schedule a free personal demo with the @HootBusiness team.
Social Advice
To help maximize your social media efforts, visit our growing library for an Info Sheet entitled Social Media Security. This one is all about using HootSuite’s many team security functions. You’ll also find many other helpful Info Sheets and Case Studies that outline examples of using social smartly.
(Si prefieres leer en español, ve un poco más abajo)
The HootSuite nest includes owls from around the world, and thanks to our Translation Project, we’ve localized in several languages including Japanese, French and Italian.
This means you can hoot in your language of choice, from Montreal to Milan and beyond. And with your help, there are more translations to come. Spanish is almost complete, which language will be next?
We even have our very own internation-owls here at HootSuite HQ. As a result, you can find many Info Sheets and Case Studies in our Library translated to both Spanish and Japanese — two of our largest growing international communities.
Localized Learning
Well, Hoot-Fans, today we are thrilled to release our very first, fully-localized Case Study, all about @marca’s success using HootSuite.
And since this Case Study was born out of the Spanish-speaking community, we’ve got a special dual-language post for you today!
So read on, in both Spanish and English, to find out how MARCA, the largest sports-news media outlet in Spain, used HootSuite to build their community, increase one-on-one engagement with their audience and gain trust as the premier news source for sports.
En nuestro nido habitan búhos de todo el mundo y, gracias al Translation Project, HootSuite está traducido completamente al japonés, francés e italiano para que puedas ulular como quieras desde Montreal hasta Milán. Además, con tu ayuda, muchos otros idiomas llegarán pronto. El español está casi completado, ¿será el siguiente?
En la oficina central de HootSuite también tenemos a nuestros propios búhos internacionales, lo que te permite disponer de nuestras Hojas Informativas y Casos de Estudio en español y japonés, dos de los idiomas con mayor crecimiento entre nuestra comunidad de usuarios.
El Caso de Estudio de @marca (en español)
Y hoy, fans de HootSuite, estamos encantados de presentaros nuestro primer Caso de Estudio surgido y desarrollado totalmente en un país hispanohablante: @marca y su utilización de HootSuite.
Descubre cómo MARCA, principal grupo de comunicación deportiva en España, utiliza HootSuite para construir su comunidad, aumentar la interacción y vinculación con su audiencia y ganar reputación como fuente de noticias deportivas.
The owls at HootSuite know that running social media campaigns is anything but simple. Marketing managers, community directors, and customer support personnel all have a big role to play.
It was these multi-tasking owls that HootSuite had in mind when we developed our many useful team collaboration tools to make sharing, assignments and drafting messages a breeze. And no matter how large or small your nest may be, HootSuite has a plan that can fit your needs.
To help illustrate the power of team collaboration for your social media initiatives, we’ve got not one, but TWO releases today all about teams — a Case Study detailing a Transit Authority’s use of HootSuite to launch a new Twitter Pilot Project, and an Info Sheet full of helpful advice.
Recently, the Transportation Authority for Vancouver, Canada launched a new Twitter Pilot Project. Using HootSuite, the @translink team collaborated to make customer-updates on events and major service disruptions a permanent feature for all those that ride on their system.
Check out this Case Study all about the successes of using HootSuite’s handy team collaboration tools to reach out and increase customer engagement.
This can be found in our library along with many other Case Studies and helpful Info Sheets to give you information and inspiration for using the dash for your social endeavors.
¿Hablas español? ¡Hemos traducido este Caso de Estudio para todos nuestros fans hispanohablantes!
There is a suite of team collaboration tools available in the HootSuite dashboard to give your team what it needs to efficiently manage multiple social campaigns and initiatives. With so much that you can do, it can be hard to know where to start.
For this reason, we’ve put together this Info Sheet all about team collaboration as part of our series on Advanced Topics for the HootSuite dashboard.
