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Podcast: Hootsuite Explained in Plain English
Hootsuite Explained in Plain English | The Web in Plain English, by Dave Naves. Previously recorded on KAHI Radio 950AM, August 14th, 2015
What are we talking about Dave?
Hootsuite? Who?..
Good morning, Sarah how are you I am good… it’s Friday!
It is Friday It has been a week a big big week
It has… all over the place
So yeah let’s talk about Hootsuite what the heck is Hootsuite?
Well, let’s home start by saying it’s a social dashboard. It’s a huge time saver Social networking can be kind of ominous and can be a lot of work. You know if you’re doing it right it ~is~ a lot of work but you know the ROI is there.
You know one of the problems that many people have social networking is there’s a lot to remember there’s a lot of different accounts: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest… the list goes on.
It grows exponentially…daily it seems it really does
I concentrate on the big six: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube
Those are from my perspective, probably the biggest social networks that. That get the biggest bang for your buck if you do this right. Instagram also is being added soon… it’s going to be part of my big seven. ~In my official list~ But with all that there comes a lot of organization and management and can get a bit crazy with how many examples and how many websites you manage.
It has been a while but I can remember when there were a few companies that have created social dashboards meaning a website or in and out there you can go to for free that you can manage all of these social accounts under one single dashboard. So, Hootsuite, in my opinion, appears to be the clear winner in this space. It’s amazing what they have done… over 10 million users now.
It allows you, and not only you, but for an entire team securely and safely manage your social space. I’m talking specifically in business now you can definitely use it for personal, but I typically like to talk about business. But you can have team members all over the world help you with your social media management and that’s what Hoostuie is and what it does.
Get Hootsuite
They have essentially three different products they offer” The free one or Freemium, which you get to add three social networks. And there is a Pro version of Hootsuite, which you can have up to what is it that I think you can have up to 100 and social profiles and then there’s the Enterprise version of Hootsuite which has unlimited everything. And the Pro it’s 10 bucks a month. It starts at 10 bucks a month the enterprise you have to call because enterprises obviously vary in size. They offer all this that really affordable rates in my opinion.
It’s a big time saver.
It really is a big time-saver because you can look at a single screen and manage the flow of all this information. And it isn’t just about marketing either. It goes far beyond. I’ve touched on this before but you can do this for sales you can do this for customer service you can do this for for your marketing efforts you can do it to manage your analytics. They have a killer set up set of analytics in there to find out what’s going on in your company. Everyone can have a separate logins and the big boss can check out what’s going on… everybody on down the line can help the company grow socially. And the fact of the matter is that if you’re not paying attention to this you were probably spinning your wheels I fight this spell all the time with customers saying “Dave I don’t have time to do this.” And my answer’s always same, “You don’t have time not to.” This is where business is at.
And the future
And the future… it’s only growing. So it doesn’t mean it needs to be impossible for you I don’t care how big or how small you are there are tools available so be open-minded about it. This is one tool that allows you to really effectively and efficiently manage your whole social world.
And they there’s not too many social networks that this tool doesn’t support as of now. From Facebook Google… will link to all of the that I’ve mentioned. But also one of the apps… they’ve gone a little division in their called apps, where you can actually post to your blog. You can share your specific WordPress blog. WordPress is a CMS tool, you we are going to go over that in the future show. But they have the ability to not only monitor what’s going on in your blog, but you can actually post ~to~ your blog from Hootsuite. For years I’ve been telling people, “no, it’s only a social ddashboard, it doesn’t allow that” I was wrong and I didn’t know until fairly recently.
So what you get when you sign up for specific, excuse me when you connect one of your social networks, it’s a process what they ask you is what social network you want to connect. So Facebook, great! Is a personal profile? is it a page? Right, for the business and then so those would be the social note network to connect, now within that they subdivided into into these columns. And the columns are called streams. So within your Facebook social network you get the tabs at the top and from the tab you get your Facebook columns which are the resulting streams divided up into feeds, messages, comments, anything that really subdivides each year and every one of these columns into streams so and that does occur social network which is amazing. And you can even put a column… we talked about hash tags. If you want to find out what’s going on to say with KAHI Radio, you can find out what what’s going on. If you want to have local news available, if you want to find out from or their sources. You can follow them directly or you can follow the hash tag in there So you can quickly find out what’s going on whatever it is that’s within your sphere of influence. It’s pretty amazing and it’s all within this dashboard with many many layers.
So it’s your own personal ticker…
It really is…
That’s cool and for any subject or for any social network. it is truly amazing and the beauty of this is and I think I’ve talked about this a while back about customer service people are really but I said people I mean businesses, smart businesses are really using the social networks to communicate via their customer services reps… and the are now using things like Twitter to help people. I don’t care Home Depot… Comcast. If you have a problem with Comcast which I’ve heard a lot of people have had.
Who hasn’t?
Yeah, rather than getting on the phone and waiting forever, go on through which leads through their twitter account and ask him a question. That you is teeny compared to the phone queue. you want to ask a question a.m. having a problem with XYZ, here’s my information within minutes you will have your answer. Or they will call you back. It is truly brilliant.
