We wrote last week about the importance of social media marketing, particularly for small, local businesses. To recap, effective social media management is social, local, and mobile, and not always as easy as it would seem to be. We at E.H. Anderson PR have found one tool in particular that helps manage the dozens of social media accounts we handle for our clients — Hootsuite. To be clear, this is not an ad nor a wholehearted endorsement of the social media management site, merely the suggestion of a tool we find useful and how it can benefit your social media marketing efforts. There are several others, but we believe Hootsuite in particular is a solid social media management tool for businesses small and large, and the following information pertains to the service Hootsuite offers, no matter your budget.
For starters, Hootsuite is free—at least for a small business managing only its brand. Hostile allows for three free accounts before you’re required to pay for the service. That means you can manage, for example, your Twitter, Instagram, and Google Plus accounts all from one dashboard, Hootsuite, by the way, is one of the only apps that lets you post to G+, other than Google itself. Of course, if you’re managing multiple platforms like we do, you’ll want to invest in the Pro or Enterprise plans, which start at a mere $10 a month. But for a small business’s social media management, three accounts should be sufficient.
Next, you can see all of your social media activity from Hootsuite’s dashboard. Now, Hootsuite’s dashboard can be a little overwhelming at first—that’s what makes it useful. You can monitor your scheduled posts, posted posts, and how people are interacting with each one of your social media sites from one central location. You can organize your streams to your specific preferences. If you choose to start a Hootsuite account, play around with the dashboard to see what suits your needs best.
If you prefer to delegate your social media management to one of your employees, Hootsuite allows you to schedule posts and let others collaborate on or edit them before their posted, assuming you’re comfortable sharing your login information. This can be especially useful if several people comment on or interact with your page on a daily basis; if you’re unavailable to respond, one of your trusted employees can. If you’re willing to invest a little extra, issues such as security (not having to share your password) and not stepping on each other’s toes trying to manage the same social media account in several different places can be remedied with the Enterprise package. Also, if you’re afraid Hootsuite will stamp its attribution on everything you post on Facebook, don’t worry; only admins of the page can see who posts what, not the public.
Of course, investing in the Pro or Enterpriser plans offers a lot more options and cross-platform social media management. Nonetheless, the free version can take a huge weight off the shoulders of social media managers trying to juggle various pages at once. What would usually take upwards of half an hour login in and out of social media apps to post the same information can be done in a matter of minutes. Give it a try, and see if Hootsuite suites your social media management needs.