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Related Categories
1.) Social Media Management Software
2.) Social Media Monitoring Tools
3.) Social Media Scheduling Tools
Most Popular Software
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HootSuite Review
Hootsuite is arguably the single most popular social media management software manager on the planet at this time. It’s no mistake that over ten million (10,000,000, no typo!) professionals use Hootsuite to kickstart, maintain and grow their social media interactions across 35 different social media platforms. To be brutally honest, Hootsuite is very tough to beat and also offers one of the best free plans, so if you’re frustrated that you’re wasting too much time on social media and would like to cut that time in half (or even less) then absolutely consider Hootsuite, and definitely read this review very closely.
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Hootsuite has a ton of powerful apps that dramatically empower your social media results, and it doesn’t matter what social media platforms your businesses use. So if you love and use Twitter, HipChat, Yammer, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, or almost any other platform you’re going to find really cool apps with features that take the power of your profiles to the next level and beyond.
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Whether you want to engage new followers, sell more products, build your email list, publish and automate content, analyze your current social media accounts, or establish powerful insights that would be almost impossible to develop elsewhere, Hootsuite is one of the best ways to accomplish whatever your social media goals may be, and it doesn’t matter what your current social media action plan looks like.
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Did you know that social media heavy hitters are constantly at risk of getting hacked? Even Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg isn’t safe from the nonstop onslaught of social media hackers! That’s why Hootsuite takes your security “dead seriously” with a boatload of protections so you never carelessly risk the reputation and assets of your company.
HootSuite Advantages
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Forever Free Plan – If you operate a startup or are just getting started in the world of social media, and want to drastically increase your current results in the fastest way possible, then using Hootsuite’s 100% forever free plan is the fastest way to get there. So you can begin connecting your social media profiles and analyzing them at a glance, and scheduling your messages which will save you stress, and time.
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Tons Of Integrations – Name any social media platform, seriously, name any one! Regardless of which social media platform you just named, you can bet your boots that Hootsuite integrates with it seamlessly, which is definitely one of their strongest advantages. Because you probably realize by now, that many of Hootsuite’s competitors focus heavily on one social media platform or the other. Hootsuite on the other hand, is the “all in one” social media management tool that handles just about everything you could ever need.
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Robust Features – Whether you want to access the Hootsuite dashboard so you can witness first hand your accumulative social media action in one fell swoop, engage with your best followers, analyze what’s happening now across all of your social media platforms, find new customers, build your email list, or schedule content posting throughout all of your social media profiles, Hootsuite has you covered easily, in addition to several other features that will save you a ton of time and make your social media interaction more powerful one way or the other.
HootSuite Disadvantages
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Free Plan Limits You To 3 Accounts – It seems like the acme of henpecking to put a negative checkmark in Hootsuite’s category for giving something away for free, especially since many of Hootsuite’s competitors only grant 3 social media accounts on their premium plans. That being said, in the spirit of 100% transparency, it’s important to note that Hootsuite only allows 3 social media accounts to be linked on their free plan.
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Free Plan Has No Bulk Message Scheduling – Another limitation of Hootsuite’s (admittedly generous) free plan, is that there’s no bulk message scheduling. So if you’re interested in planning and brainstorming a massive messaging campaign, then you’re advised to at least consider one of Hootsuite’s very affordable premium plans, which offer more features and benefits (which you’ll learn more about later in this summary review, so continue reading!).
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Competition – It’s arguably true that Hootsuite is one of the most popular, and most fully featured social media management tools. That being said, as you know, the internet is liberally strewn with boatloads of competitors, which causes Hootsuite to easily get lost in the mist. So, is Hootsuite your ideal choice for social media management, or are you better off looking elsewhere? Continue reading this review for 100% honest and transparent feedback.
Who Is HootSuite Ideal For?
If you operate a small business, if you’re a blogger, an author, an Internet marketer, a social media authority, an email marketer, product launcher, a small medium or large business, are managing a startup, planning a startup, or if you work for or manage a marketing agency of some type, then Hootsuite can make your life much easier.
Another thing about Hootsuite, is that they have a massive list of features. So if you want to generate leads, find new customers, build your email list, or syndicate your blog content, then Hootsuite’s impressive list of features and widgets have a lot to offer you.
Additionally, even if you’re totally new to social media marketing and are thinking about developing a following on social media, Hootsuite can offer you a massive head start by enabling you to find new followers, better interact with new prospects, and automating your content messaging across all platforms.