Even CDF California Department of fire…
Cal fire is pretty active on twitter…
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying… . I was trying to find out it was a burn day… called and called, got the round robin with no answers. Then I used Twitter and within minutes had my answer. It’s very handy
Let’s see.. what else?
One of the things that would suite offers is called Hootsuite University a place where you can get schooled on exactly how to use Hootsuite, along with every little detail that Hootsuite offers. That is pretty amazing in and of itself, in that you can be certified. They offer online instructional videos and it’s really important for say a company owner that says I know I need to do this and would be far more efficient and cost-effective rather than me go, say to watch a bunch of YouTube videos to figure this out, when, they’ve got a full University with 50,000 people who have gone through their certification process. So it’s well worth it to go and get certified… again to make more money for your company. be more efficient with the social… they’ve got a full educational program. Or you can go to a place like Lynda.com. I am big fan of Lynda.com. I’ve got tons of links on my site Daveworks.net where you can find out how to use Hootsuite through Lynda.com where they have all the instructional videos… really efficient. You know you can, for $25 learn it for a month and you’re done.
It’s information you can take with you into the future
Absolutely
Constantly grow with what you need to do today
Absolutely
To keep your business running
I’ve mentioned that the social streams… each stream becomes its own informational ticker as you said. I can’t illustrate enough how efficient it is, but until you really just go… and it’s free to go to Hootsuite.com, sign-up and then you hook up your social accounts. But the streams I can’t tell you how helpful they are. The time-savings and as security offered through Hootsuite to allow a bunch of people Your employees) to help you with your social media management for your company. They just keep getting better and better. It is just amazing what they’ve done and how finely sliced and diced the information for you.
Now, talking about security, is hoots with its own entity or is it a part of Microsoft or Google or anything?
It’s its own entity, great question it is its own entity. but they’ve have to work very hard at working with these companies ande how shall I say help develop these APIs that are offered… APIs meaning it’s a way for connection between your website or program and somebody else’s and that’s a good question, by the way. One thing I can remember is that one of the features that just got shut off because of security through Hootsuite was Facebook’s news feed. I used to use all the time. One of the things you can’t do through Hootsuite, and it’s no fault of their own. was that Facebook added a bunch of extra security so now you can’t look at everybody else through your personal news feed. Normally you log into Facebook and see what everybody’s post on Facebook well you can’t do that through Hootsuite because of security because you were connecting to other people’s information their private personal information as friends. You know Facebook just locked them out. Well maybe they’ll change maybe they’ll be able to work something out, but that’s more of a personal thing and I’m talking about everything business here. You can definitely log in personally and see your personal stuff just not the personal stuff of other. This just happened in March and I’m sure was a great disappointment to HOotsuite. Facebook is running the social show right now and then a lot more money and a lot more clout when it comes to… you know what they want on (their site) and they can offer. It’s always in the spirit of security so I appreciate, you know, they’re looking out for all of us.
What else… scheduling you can do scheduling through Hootsuite. Say there’s so much you know I can I can’t delve into everything, but the scheduling of your posts is very important. So you can find out how to optimize when the most eyeballs are sitting looking at you and your specific posts. (using a tool like SocialBro) Your audience may be on a different schedule than someone else’s. So when do I get the maximum throughput here when most people are looking, you can schedule them right on the money. Yu know 3 PM on Tuesdays over 5 PM on Fridays… you can post all fot the most important information
Your demographics
Well said.
They also offer their own link shortener. Link shorteners are important you know some URLs are long and Twitter, specifically Twitter, is usually the bottom line there because you can’t have more than 140 characters. Okay so you have to shorten those URLs and there are many different link shorten theirs out there but Hootsuite you can copy and paste your URL into this little box as a shorten it and it shortens up to the maximum possible, so that you can continue typing more words to get, you know, you’re link and and your words into specific words into your post. That’s an important piece
Apps and extensions. One of the coolest things I’ve seen is if you have your browser like chrome, you can have a little, it’s called called a Hootlet on the top you can go there click on the little owl it’s a hoot, get it? You click on the little owl and it brings up a little window pop-up window so you didn’t have to to have your Hootsuite dashboard open you can do it through your browser. which I do often. If your’re sitting there n the browser and say I have to share this… you click the owl, up comes out the window it automatically shortens the URL post your stuff… yueah
And I’m sure there’s a mobile app for it to
Yes absolutely, there’s definitely a mobile app. they are very ip on that.
So I’m sure were running out of time once again… there’s so much more to this which is available… I will make my podcast available now I will have this MP3 up shortly, you can listen to it…
But let me leave you with three thoughts:
- Be open-minded about it, because Hootsuite saves time.
- Number two: stick to your knitting… . plan your work and work your plan. Don’t deviate from that.
- And as always be social.
Next week for the love of all that is holy… do NOT miss next weeks show because I’m going to talk about Google Voice. Google Voice is free phone service through Google.
So we’ll see you next week. Talk to me on Daveworks.net
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