If your resolution this year is to learn more about social media tips and techniques, then HootSuite University has a treat for you. We’re starting off 2011 with handy ways to enroll team members, easier ways to pay and a new lower price — so learn more and get more with HootSuite University.
Expand Your Expertise
The HootSuite University program is designed for professionals seeking to increase their social media skills. As a graduate you’ll receive a HootSuite Social Media Certification and a listing in the Directory of HootSuite Social Media Consultants — so businesses and organizations can seek out your expertise.
This also means that you can promote yourself as a social media expert, increase your network of social media professionals, and get discovered by businesses in your area.
Add More Education
To make learning even easier, HootSuite University is now integrated with the HootSuite Pro plan. So you can add-on HootSuite’s learning program and assign HootSuite University to any of your team members all from within your account.
Are you registered in HootSuite University on a free account? Then the good news continues… The cost of the Pro plan is now included in the price of admission. You’ll have the option to migrate over to a Pro plan to get one free month of HootSuite Pro for you and an additional team member on top of your 30 day free trial.
Simply select which team members you want to enroll in HootSuite University and they’ll be added to the list. And once they’ve been certified, you can opt to de-select team members without losing information on course completion and certification.
Ready to get started? Go to learn.hootsuite.com today to start gaining advanced skills in social media for you and the members of your organization.
Happy New Year – we hope you had a great holiday season filled with lots of happy hooting! Owly had a nice vacation, and is back and ready for a big 2011.
The HootSuite App Directory is coming along nicely, and still on pace for launch early this year. There is a lot of excitement in the development community and we’ll have some big announcements to share with you soon.
You may remember the news about the App Directory in December – briefly, we previewed the popular Salesforce Chatter and Lead Scoring Apps, and released Ning as a live preview of what you can expect to see from the App Directory. These announcements certainly garnered some attention, and in case you missed it, here are some highlights of the coverage and feedback.
Imagine having a team chat built into your regular information tool? At TNW we, of course, have lots of tools to help us keep up with the news. Twitter is just one of them, but we have a back channel as well. We’re always looking for new solutions to explore. Maybe SalesHootChatterSuite might be just the ticket.
Chatter in the HootSuite dashboard (click for larger version)
Today at Dreamforce, HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes revealed a preview of the upcoming Salesforce integration into HootSuite. This integration will tie into the HootSuite App Directory launch, which is slated for early next year.
This is a big feat, considering how huge Salesforce is. HootSuite has come far in its short life.
HootSuite is a Twitter client that has focused on building an app platform. In November, the company announced a new API and App Directory. HootSuite now integrates with Salesforce Chatter via the API. That means a user may view a Twitter stream and Chatter in the same interface.
HootSuite is a natural fit with Chatter. Both use the same river of news style. And both have a direct tie in to the fast adoption of social technologies in enterprise and business settings.
With this integration, the 1 million HootSuite users can now broadcast to Ning’s participants – which number upwards of 70 million users across 80,000 social websites – and connect with them on the topics they are passionate about. Will you find this new feature helpful?
Ning in the HootSuite dashboard (click for larger version)
Blogg-ing with Ning
Ning invited us to a special guest blog post on the Ning blog which explains the HootSuite / Ning integration. The post provides five things you can do with HootSuite today to help build and nurture networks and communities.
Broadcast over Multiple Services…
Monitor Member Activity…
Better Manage Multiple Services…
In-Depth Analytics…
Collaborate with Teams…
We were happy to contribute to their blog and share helpful tips about using Ning in the dashboard to build your audience. And we thought this would be a great time to let you know that even more exciting tools are on the way.
Twitter might want to become a service platform, but it looks like HootSuite wants to become the app platform of choice for Twitter clients. HootSuite announced today a new API and App Exchange to allow other providers and developers to build specialty add-on applications for HootSuite…
Real time chat integrated into my Twitter client? Maybe connected to GoogleTalk? That would be cool and it would eliminate an app I need to run. Connect to FriendFeed? Another. Really good alerts and Growl integration?
