Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi this is Lisa from the Secret Women's Business Network. This week's Cool Tool isÖwell it's
my favorite Cool Tool of 2010.
I heard people mentioning this way before I actually signed up for it but I'm so glad
that last summer I signed up for HootSuite because I use a lot of different computers
throughout the day. I can go to the studio where I do voiceovers and be on a couple of
different computers, Iíve got a couple of different laptops that I use, and it's much
easier for me to be able to access my social media through a web browser than it is to
keep downloading the other applications like Tweetdeck and things like that to different
computers.
So, Hootsuite is a browser-based social media application and it enables you to follow all
your social media or your main social media accounts all in one place.
As you can Iím on my main dashboard here with Hootsuite and you can have Twitter, you
can your Facebook, you can have Facebook pages, Iíve got my LinkedIn on here. And, in fact,
if I just click here and show you. If I wanted to add a stream it actually shows you all
these different things that you can have. You can have Facebook pages, normal Facebook,
LinkedIn, MySpace, Ping FM, Wordpress, Foursquare, mixi and Ning as well. And I'm sure theyíre
going to keep adding to that.
And basically you set it upÖyou sign up with all your different accounts and then you just
can track them and add to them as you go along. And the great thing about this is I do have
different social media accounts for different niches or businesses but also I do social
media management for other people so I can track their accounts as well.
Another thing I love about this is when you write a message you actually have the optionÖwell,
let me show you how to write a message.
First of all, Iíve just written and published a post on the SWBN blog, so Iím going to
copy the url and Iím going to put it down here, and Iím choosing the Hootsuite url
shortener, which is Ow.ly. So, Iím going to shrink that, and thatís going to come
in useful later as Iíll show you in a moment. And Iím going to copy the title.
NowÖ I need to choose which account Iím going to send it to, so itís going to go
out on the SWBN Twitter account. I can also choose to save it as a draft (and you can
view saved drafts there), upload an image or a file, and schedule your message.
Now, if you wanted to schedule the message for laterÖ.and people will say to you that
you shouldnít schedule messages on Social MediaÖyou know, there are a lot of purists
who will say that you shouldnít do that on Social mediaÖbut at the end of the day different
people are following the SWBN across different time zones, so if there's something important
I want to go out then I might schedule it to go out at different times so that all our
community get a chance to see the Tweet.
But, I'm not going to schedule it this time. If I was to schedule it, I would pick a time
that I wanted it to go out, pick a date and then you just click okay to schedule it.
But I'm not going to do that. Iím just going to click Send Now.
Thatís gone out, and if I refreshÖyouíll see thatís gone out in my feed.
And you can addÖ.along hereÖyou can add different things that you can monitor. So,
Iím seeing my home feed, Iím also seeing people who are mentioning the SWBN, any direct
messages, messages that Iíve sent, messages that are pending, I could also add to here
messages that Iíve sent privately - my Direct Messages Out Box.
Thereís lots of different things you can add. In fact, if I show you again on this,
I could choose to select any of these different things to add to my stream but Iím just going
to leave that for now.
And I showed you that url shortener. Hootsuite has a variety of different levels. Some of
them you pay for but there is a free basic level as well. But the more social media sites,
or profiles, you add and the more features you add, like being able to track your stats,
then there are different levels and you will have to start paying for them.
They also offer a great service if you are part of a company that is using social media
and different members of your team are likely to login, or maybe youíre a social media
manager but you have more than one team member, then you can actually just pay a monthly amount
to add each team member.
Iím going to go over here and show you contacts. And basically you select a profile and youíll
see whoís following you and who youíre following.
But weíre going to go to stats. Letís do an overview of stats. Letís pick SWBN from
the last 7 days. And of the things Iíve posted on the SWBN in the last 7 days that have used
the ow.ly shortening trackable link, you can see 15 total clicksÖ.which is not particularly
good, but then Iíve not posted a lot this last week. And you can see various things
like your stats for whoís referring, where theyíre referring from, most popular tweetsÖyou
can see whatís popularÖso last weekís Cool Tools just pops in there as the top one.
So, particularly if youíre doing social media management, but generally if you like to follow
your analytics then Hootsuite Pro is definitely worth paying for. I think I pay $5.95 a month
to get all these extra things and you can see there are various different things here
that you can track.
So, thatís the basics of Hootsuite. As they add more things, as you can see theyíve actually
added a University to teach you how to do stuff.
If youíve got a mobile, if youíve got a smartphone, and youíre thinking well I really
like ìwhateverî app on my iPhone, there is an app for Hootsuite, if you want an app
on your smartphone. So you can use it on your smartphone. I canít tell you how good it
is because I havenít got it myself, but certainly it is there as an option.
So, this is one of my favorite things. Itís one of the first things I open whenever Iím
at a computer and itís my way of tracking my social media accounts.