HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

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

This news round-up focuses on a few posts discussing social media efficiency, international versions, media convergence, plus planning and measuring strategic campaigns.

Take some time to enjoy the knowledge and let us know which articles you particularly enjoyed.

As always, catch more HootSuite news via the social bookmark stream and point out any articles we’ve missed in the comments.

Here we go:

Business Week – Stop Wasting Time on Social Media

Karen E. Klein and Ivan Misner (founder and chairman of business networking organization BNI.com) in a Q&A:

There are great services they should be using like Ping.fm, Seesmic, and Hootsuite.com. You can go there and it ties all your social media together. In other words, they’re probably logging on to their Facebook account and going to their page and typing in their message, and then going to Twitter and LinkedIn and doing the same thing. It kills time. If you use sites like this, you write one message and they ping everything so you’re not spending 20 minutes to do what you can in three minutes.

Some great tips for working efficiently – thanks Karen and Ivan.

ADO Strategies – Application Convergence: Have you seen the new Hootsuite?

Application Convergence: Have you seen the new Hootsuite? from ADO Strategies

Matthew Snyder writes:

What we have seen is that our friends in Vancouver  (Hootsuite) have really looked to market differentiation with these translation tools.

{snip}

When I saw the announcement in April by Hootsuite I felt like they were really listening to the customer; as there must had been lots others like me with the same predicament.  In my mind this is a big move by the Hootsuite folks in their attempt  at this and even though we have not yet seen this capability on Facebook,  MARK MY WORDS….. This is going to be one of the most important features for them with their 500M users in the coming months.  If they do not buy Hootsuite, then they will do this themselves by the end of the year.

Interesting points Matthew — we definitely feel it’s important to embrace users from around the world and take a true global view of the impact of the social web. Now, about HTML 5 …

CommunicateAsia – Hootsuite Awarded a Big Hat Tip (from me) for Thinking Like an Internationalist

Michael Netzley writes:

Hootsuite, one of the major tools for Twitter lovers, now has translation built into its iPhone app — Japanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. While this does give us access to one of the world’s truly leading digital markets, Japan, other Asian countries are not yet included (I remain hopeful). Still, a big hat tip to Hootsuite for thinking like an Internationalist! A rare thing in the 21st century, so much appreciated.

We’ve since added localization for Korean and Arabic to the iPhone with more language choices to come – thanks Professor.

thoughtpick – 4 Awesome Web-based Twitter Clients

M. Bamieh writes:

If you can appreciate the utility of an electric screw driver over its traditional cousin, you will appreciate Hootsuite. {snip} This is a heavy application, and certainly more enterprise centric providing you with a command console worthy of a marketing department HQ. If you have many Twitter accounts to manage or you are a star and would like to manage the accounts of your Twitter account ghost writers this is the tool to use.

HootSuite loves marketing departments and Twitter stars alike

inmanNews – How to measure social media strategy and success

Katie Lance writes:

Along with Google Analytics, I utilize the statistical feature in Hootsuite. I think Hootsuite is a must for any social media manager or anyone who is consistently managing a social media campaign on different platforms.

Once you are logged into Hootsuite, to view your statistics, look at the lower-left-hand corner of your screen and click the “Launch” button. From there you can check your stats summary or individual messages by clicking “Summary.”

Glad to hear Katie – have you tried the custom URL parameters yet?

Youngentrepreneur – 8 Awesome Tools Every Entrepreneur Needs

Navid Zolfaghari writes:

Through Hootsuite’s unique social media dashboard, you can collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress and other social networks. Hootsuite helps organizations launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels.

Thanks for putting HootSuite at the top of the list Navid – we concur with many of your other tips too.

The WELDer – How To HootSuite Like A Pro

How To HootSuite Like A Pro from The WELDer

Gretchen Stone writes:

The beauty of HootSuite is that unlike some other apps, you can update multiple accounts from just one platform. So, for instance, if you’re tasked with managing your company’s profile, you can also update your own without having to log out. You can even send the same message to both, cutting your typing time in half.

{snip}

Short cuts like HootSuite take the frustration out of keeping up with your online presence and more importantly save time for busy executives.

Great tips and love that header graphic with the superhero lad.

StayOnSearch – Using Hootsuite to Manage Your Twitter Engagement Efforts

Mark Thomson writes:

In my personal opinion, I have found Hootsuite to be by far the best Twitter client out there.  I’m sure a lot of people can make an argument for clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic, but I find Hootsuite to be the most user-friendly, feature-rich, and up-to-date Twitter client available.

The interface is clean, customizable, and includes a wealth of information about your twitter account.  Let’s take a detailed look into how Hootsuite can be used to manage your daily engagements for both personal and business use.

We’re glad you are on-board Mark and props on a very comprehensive roundup about HootSuite.

Social Media for Dealers -  Twitter tools profile: HootSuite

The first tool we’re covering is HootSuite. HootSuite is a “professional Twitter client”, fancy for “free tool that allows you to post, schedule future posts, track, follow and stay updated with your Twitter strategy”.   Check out the article “How to Get the Most Out of Social Media Using Hootsuite” by Zachary Sniderman on Open Forum. He does a great job over-viewing Hootsuite.

{snip}

HootSuite offers the best tracking options of the Twitter tools we’ll cover. It offers statistics and tools that can tell you anything from what links were clicked on (and when) to which sites are sending traffic your way.  Of course it also measures retweets, replies, and mentions.  It’s a great way gage your success and set benchmarks for the future.

In case you were wondering, “Dealers” in this case means RV dealerships – nothing nefarious

More

As always, catch more HootSuite news via the social bookmark stream and let us know about any we’ve missed in the comments.

News Roundup asia, business week, convergence, Facebook, japan, localization, news, News Roundup, pro, social media, strategies, strategy, tips, translation, Twitter

Keeping the media reports rolling out with another round-up of recent article about HootSuite. This time, the focus is on business users with a batch of tips, rankings, reviews and soliloquies about saving time, keeping an eye on assets and giving a hoot.

Settle in for a read to learn how to save time while increasing results in your social promotion campaigns.

As always, follow along with HootSuite’s social bookmarks and/or @hootwatch for the full news view as it happens.

Financial Post – Keeping tabs on your brand – see also: CBC

Ryan Holmes - (cropped) photo by Lyle Stafford for National Post

Matt Hartley writes: In essence, Hootsuite users can track who’s talking about their company who’s passing around links related to promotions and news and what services they’re using to do so.

“That’s kind of the Holy Grail of what Hootsuite does,” Mr. Holmes said.

“Social media marketing didn’t really exist as a job title prior to the last couple of years, but we’re really building this as a tool for them and also traditional marketers that are looking for tools,” he said.

Mashable – HootSuite Gives Groups More Twitter and Facebook Tools

Jolie O’Dell writes: We’ve noticed that HootSuite has been cranking out major upgrades consistently over the past several months. In terms of team collaboration and CRM social media tools, this company seems to be en fuego. Last week, HootSuite added Facebook support and geolocation features to its iPhone app.

A month ago, HootSuite integrated Foursquare and MySpace capabilities — a surefire path to the hearts of marketers and recording artist promoters. You can use HootSuite from your Android phone and you can use it to update your WordPress blog. Clearly, this team is focused on making a robust and competitive application in a very crowded space.

American Express OPEN Forum – How to Get the Most Out of Social Media Using Hootsuite : Technology

By Zachary Sniderman via Mashable: Managing a million different social media sites is a headache for even the most seasoned social media-ites. But what happens when your business is expected to maintain a Twitter account, a Facebook Page, or a WordPress blog?

Updating all those sites takes time and energy, but social media hubs like Hootsuite can help any small business efficiently manage their social media presence. Hootsuite is a free website that allows users to update, post, monitor, and track a range of popular social media services.

Like other social media hubs, Hootsuite’s hub can be customized to suit your needs. Whether you’re tracking one or multiple accounts across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, Hootsuite might be an efficient, secure way to stay on top of all of them. Below are five quick ways to maximize Hootsuite … Read on …

SUITE101 MEDIA – Suite101.com Releases Its Second Annual Index Of Most Visited Canadian Web Sites

Suite101.com, a global content site that provides trusted and reliable information to consumers today released its second annual readership index of Canadian-owned Web sites, entitled “Where The Online Readers Are.” The second annual index reveals that the top sites remain largely content sites, and social media activity by the top-trafficked sites has increased substantially.

