Managing various social media accounts requires major organization. And while it’s possible to keep a list of all your account usernames and passwords and log in to each of them every day and post messages, it’s a huge waste of time and resources. Luckily for us, and for you, there are several different resources available that will allow you to manage all your social media accounts from one central hub. While it’s certainly not the only option, we have the most experience with Hootsuite, so that’s what we’re talking about today!
Hootsuite is a social media management service that’s available as a website and also as mobile-friendly apps. The basic version is free, and it does offer a lot of options. However, we decided to upgrade in order to manage more accounts. It’s modestly priced and gives you some more power and tools to use.
Hootsuite’s layout is made out of tab views. You can view your various social media “streams” in tabs along the top. You can add a limited amount of tabs depending on what you want to monitor. For instance, we have a stream that shows us all of our feed activity, another stream that shows our scheduled tweets, a stream that shows every time we are mentioned, a stream that shows every time a certain hasthtag is mentioned. And you can do this for each account.
Then along the left side are various tools. “Publisher” shows all of your past and scheduled posts, so that you can collaborate with your team. You can create campaigns and contests directly within Hootsuite, gain more insight into your followers, etc.
Hootsuite even has its own analytics feature that can show you how your social media initiatives are working. Gain insight by looking at different numbers and statistics and tweaking things week to week.
We love Hootsuite and how it helps us keep our social media plans organized and intuitive. What social media management programs are your favorite and why?