HootSuite Review

As you start using more and more social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, you start torealize that the task is growing difficult to manage. How can you log into 5 or 10 different social networks everyday, reply to messages and post something meaningful?

This is where many people give up on using social media for marketing.

When I ran into this problem, I decided to research tools that would allow me to manage all my social media in oneplace. I reviewed a lot of different tools, but the one I found the best is called HootSuite.

With HootSuite, you can create columns of information from each social media source along with tabs across the top for the various social networks.

As you can see in the image above, I have tabs for my 2 Twitter accounts as well as my LinkedIn, MySpace, foursquare accounts.

This lets you see at a glance if you have any direct messages in any of the networks or if anyone mentions you.

The Compose Message box at the top left lets you enter the message only once, and then checkmark all the services you want it to go out through. This alone is a huge time savings if you have a message to go out to multiple networks. It also shows you your word count, lets you schedule a message for later and lets you shorten urls (web site addresses) to allow you to include more characters in your message.

HootSuite has versions for your laptop or desktop using the web,as well as versions for the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and other portable cell phone. So you can easily access it from almost any device. In my case, I most often use it from my laptop and my iPhone.

You can also add the “Hootlet” bookmark tool to your browser. Once it is in your browser, you just browse the web like normal. When you find a web page or article you want to share with people, just click on the Hootlet…

And immediately a “Create New Message” window pops up with the name of the site and the url already preshrunk. You just add any adidtional text you want to the message, click on the social networks you want to send the message to and click on “Send Now.

HootSuite also lets you search Twitter. Just click on the search box and you can search for key words or do a local search to see what other local people are tweeting about.

HootSuite can also handle your Twitter contact lists. It will show each contact, along with their following/follower count and their Klout score.

HootSuite also provides great statistics. It will show clicks, referrers, influencers who mentioned you and and what your top messages were.

Wow! The ability to manage your social media in one place, control over your various social media streams, posting to multiple social networks at once and great statistics. HootSuite really is a powerhouse social media tool and is the best free tool I have found to manage much of what I do in social media.

And best of all it is free.

Have you tried Hootsuite or will you now that you've read this?  Do you have any questions?  Please let me know what you think by commenting below.  I will read and answer all the comments.