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    2   Ow.ly            http://ow.ly/                468   new   URL shortener
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    7   HootSuite        www.hootsuite.com            877   new   Marketing

VentureBeat – Foursquare declares platform-dom with launch of App Gallery

Camille Ricketts writes: Mobile location application Foursquare is diversifying itself into a platform of its own today by launching an aggregation of third-party applications built on top of its core service. It’s calling it the App Gallery.

{snip}

Currently, the featured apps include HootSuite (a service to share your favorite locations with your friends), Kickball (a new interface design), FourFace (a creative interface changer) and Mob Zombies (a game that plays on the zombie apocalypse meme).

The Rise To The Top – Why Entrepreneurs Should Give A Hoot About Hootsuite

David Garland writes: There are streams everywhere. Facebook. Twitter. Plus more. Information coming at you at a crazy pace. Now add in the fact, that many of us entrepreneurs are creating our own valuable content and promoting it. And keeping tabs on when our business pops up in a conversation. And paying attention to our niches. The list goes on and on.

Whew, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. So, what is the solution? What is an easy way to make it all manageable from anywhere (your computer, phone, etc.)? Ryan Holmes, founder of Invoke, came up with the solution for us entrepreneurs: Hootsuite.

As CEO of Hootsuite, Ryan has developed a unique platform that makes this quickly changing web easy to understand and manage. I had a chance to sit down (errr Skype down?) with Ryan and discuss Hootsuite for all of us.

Kevin Gilbert’s Weblog – HootSuite

What we hope to accomplish by using HootSuite is a more centralized place for managing our communications. We set up an account, using our company name and proceeded to add each of the company twitter accounts and our own personal accounts. Now, either of us can use the streamlined interface to “tweet” from our personal account or “tweet” from either of the company accounts.

{snip}

… more importantly, HootSuite can now track how many times a link was clicked. This lets us know which messages generated the most traffic for our websites. The more traffic, the more likely we are to establish ourselves as experts in what we’re doing and hopefully generate more leads for business.

StayOnSearch – Using Hootsuite to Manage Your Twitter Engagement Efforts

Mark Thompson writes: In my personal opinion, I have found Hootsuite to be by far the best Twitter client out there.  I’m sure a lot of people can make an argument for clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic, but I find Hootsuite to be the most user-friendly, feature-rich, and up-to-date Twitter client available.

The interface is clean, customizable, and includes a wealth of information about your twitter account.  Let’s take a detailed look into how Hootsuite can be used to manage your daily engagements for both personal and business use.

TCMnet.com – Balance social media channels for successful marketing of business

If you’re wanting to save a step, I’d try HootSuite, a free site that will allow you to post to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts at once. It also has a built-in link shortener.

If you have people with social media duties, you can give them different privileges on HootSuite without sharing your log-in information to the site. Also, you can edit access to specific social media accounts you have on Hootsuite. For example, if you have your personal Twitter account added on to HootSuite, you can select just the work account for access privileges.

Cruiter Talk – Hootsuite Riot: #Recruiters need it and will want it #justsayin

Hootsuite for those that don’t know it or use it is about to get downright nasty in this game. Not nasty in a bad way but the app has grown and it’s going to sick.  Forget the discussion internally about ROI and team management, this group has got it for you.

RISMedia – 5 Keys to Integrating Search and Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Key 4: Learn to monitor social media efficiently. Programs like TweetDeck, HootSuite and Seesmic make sharing content and links across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook simpler. To monitor networks for inbound linking opportunities and reputation management, search columns for keywords or hashtags are extremely helpful. Additional monitoring can be done through Twitter Search and TweetBeep, while an overall online presence can be surveyed with tools like Trackur, Google Alerts or SocialMention.

More Hoots

As always, follow along with HootSuite’s social bookmarks and/or @hootwatch for the full news view as it happens.

