I can’t remember who tipped me off to Hoot Suite when it first started up, but I am glad they did. It really has been a lifesaver web app for me. I manage about 20 different Twitter profiles right now, and there is no way that I’d be able to keep up with them if I didn’t have a good Twitter client to manage them. There are dozens of other Twitter clients out there that will manage multiple accounts at one time, but many of them are desktop applications that eat up a lot of memory and slow down my computer when I have 10 different web pages open, iTunes, FTP client, and instant messengers.
So, what’s so great about Hoot Suite?
- Allows you to add multiple social media accounts
- Supports Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Ping.fm and WordPress.com Blogs
- Twitter stats for all URL’s shortened using their ow.ly service
- Keyword tracking with separate columns
- Saved searches
- Twitter lists function (which can be used as a group type setting)
- Option to schedule tweets for a later date/time
- Browser bookmarklet allows you to tweet instantly, schedule a tweet and shorten links – all with the click of a button
- HootSuite provides desktop apps to compliment the web app too: Mac and PC programs, Chrome and Firefox extensions, even Greasemonkey scripts
Three Features That Make My Life Easier
The ability to schedule Tweets for later is so great. I am a purist when it comes to social media, so when I am at the computer, I use that time to interact with people, Re-tweet, and reply to people. But when you manage small business Twitter accounts, there are promotional tweets you need to get out there, so instead of spamming people with them all in one cluster, I schedule them for later and space out the tweets. Another great feature is the statistics that Hootsuite keeps for you. Any link you tweet using their personal link shortener, ow.ly, will track how many people click on that link. This is great, because small business owners usually want an idea of how many people are interacting with their Twitter content. You can also import RSS feeds to whatever Twitter account you want all within the Hootsuite interface.
HootSuite is Cloud Computing
There’s no importing or exporting required like when you have a desktop client. It saves all of your settings, because it’s a web application. I love this, some people reject it, but I want my entire digital life to be at my finger tips as long as I have internet access. This is why I am a huge fan of Google Apps for small business owners as well.
The HootSuite iPhone App
I recently downloaded this, it’s only $.99, but it still has some issues. I got rid of Tweetie 2, because it would only access like the last 30 minutes to an hour of tweets, and I like scrolling further back than that, and the HootSuite app has the same issue. It also didn’t show all of my accounts to be able to send one tweet to multiple accounts. So, it’s not perfect, but I am sure they will update soon. Here’s a short video about the app:
