Hello again from NeONBRAND. Today is your average Thursday, but don’t let that fool you: we’re still working hard. Today I want to quickly tell you about a website we have used religiously since NeONBRAND’s inception: Hootsuite.
I’ll tell you three reasons why we use it and why I think you should try it out:
- Schedule social posts in advance
- Connect and track multiple accounts
- Track progress with simplified built-in analytics
Schedule your social posts in advance
The best feature on Hootsuite and the one we use the most often is post scheduling.
Say we write a blog post (like this one!) that we want to share on our social pages. We could take the link, paste it into Hootsuite, write a quick caption, and schedule it to post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn with one click.
Well, we wanted to put our skills to the test, so we timed how long it takes to schedule a post to four different social profiles. We came in at a smooth 40 seconds.
After you schedule your posts you can see the calendar of scheduled posts and move them around if you’d like. It’s easy to see what is going out when.
This is what a week on the calendar looks like:
When you schedule a post it will appear on the date and time you select and you can drag it around. Easy, convenient, time-saving, and all the good things you want in a social-scheduling software—without the extras.
Hootsuite even has the ability to schedule Instagram posts, which some other scheduling programs don’t have.
Can you tell we’re big fans?
Connect and track multiple accounts
We have a lot of clients, and we like to keep track of what is going on across our social accounts. Now we could check all our accounts individually, or we could connect them to Hootsuite and have them all in one place.
It’s a convenient way to keep track of what is happening on your social media pages.
Here’s how we set our streams up:
We basically have it set up so we can see all our mentions and posts across Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. We have even more streams we track that didn’t make it into this screenshot.
You can create a different tab for each client or company so you can click around and see how every account is doing without going from site to site.
Time. Saver.
We’re all about condensing and cutting out extra steps. Hootsuite helps us do that.
Track progress with simplified analytics
Just like how we condense our mentions and streams into one page, Hootsuite helps us see all the analytics we want in one place.
Here’s what it looks like.
There are a ton of different ways to format these reports, and you can scroll through unlimited data points to track. This is just an example. It’s simple, easy to look at, and includes data from different sources.
You can see on the left-hand side that you can create different reports that will auto-update when your info changes. So they will always have the correct information.
The analytics Hootsuite provides are good for quick insights. At NeONBRAND we put together full detailed reports, and we still go to the native platforms to put those together.
Have we said time saver yet in this blog post? TIME SAVER.
Is Hootsuite the only social software I need?
Well, we think so.
We should note that we don’t use every single feature on Hootsuite. They have kept their software simple, but there are still several features we didn’t mention here because we never use them. They are pretty unnecessary for most people.
You can read more about available features on the Hootsuite website.
For example, we don’t boost any posts on Hootsuite. We still do that through Facebook itself as needed.
But we do believe it is one of the only social management software programs you need as a business owner. You can get most everything else you need directly on each social platform.
As your business or agency grows you will undoubtedly find new programs you want. Unless you’re looking for a crazy analytics or task management software, then you should be good with only Hootsuite.
How much does Hootsuite cost?
Now we are grandfathered in on pricing from many moons ago, so the price of Hootsuite has gone up since we first got an account.
Just pick a plan that works for the number of accounts and scheduled posts you will have. Either the free plan or the $29/month Professional plan will work for most people just starting out.
Now that you know how deep our love for Hootsuite runs, you’re probably convinced to at least look into it.
Check out Hootsuite today, and as always, contact us if you have any questions.