News Roundup american express, business, hootsuite for business, mashable, reviews, suite 101, tactics, tips, Twitter for business, venture beat

With recent news about adding funding partners and the newly-released social media iPhone app, the web is brimming with articles about HootSuite. But of particular interest to us are the people and companies who are using the social media dashboard in inspiring and interesting ways – plus teaching others how to spark social media-powered campaigns designed to grow audience and spread messages.

With this in mind, here’s a round-up for reviews, tutorials, punditry and accolades from the past fortnight.

Mashed up for Business

First off, a double does of Mashable and American Express Open Forum – the wise minds and info curators @mashable contribute knowledge to AmEx’s space for SME’s and entrepreneurs to share tips and tactics.

Mashable’s Barb Dybwad (perhaps the coolest Twitter handle ever) shares Essential Social Media Tools for the Small Business which includes CoTweet as well as HootSuite:

If your small business has a presence on Twitter, you’ll want to look into two great and free tools for managing your account: CoTweet and HootSuite. You can think of them essentially as Customer Relationship Management tools for Twitter.

Both services offer a similar core functionality, allowing you to manage multiple individual accounts, give multiple authors access to individual Twitter accounts, search for keywords and monitor saved searches over time, and get message notifications based on certain criteria. Beyond that, each service has its own custom features — and which app is right for your business will depend on who in your organization needs to use it and what functions you need to access in your business.

Another @mashable writer Leah Betancourt contributed 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Avoid Social Media Panic which appear on Mashable and Am EX Open Forum and provides practical tips for busineses to get over the glassy-eyed feeling when adding social media-powered campaigns to their marketing mix – of course her tips include using HootSuite for tracking.

The notion of getting into social media might seem overwhelming for any small business. Spending time upfront before launch to create a plan with goals that includes how to translate that social media presence into dollars will go a long way toward achieving success.

Some examples of metrics to look at are: How many visitors came to your site from a social media site; Conversion (i.e. how many people clicked through to your site and then bought a product or service), Falls said. In minimal terms, be able to say something like: I spent X dollars and was able to track X amount of revenue (or percentage).

Link shorteners can help track click throughs on Twitter. Twitter tools such as Seesmic (), TweetDeck (), HootSuite () and others can help users track mentions, direct messages and @replies.

Hoots for Growth

Inc.com published Lori Highby’s experiences building her web design business in How to Use HootSuite for Business (article is dated Feb 1, 2010 which is in the future ~ whoa) – again practical advice for entrepreneurs:

I use HootSuite to streamline the process. It lets me manage multiple accounts on one dashboard. I can schedule tweets in advance instead of logging on every time I want to send one. When I write a new blog post, HootSuite automatically sends a tweet to my followers. If I’m reading an interesting article online, I can click on the Hootlet feature in my browser’s Favorites bar to send out a tweet with the story’s name and URL. A stats feature lets me see how many people clicked on any given link so I can tailor future tweets accordingly.

I also use HootSuite to keep track of tweets containing certain keywords. Anytime someone mentions Keystone Click, for example, it appears on my HootSuite dashboard. I sift through the responses at the beginning and end of each day, tracking both positive and negative feedback and reaching out to potential customers. I use the search term Web design company to scour Twitter for prospective clients.

BtoBMagazine’s Rich Karpinski addresses businesses looking to gain a foothold with their outreach methods in Twitter tools for teams – As Tweeting evolves into a group activity, applications offer options – and includes a comment from the Chief Executive Owl:

While many marketers still use standalone clients or even Twitter.com for their tweeting, the convoluted workflow requirements for keeping up with Twitter, not to mention all the other social networks, scream for a more capable tool. HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes, for instance, calls his company’s app “the ultimate social media dashboard,” and in recent months has added LinkedIn and Facebook postings to its Twitter core. HootSuite counts Dell, Fox and MSNBC among its customers.

Author Holly Reville created a video about how to use Hootsuite to Manage Multiple Accounts & Schedule Tweets – Holly Reville is a humanitarian, an entrepreneur and an author and founder of Xpressive Marketing, specializing in corporate training, cause and social media marketing. (Note: Subscribe to Holly’s YouTube channel for more). Here’s the set-up:

Let’s face it in today’s busy lifestyles we can all use a little help making it easier to keep up with our Social Media efforts. Hootsuite.com is a valuable tool for doing just that. It gives you the ability to manage multiple twitter accounts and schedule tweets ahead of time. Check out this video to learn how!

Helping Haiti

from United Nations Development Programme's Flickr photostream

Speaking of humanitarians, Brad came up with a plan to use HootSuite to schedule reminders to encourage followers to donate to Haiti even when the stirring images fade from the TV broadcast on Lawn with Gnomes post: Hacking Haiti Donations.

I gave to Haiti, did you? While I did give, it just felt like it wasn’t as much as I would like to or can afford at the moment. I thought maybe I’ll take time to work in a local charity? Reality of course set in, the reality that I’m a full-time student and hold a part-time job.

So what’s the idea/hack? It’s simple; 1) Sign up or sign into Hootsuite.

Love that first step and best wishes for your noble quest to help Haiti. BTW United Nations Development Programmer are using Twitter

Quick Hoots

The Marketing Tech blog’s pundit Douglas Karr offers some gentle copywriting advice: Dear Tech Marketers: Stop Marketing Features over Benefits and was kind enough to follow up to my comment:

Congratulations DaveO on the new digs! You’re working for a company with an amazing product. I especially love your iPhone app, I believe it to be the best on the market. Hopefully you can get this post over to your web marketing team, I believe it will help you improve your penetration of the enterprise market. Thanks for coming out and responding – it says a lot about HootSuite!

Blogger James St. John lends a hand to HootSuite’s support efforts with a re-cap of key features including using lists plus adding Facebook and Linkedin in The Professional Twitter Client, for serious marketeers

Seeking More?

hootsuite news amex, blogs, business, case studies, growth, hacking haiti, haiti, HootSuite, mashable, news, sme, tips, tricks

HootSuite has a few nifty tricks up its sleeve for managing RSS feeds. Here are a few things you may or may not know about feeding RSS with HootSuite:

Pause a Feed

We’ve made it possible to pause your feeds with HootSuite — with a click of a button. In the RSS/Atom section of your settings, simply press the pause button. Press play if you want it to resume. We’d like to think that the hardest thing about this is wrapping your mind around how easy it is.

Private Analytics

When you feed your RSS content into HootSuite, rest easy knowing the analytics are private. Your competition can’t peek at your numbers. Unlike other Twitter RSS services that depend on third parties for their URL analytics, HootSuite integrates both RSS and analytics in one app. This means better security for you (and less intel for competitors).

Multiple Accounts

We’ve saved the best tip for last. With HootSuite, multiple Twitter profiles can have access to one RSS feed. You can choose which accounts have access, and when they have it. One RSS feed can be configured to send to all your accounts, a few of them, or just one.

Here at HootSuite, we have tested many helpful ways to integrate RSS feeds with Twitter. However, we’re only scratching the surface. What tips do you have?

Twitter for business, features analytics, atom feed, columns, multiple accounts, rss, tips

“Our business is about technology, yes. But it’s also about customer relationships,” says Michael Dell. The same is true with Twitter. Twitter is a technological breakthrough which hinges upon the creation of relationships. It works for Dell: they made $2 million off sales from Twitter. So how does a brand on Twitter establish relationships? One answer: sig your tweets.

“Sig” is a term borrowed from email culture, which is short for “signature.” Just as in email, sigs identify the human at the end of a message. A sig takes only three of a tweet’s 140 characters. Here’s an example:

Sigs are especially useful if multiple people tweet for a particular brand profile. They create organizational accountability and help manage workflow. A sig allows one to know who sent a tweet and when it was sent. Inclusion of sigs also values transparency, a high-value attribute on the Internet. Conversation becomes more natural when customers know who they’re talking to.

Sigs are simple to add on your own. For those who tweet often on multiple-editor profiles, HootSuite has made it even easier. One of our long-running features is autosigging, where sigs are automatically inserted into tweets. If you autosig, there’s no need to manually type it in every tweet. Most importantly, nobody in an organization will forget to add their sig — since it’s already there!

Update: A few people have asked when we implemented this feature. HootSuite has featured autosigging since December, 2008. It was part of our first version. We hope you continue to enjoy this feature!

features brands, business, tips