Hootsuite: So Much More Than a Twitter App in review

Hootsuite hoots tweets! From webapp to Twitter, to people who tweet. (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang reference, anyone?)

Hootsuite's Logo is a cute owl. Yes, I said cute.

What’s with the Owl Metaphor?

Twittering is a bird’s short call.  Hooting is an owl’s call.  Twitter is to Hootsuite as birds are to owls: closely related!  I’m not really sure how I started using this Twitter webapp, but I’m so glad I did!   Hootsuite does more than just Twitter.  As the website has matured, so has its offerings.  Hootsuite now connects to Facebook, your Pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, and WordPress.  WordPress was just added today.  And with Ping.fm, you can post to over 40 different social networking sites!  They even have an app and plugin directory now where you can extend the internet browser based functionality to your iPhone, or turn Hootsuite in to a desktop program as well as extensions for Firefox or Chrome.  And of course there’s always the Hootlet:  A bookmarklet that pops up a Hootsuite window wherever you are on the web.  It can plug in to almost any internet browser.

Why should I even try Hootsuite? (And you have to answer in 140 characters or less!)

Just tweet, or spread your status updates across the web w/ Hootsuite. Schedule future updates, keep track of your brand, click stats, etc.

Ok, now that I’ve (hopefully) convinced you to at least try it, let’s jump in to the features that Hootsuite has to offer.

Birds of a Feather Tweet Together

Currently I have 12 accounts active in my personal Hootsuite account.  10 are Twitter accounts and 1 is my personal Facebook account.  The last is a Facebook Page that I maintain that I added today.  Hootsuite has all my user icons gathered together at the top of the page, on the right.  I can easily select which one account (or multiple) I want to tweet from.  This means that I don’t have to log in to each and every account that I want to tweet from.  This also saves me the headache of trying to find my @ mentions, direct messages, etc. for all those accounts.  Even if you only have on Twitter account, you probably also have a Facebook account.  And just being able to see the news feed without all the noise is a delight.  But don’t forget that you can schedule updates for Facebook too.  Which brings me to my first favorite feature…

My favorite feature is being able to schedule tweets in the future.

Scheduled Tweets, Updates, Posts, Microblogs or Whatever You Want to Call Them!

Depending on what kind of Twitter user you are and how long you’ve been using Twitter, you may have found yourself tweeting regularly.  Your followers may even say EXCESSIVELY!  To help balance that out, use the schedule button to send a thought in to the future.  Spreading your tweets out doesn’t necessarily mean that you tweet less, but it should help relieve your followers of a heavy load of tweets to read.

One problem with doing it this way is keeping your tweets relevant.  Keep that in mind when scheduling future messages.

Scheduling your tweets in the future may not make sense at first, but just think it through.   Twitter is for answering the question, “What’s happening?”  Presumably that means right now.  But many people have found greater use than just answering that question.  You can keep answering the question in the now, and save your cool links, or time-insensitive quotes for future tweets.  You can come up with your own method, it doesn’t really matter how you do it!  It’s your’s for the future hooting/tweeting!

My second favorite feature is being able to track stats on the URLs I've shortened with ow.ly.

Click stats, Referral and Region stats, and Most Popular ow.ly URLs

After you get used to using either the hootlet, the website, or various different ways of accessing Hootsuite, you’ll likely start to wonder, how effective you are being with your tweets.  I know I did!  Hootsuite allows you to take a look at your stats over time.  In being able to schedule tweets, you can begin to find a prime time to send messages out.  A general marketing principle is that you receive a 10% return on your efforts.  If you have 500 followers, assume that only 50 will ever see your tweet.  But not all 50 will be checking Twitter in their preferred way at the moment in time you tweet.  This is where targeting your audience based on time comes in handy.  If you know your group of people check their tweets at lunch time, between 12 pm and 1 pm, perhaps 12:15 or 12:30 is a good time to send a tweet.  You think about this to maximize the number of people that will see and respond to your tweet.

Now Go! Start Hooting!

Hootsuite is just sitting up in the Internet tree wondering, “Hoo?” will be next to sign up.  So, why not?  Maybe you have questions.  That’s fair enough.  Go ahead and leave me a comment, or contact me on Twitter and I’ll answer anything you need to know!