At the end of the day, Hootsuite is for you if you use social media now, and realize that you waste too much time interacting with your social media followers on whichever native platform. Always remember that social media platforms are designed to get you to stay there forever! While this sounds cool in theory, the reality is that you need to publish content, analyze your followers, and interact with your fans in as little time as possible, and since your time is at a premium, Hootsuite can be your closest ally in the social media marketing world.
HootSuite Signup Process
Registering for Hootsuite literally couldn’t be any easier. Upon visiting the Hootsuite homepage, you’re going to see several calls to action inviting you to automatically login via Twitter, Facebook, or Google. So if you have a Twitter account, a Facebook account, or a Google account (which the smart money says that you do), you can easily access the Hootsuite control panel without even entering a username or password, all you have to do is connect with your existing accounts.
You also have the option of registering with a traditional email username and password if you wish, so no matter how you want to connect with Hootsuite, it’s only going to take you a few seconds, and the best part is that there’s no credit card required to register, so if you want to get started with Hootsuite, it doesn’t cost you a single red cent and it won’t take you more than a few minutes.
In the event that you want to unlock some of Hootsuite’s advanced features and apps, you can always upgrade at any time and the overall upgrading process is rather intuitive and nonaggressive, which is a nice touch.
HootSuite Ease of Use
The first thing you should know about Hootsuite, is that they do offer a mobile app, however the mobile app isn’t required at all. The fascinating thing about Hootsuite’s mobile app is that it’s been downloaded over 7 million times (7,000,000) from over 196 countries, making it easily one of, if not the most popular social media management application on the face of the planet. The mobile app is available for Mac and Android and will let you manage your social media profiles from anywhere on Earth as long as you have your smart phone.
That being said, the mobile app is absolutely not required. In fact, if you want to use Hootsuite’s web interface, then you’ll never have to download any apps, or any software, period.
Upon logging into the Hootsuite member’s area, you’ll be prompted to start connecting your social media profiles (or, if you registered via one of your social media profiles, this is already done for you).
After you get your social media account connected, you’re going to have a beautiful dashboard at your command which will enable you to interact with your followers, quickly visualize trends, spy on your visitors to see what they’re saying, and you’ll also have the ability to activate different apps which provide additional functionality, and post (or even schedule) content across all of your platforms.
Overall, the learning curve is near zero as everything is easily identifiable and defined. So you’ll be interacting with your followers, generating leads, launching contests, scheduling content, finding new followers, and activating different Hootsuite features without a massive learning curve, and before too long you’ll have full control over your social media profiles.
HootSuite Features
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100% Real Time Data – Have you ever ran a social media report, and then pulled out your hair because the synchronization process was taking forever and a day? With Hootsuite, everything is 100% real time, so there’s never any annoying queries to wait for, and you’ll never lose your train of thought when brainstorming a breakthrough campaign due to downtime.
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Trends At Your Fingertips – Have you ever banged your head against your keyboard because your business was missing something as it happened? Maybe one of your webpages is down during a product launch, or maybe one of your mobile apps just broke. Worst yet, maybe demand for your product skyrocketed overnight but you were never around to take advantage. Hootsuite will become your new “eye in the sky” keeping you apprised of social signals in real time, so you never miss the trends that impact your business, and so you never miss a potentially golden opportunity.
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Intuitive Design – As a marketer or business, you probably realize that the social media platforms want their end users on their service for as long as possible, so that they continually click on advertisements. For that single reason, you know for a fact that the layouts and designs of native social media platforms will never be designed for efficiency. That’s why you’re going to notice an unreal difference in how the Hootsuite interface saves you tons of time, effort and energy, enabling you to shatter your previous results all from a single dashboard, which puts you in a position of authority that’s hard to imagine otherwise.
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Lead Generation Campaigns – If your main goal right now is to generate leads for your business one way or the other, Hootsuite offers a ton of awesome ways to grow your audience such as photo, video, caption and essay contests, sweepstakes, quizzes, polls, voting galleries, and a boatload more contests that can help you to grow your following virally, enabling you to truly leverage your current followers to the max.
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IT Security Policies And Procedures – Face it, most marketers neglect IT security! The problem with doing so, is that one breach can be enough for your followers and fans to lose confidence in you, even if it wasn’t your fault! That’s why Hootsuite takes vigorous IT security measures such as forcing HTTPS, controlling permissions, and they even push security alerts when suspicious activity is found across your accounts. Hootsuite’s messaging protocols are also in compliance with the standards set by FINRA and HIPAA, so you can be rest assured that not only is your data safe while traveling over the wire, but the data of your followers, customers and fans are also secure.
