Hootsuite

Full Review

The world is still figuring out how to use social media, but it's quickly becoming the next major industry in technology. For businesses, social media is a new way to keep a pulse on the market and offer personalized customer support. Campaigning politicians can use Facebook and Twitter to interact with voters like never before. But anyone who's used twitter before knows that the interface sucks. Great product, but crappy layout and tough to manage anything. And that's just one social network, combine that with a couple Facebook pages and a few more twitter accounts, and it's a lot to manage. That's where HootSuite comes in.

Getting started on HootSuite requires you to integrate your social media accounts. I added everything, from foursquare to Twittter to Facebook. Many businesses just need it for twitter, and I'll tell you right now that even if you are only adding a single twitter account - HootSuite will help. That being said, managing multiple twitter accounts and Facebook pages is a breeze, and only takes a minute to set up.

Once I had all my accounts entered in, I set up all my streams. This is how HootSuite works, the UI is a collection of tabs that have all your different social networks. So on your twitter tab, you can add a vertical panel for mentions, direct messages, home feed, etc. On Facebook you can add a newsfeed stream, on FourSquare a recent checkins stream, and so on. And there's a home tab where you can add streams from any social network, so you get a complete view of whatever social media you want.

I think the UI is refreshingly simple but incredibly powerful. It's so easy to get information, and many actions can be done without leaving the site. There's a button to trace the conversation for any @reply (something twitter's own site doesn't even have). I could like Facebook posts and comment on them without ever leaving HootSuite. Frankly, I don't even have a need to log onto twitter anymore because I can do everything from HootSuite.

There's a simple window for sharing content at the top of the screen, with buttons that allow you to send it to all or some of your included social networks. And if you don't want to post something immediately, you can schedule a post and even be sent an email reminder. If you want to link something, HootSuite has two URL shorteners built into the site itself. Ow.ly is a simple URL shortener that just directs you to the page. Ht.ly (hootly) is more robust with an on-screen frame that allows for more social interaction but can come off as annoying and interfering. HootSuite will track analytics with both shorteners, and won't track analytics for any other links. HootSuite even syncs up with Google Analytics, so you can directly compare tweet stats with any site you use with Google Analytics.

HootSuite has decent team integration too, allowing for multiple users to the same social media accounts. For companies using social media has a serious form of customer support, there's the nice feature of assigning tweets - complete with email notifications. It doesn't seem to be built to handle massive volume, and I think CoTweet is better for team support, but HootSuite isn't shabby at all.

The Bottom Line

With the wide array of features it has, and how seamlessly everything integrates, anyone who's serious about social media will benefit from using HootSuite - especially because it's free. I am by no means a social media guru, but even I feel HootSuite makes life easier for me. And frankly, it just looks so much nicer than Twitter... that aesthetics alone is reason enough to signup. Team implementation is nice, and has powerful potential for any business, campaign, event, etc looking to manage their social media.

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