The more tools that HootSuite can replace with add-ons and still not bog down the app or clutter the interface up. The more people who will use it.
And keep using it.
From the Twitter-sphere
@andybryant: Great development for Social CRM: HootSuite to integrate Salesforce Chatter & Lead Scoring
@nmwallace: Yeah!! Wooohooo! HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard » Ning Social Communities Added to HootSuite Dashboard
@kentanjo: Talk about going social! Two powerful tools to engage online public: Ning and HootSuite
Stay Tuned
There’s more exciting news to share in the coming weeks regarding the HootSuite App Directory. Make sure to follow @HootSuite_Apps to stay up to date with all the latest.
The year has flown by and looking back, it makes us smile to see how far HootSuite has come – indeed we are happy to see all the amazing new developments and integrations we’ve hatched to our growing, global audience of Hoot-fans.
To ensure you haven’t missed out on any of the fun we’ve had, and reflect on the progress, we assembled the most notable HootSuite achievements this year. We hope you enjoy reliving some of the great HootSuite memories from the past 12 months, because you were part of the story.
January 2010 – New Beginnings
New year, new launch, new focus on community development and relationships: In January of 2010 HootSuite officially spins out on its own with about as many people as you can count on one hand. Thanks to the injection of some funds raised to jumpstart the dashboard, HootSuite launches WordPress, trend explanations and URL previews. And a new Owl joins the nest — Dave Olson joins HootSuite to develop the HootSuite community and starts off strong by introducing News Round-ups to help spread the word.
February 2010 – Aquarius Barn Owl
Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Games and HootSuite has some growth of Olympic proportions down at HQ. HootSuite releases a second iteration (code-named Barn Owl) which integrates Social CRM, campaign measuring and influence tools, and launches a new help desk for top-shelf support and a feature suggestion channel to gather ideas.
Plus, HootSuite hits the road to attend Seattle 140tc, Toronto’s Sprout Up, and Austin for SXSWi where the interviews, networking and socializing were non-stop with conversations about Foursquare/Myspace added to the dash. To top it all off, we managed to get some time in SF to build fortuitous relationships.
April 2010 – New Advancements
April brings ow.ly and ht.ly — two flavors of social bars for link-sharing/shortening needs. iPhone gets an update with translation, Facebook and geo-location tools, and school is in for spring with the introduction of HootSuite University — a subscription-based learning program with a social media certification for graduates.
If that’s not enough, the hugely-awaited and artfully-created team assignment tools are released to help delegaters the whole world over draft, schedule, and assign tasks to team members for efficiently managing social mentions and interactions.
June 2010 – Updates and upgrades
Half way through the year and there’s no sign of slowing down — in fact the pace increases. To pay homage the online world we live in, we celebrate Social Media Day with some treats for geeks, then release the HTML5 version of HootSuite to help users utilize the capabilities of the latest browser with geo-search, themes, Google Analytics, native/old-school Retweets and more.
Plus – June brings a Japanese version of the web app and an update to iPhone with Korean and Arabic localizations baked right in.
And who didn’t learn to love vuvuzelas just a little bit during World Cup? We use July’s football-phenomenon to interact with a whole new flock of our international users (and have a lot of fun doing it) and added some weight to the masses of Tweets as soccer fans the whole world over tested the limits of Twitter’s capacity.
August 2010 – Up-ing the Velocity
Ready? If you blink you’ll miss all of the August action. We’ve cranked up the heat with a bevy of new additions. First off, we announce a relationship with Constant Contact, announce the new freemium plans, get USA Federal-friendly with an updated terms of service which gets us listed in the apps.gov site (much to the joy of many key agencies).
We give you a sneak peek of the highly anticipated BlackBerry.
And we release ow.ly pro custom URL shortening services
Not enough? No problem, we’ll also throw in a live Twittering case study of an operating room using HootSuite to live-Tweet a surgery in progress. Enjoy!
