I use Hootsuite as my social media management tool and though I’m pretty satisfied with it, there are of course a few things that I think they can improve on. To get right to the point, here goes:
What I really like about Hootsuite:
- I can easily import my networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and have access to a bevy of apps such as Wordpress, Instagram and Constant Contact for email marketing.
- I have the ability to schedule my messages whatever day or time I want in my timezone (instead of using Facebook’s old school scheduling tool) and I can see my scheduled content organized in Hootsuite’s Publisher.
- I can create streams to scan my client’s competition and see what they are posting about and can also add hashtags to search keywords related to my client’s industry.
- Hootsuite provides easier management amongst teams so that anyone can use their own account to log in and be accountable for any interaction they instigate.
- I also think their support team is on the ball with answering requests (it would be pretty terrible if they weren’t, considering…)
- At a reasonable monthly add-on fee of $29, I subscribe to Hootsuite University, have become officially certified and all with a nice badge to use for our company website.
- I have unlimited access to training videos and industry experts providing tips on various industries and how they handle social media.
The nitty gritty of what I don’t like?
- I can’t tag people or pages in any posts or comments I make, which means that I have to go to Facebook.com if I want to make my post more engaging, or in other words, be more social! However, to defend Hootsuite, this is apparently an issue of Facebook’s API not allowing them to provide this option.
- I’m not able to create a stream of my Newsfeed, which is unfortunate because I can’t share or interact with any pages my client has liked.
These (seemingly) small issues are actually quite important on the grand scheme of things because the whole point of social media is to be able to interact with your peers on a regular basis and the goal of using Hootsuite is to be able to use all of your social networks in one place. Hopefully, by the time that someone from Hootsuite reads this, they’ll have moved my recommendations up the ladder in their Feedback Forum.
There are many other major aspects of Hootsuite I didn’t discuss such as reporting and pricing but let’s keep that for a subsequent post.
What about you? What are your initial impressions and experiences with Hootsuite?