12 Most Compelling Reasons to Use Hootsuite

Social media is really no longer a choice for business owners. Every business needs to be doing something in the social media arena, and very likely more participating in more than one social network. Whether a business is marketing to other businesses or to consumers, potential customers are online somewhere, it’s just a matter of getting the right message to them at the right time. Posting on all these networks can be incredibly time-consuming. That’s why you need a social media dashboard like Hootsuite. Here are the 12 Most Compelling Reasons to Use Hootsuite (Aff) as your dashboard.

1. It’s in the cloud

Once you’re all set up, you can log in to your dashboard from any computer. Keep up with your accounts from home, work and the local public access site with ease.

2. Make Twitter conversations easy

By setting up your columns to show your favorite tweeters, your mentions, direct messages and all you follow, you can easily scan what’s happening on Twitter without clicking through a bunch of page changes.

3. Track your Twitter searches

Create a column for your favorite Twitter search and watch it update in real time if you’re so inclined. At the very least, you never have to remember how to get that perfected search perfect again.

4. Schedule your posts

Probably the most common reason for adopting a social media dashboard is the ability to schedule posts for optimum timing. Got a meeting at 8am but need to post an announcement? No problem, Hootsuite can help you with that. In fact, with careful planning you can easily post a week’s worth of updates in a few minutes ensuring you don’t miss the important things. Then you can engage in the fun part of social media at will.

5. Cross post with ease

Not only can you schedule a post to go tomorrow morning, or next week, you can schedule the same post to go to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a few other networks with the push of a button. Just be careful about posting long updates to Twitter and to not use hashtags and @ tags.

6. Easily shorten links

Hootsuite comes with its own link shortening system. Choose between ow.li/ow.ly and ht.li/ht.ly depending on whether you want a Hootsuite header bar to appear when clicked. No need to integrate with another system.

7. Get free reports sent to your e-mail

Basic link tracking reports are free and more advanced reports can be purchased. The free report includes referral information and shows you which links were most popular with your audience.

8. Use it on your mobile device

The Hootsuite mobile app gives you easy access to all your columns and tabs right on your phone. This is a great option for anyone who is managing multiple client accounts using Hootsuite.

9. Work in teams

There is an option to give another person access to the same accounts. This allows the “manager” to assign team members tweets to respond to and to see when those responses have been posted. It’s a great way to reduce duplication when multiple people are working on the same accounts.

10. Manage your Twitter contacts with ease

Easily follow back those who have recently followed you or unfollow those who have annoyed you. Quickly add accounts to your existing Twitter lists, or create new ones. Click on an account to check it out before you take any action.

11. Easily post from your internet browser

Install the Hootlet app for your browser and post to any or all of your linked accounts with the push of a button. Clicking on the Hootlet brings up a full featured posting box with linking, attachment and scheduling options.

12. Learn more at Hootsuite U

If you’re serious about using Hootsuite (Aff) and/or social media to promote your business, take advantage of the upgrade to Hootsuite U and get access to various tutorials, case studies and webinars to help you along.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There is so much more that Hootsuite has to offer. And most of the features are free! You can link up to five social media accounts without upgrading, so that’s a Facebook profile, Facebook business timeline, LinkedIn account, Twitter account and one more to spare! Lucky for you it’s easy to learn how to use as well.