4 More Reasons to Start Using HootSuite

HootSuite has been around for some time, unfortunately I’ve only been using it for several months, and am hooked.  It makes it so easy to integrate multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Facebook pages.  You can even use HootSuite to update your chosen social accounts using content from an RSS feed (like your blog).  Today I logged into HootSuite and discovered they had a new update.  No worries, it is all contained within the browser, so no software to download.  I’ll review them here, and why I think HootSuite is a great productivity tool for today’s social web.

4 More Reasons to Start Using HootSuite

I am often asked, “How do you sync all your social profiles?” or “Are there tools available to help people manage multiple social profiles?”  I have used multiple services over the past couple years, but my favorite has been HootSuite, and now it just got better.  Here are the 4 new main features.

1 – HootSuite Supports Twitter Lists

Twitter lists allow you to group a collection of Twitter users as you wish.  It is an organization tool of sorts in Twitter, so you can quickly locate people of interest and see their latest tweets. Lists can be private or public to your Twitter account.  Lists have been around for some time, but I didn’t use them, because I was keeping all my important peeps in HootSuite groups.  Today, when I logged in, it prompted me to convert my HootSuite groups, to Twitter lists.  They say that it will run faster, and now I can share lists with others (see them on this page, half way down right hand side).

2 – Reporting and Tracking

Many have offered feedback on 3 Rules of Using Twitter for Business, but what if you could see how your followers in your niche are interacting with your tweets?  HootSuite allows users to track how many clicks, by region, and time a given link gets in a social message.  This information can be exported in CSV, or to a PDF.  They even support “custom URL parameters” (jump for joy marketing geeks).

3 – ‘Klout’ Score

In the lower part of the interface, there is now a “People” button, after selecting that and specifying the Twitter account, HootSuite ranks those in the social circle, and then gives several options of how you can interact with that Twitter user, including adding them to a Twitter list.  Here’s a screenshot.

4 – Save as Draft

With HootSuite, users can easily schedule tweets for the future, but now they have added the ability to save as draft.  Similar to email, this is useful when you don’t have a link ready, or aren’t satisfied with the tweet, or for any other reason you want to save it.  Sidenote: You can also upload documents and images, sweet!

Bottomline

This update builds on the already powerful feature set of this free tool which has saved me a lot of time managing and updating my social profiles.  If you haven’t had your hand at HootSuite, give it a test run, it only takes a few minutes to setup your accounts.  Who knows, you might even get hooked on it, like I am.

What do you think of HootSuite? Chime in with your comments below.

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