HootSuite Free Mobile Apps - BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Android
Summer is long gone, the leaves have turned, and October has a bountiful harvest for HootSuite this year with Open ID and Mobile fest. Now HootSuite users have the option to login to their account or create new ones using any OpenID account. Plus there are mobile delights for just about every owl – BlackBerry is released, iPhone and Android are updated, there’s a preview of keitai, and iPad – and all mobile apps become free during Mobile Fest.
November 2010 – A Million Reasons to Hoot
It’s migration season, and the great migration to our freemium model is conducted, along with resources for team building, HootSuite style. Constant Contact is back in November and this time they announce that they’ve got HootSuite’s Social Share baked right in to their interface. If that’s not enough, we officially pass over 1 million HootSuite users, so we release a killer info-graphic and contest to guess when we crossed the threshold (congrats again @kelkel926!)
It’s been quite a year, and HootSuite is just getting started. To wrap up 2010 and create some momentum for the new year, we’ve got a whole list of goodies to announce:
Looking ahead to next year Hoot-fans can expect to see a load of new integrations in our App Directory to help make your social media management even better with some highly-requested networks coming rapidly.
Thanks to all of you for making this year amazing. We have some fun stories, news round-ups and Owly pictures to post over the holidays. Plus, we’ll see you back in January with events from New York and Mumbai plus an upcoming panel at SXSW called Big in Japan.
Many managers at both growing or established companies struggle to find the time and resources to manage multiple social media profiles. In many cases, an intern or junior employee is assigned the task of getting social networks set up plus tend to posting the messages on behalf of the organization.
Now imagine that the intern decides to take off to Australia to go backpacking for six months — or worse — leaves under less than ideal circumstances. Now what? How do you regain control of your online profile? Getting access back from social networks like Twitter or Facebook can be a support conundrum taking months to resolve – and by that time it could be too late to repair the damage.
Streamline and Protect
Social network profiles are quickly becoming one of the most important parts of your brand and your internal IP. That’s why HootSuite has created “Teams” allowing one account owner to assign tasks and various levels of access while protecting passwords and control.
So… What is Account Ownership?
Lets face it, when you’re dealing with people mistakes can happen. But with HootSuite you retain ultimate control of your account so that if it is compromised you can act quickly, removing users and deleting posts to minimize damage.
If you “own” a social profile in HootSuite, it means that you have the final say over all of the administration. As an account owner, you – and you alone – get to decide what happens with your social media accounts, including who gets to help manage them, and what level of access each team member is granted.
How to Add or Delete a Team Member
Because HootSuite is built as a collaborative social media dashboard, both Pro and Enterprise plans have the option to both add and remove team members, as well as maintain control over what level of access team members have. This means you can assemble a team to write status updates on behalf of your organization without revealing any account passwords. Inversely, account ownership also means you can revoke social media account access to a team member when they move on or change roles.
For most agencies or big businesses, it is necessary to have a number of contributors to your accounts. For example: junior employees monitor comments and mentions, marketers publish messages, contractors measure analytics, project managers delegate tasks and contribute messaging… and so on.
Indeed, all of these people need access, but not necessarily the same level of permission. As an account owner, you can control who has access to what.
A social media profile can only have one owner. This class of user has ultimate administrative privileges, including transferring ownership when/if needed. An account owner can invite team members as well as revoke access to anybody. The account owner also decides what level of access team members have – as either advanced or basic members.
Streamline and Protect with HootSuite
Advanced team member
A social media account can have multiple advanced team members. These team members have nearly full access to the management of the account, including some administrative privileges. Advanced team members can invite other team members, or revoke access. They cannot, however, revoke an account owner’s access to a social media account, nor can they transfer ownership or change passwords. The advantage of the Advanced team member is that it allows others to manage your day-to-day social network needs without having total control over the accounts.
Basic team member
A social media account can also have multiple basic team members. This class of user simply has the ability to monitor social media streams and submit status updates. They have no administrative privileges nor can they invite other team members to social profile, revoke access, nor transfer ownership. This is perfect for outside contractors, interns, or team members that only need to post to one of your networks – but not all.
Account Management Best Practices
Account ownership is an important role, so to help you achieve the best management of your social media networks, we’ve put together these guidelines to keep you on track:
Ensure the Owner is in a position of authority
Some companies entrust their social media accounts to interns or agencies, which can make transfer of ownership tricky should there be a changeover of staff or agency accounts. Rather than setting up key external, or temporary contributors as owners, it would be better for these interns or agencies to be brought on as Advanced Members. This will ensure that any change of staff, agency, or level of authority is controlled by someone trustworthy in your organization, and will keep your account secure.
Never share your passwords
If someone else knows your social media passwords, they can step in and take control away from you, potentially causing a very damaging scenario for your brand. HootSuite’s security allows you to add team members without sharing passwords. Also, by utilizing tools like LastPass, you can provide access to your HootSuite account without compromising the security of your individual social media accounts.
Delegate responsibility
Delegate Tasks to Team Members
If other commitments prevent you from actively managing your team, transform a basic team member into an advanced team member. An advanced team member can have the administrative capabilities of an account owner without knowing any social media passwords. The advanced team member can then manage the account for you, adding and removing team members as needed, but you still retain control over the security of the account.
Register your HootSuite account with a corporate email address
Sometimes employees create a HootSuite account with a personal Gmail or Yahoo Mail address. This can get messy if they have multiple personal email addresses and cannot remember which address is associated with their HootSuite account. Ensure that whoever owns the HootSuite account registers with a corporate email address so there is no confusion. Getting email information back from social media networks can be a very lengthy process, if they provide that information at all.
Ensure accountability
As we’ve shown here, social media is like a dance with a lot of different dancers, and sometimes there are missteps. Keep yourself in the starring role — ensure everyone on your team is accountable for what they do. HootSuite makes accountability a breeze through our team assignment and auto-initial features. These enable you to delegate tasks to others and follow up on assignments. Auto-Initial automatically pre-populates status updates with the initials of the team member publishing the post.
What are your Tips?
We enjoy hearing how teams have implemented HootSuite to both streamline and protect your social media accounts. Share your findings, scenarios and the potentially awkward situations you’ve mitigated by using HootSuite’s team management tools. Your comments always help us to better develop the tools we’ve created for you.
Using HootSuite to grow your business and collaborate with teams is an easy way to maximize your social media efforts. The dashboard is chock full of features and tools to help you make the most of your social media management. Plus, we’re always adding more.To help get you acquainted with the various functionalities, or just give you a refresher, we have a new #HootTip all about a handy HootSuite feature.
We’ve closely watched the recent stories about unintended Tweets and wanted to help companies prevent social media mishaps. With HootSuite’s Team Provisioning and Secure Profiles tool, organizations can continue using social media to promote their brand confidently while maintaining a high degree of security.”
The 
Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Games and HootSuite has some growth of Olympic proportions down at HQ. HootSuite releases a second iteration (
HootSuite CEO 
Half way through the year and there’s no sign of slowing down — in fact the pace increases. To pay homage the online world we live in, we celebrate 
We bring on 
Ready? If you blink you’ll miss all of the August action. We’ve cranked up the heat with a bevy of new additions. First off, we announce a relationship with 
And while we’re at it we’ll add 
Some companies entrust their social media accounts to interns or agencies, which can make transfer of ownership tricky should there be a changeover of staff or agency accounts. Rather than setting up key external, or temporary contributors as owners, it would be better for these interns or agencies to be brought on as Advanced Members. This will ensure that any change of staff, agency, or level of authority is controlled by someone trustworthy in your organization, and will keep your account secure.