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Pre-Written Responses – If you’ve ever handled customer support or been the focal point of contact for any organization, you realize that often times you customers ask the same exact questions over and over. This isn’t a bad thing per se, in fact, Hootsuite can take advantage of this strange phenomenon by enabling you to respond to your awesome customers with a single click, while at the same time giving them a response that’s been perfected by you or your staff, while saving you time, and ensuring quality assurance so your branding messages stay consistent and reliable, even if you’re drastically busy, backlogged, or multitasking.
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Centralized Interaction – No more frantically switching from different browsers and browser tabs. With Hootsuite, you’ll have access to all of your social media accounts from one dashboard, so you can analyze, interpret, strategize and interact from one window, so you never lose focus, lose time, and lose your marbles trying to get the most out of your social media accounts.
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Schedule Content – Not only can you post from all of your social media accounts from one dashboard using Hootsuite, but you can also plan an entire campaign from one account, and even mass schedule hundreds of preplanned messages, so you could schedule a social sequence that could last an entire season and then sit back and analyze your results without breaking a sweat.
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Find Out What Your Audience Loves – Always remember that it’s never about you and your tastes, the most important thing is what your audience loves. With Hootsuite, you’ll be able to figure out exactly what’s tickling the fancy of your best fans and followers, so not only could you share that same style content with them in the future, but this will also provide you ample opportunity to create content that matches their preference profile.
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Powerful Analytics – Whether you want to identify new followers to interact with, gain powerful insights, or track your current social media interaction, Hootsuite provides beautiful charts graphs and data that are rather easy to understand, so you can develop the perfect social media strategy that will reveal a breakthrough game plan, and also develop unshakable confidence that’s only possible when you know for a fact that you’re making the most out of your time.
HootSuite Integration's
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Twitter – Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms for branding on the planet! That’s because it doesn’t matter what market or niche you’re in, you can be rest assured that your audience spends an abundant wealth of time click clacking away on Twitter. The main problem with Twitter, is of course that it’s so easy to waste days (or months) away without getting any work done. That’s why Hootsuite integration is such a relief, and will offer you the ability to find new followers, schedule content, manage groups, and even launch contests without breaking a sweat.
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Google + – Google loves their social media network, and Google will love you even more if you publish fresh content to your Google + pages. For that reason, Hootsuite allows you to connect up to 100 different pages, so you can manage your Google + page right within the Hootsuite dashboard, and you’ll have all of the analytics and data that you can handle.
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WordPress – It doesn’t matter if you’re using a WordPress.com account, or a WordPress.org installation to manage your blog, you can easily integrate with Hootsuite enabling you to get superior statistics, and also to automate your content publishing across your blogs.
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Instagram – It seems like only yesterday when nobody knew what Instagram was, now it’s one of the most popular social media networks on the planet, so you’d be crazy to not take advantage and touch upon your followers via this new phenomenon. Hootsuite seamlessly integrates with Instagram, so you can create posts right within your Hootsuite dashboard and publish to your Instagram account in a snap.
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Facebook – Not only can you attach your regular Facebook profile to Hootsuite, you can also attach your Facebook group to Hootsuite, enabling you to manage your content and analytics from within one easy to understand dashboard, thus giving you previously unheard of control over your content and data.
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Facebook Pages – If you have a Facebook Fan Page, you can also easily integrate with Hootsuite enabling you the ability to get tons of data and you’ll also be able to post right from the handy dandy dashboard.
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YouTube – Hootsuite has a YouTube feature which will definitely take your YouTube experience to the next level. Not only can you view your playlists and manage your favorite videos, but you can also bulk upload directly from the Hootsuite dashboard, enabling your YouTube account like few other apps can.
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LinkedIn– Whether you want to attach your LinkedIn group, or LinkedIn page, you’ll have the opportunity to attach up to 100 different instances, making it possible to organize all of your LinkedIn content without getting lost in a maze of browser tabs or new windows.
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MailChimp – MailChimp is one of the most popular (and free) email marketing service providers on the planet. So imagine this scenario. Imagine if you could analyze your email campaigns and list building efforts right from within the Hootsuite dashboard. This way you can not only determine what methods are adding the most email subscribers, but you’ll also be able to add notes to individual subscribers, and integrate your email list building efforts with your social media channels like never before.
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Pinterest – Pinterest is the most popular destination on the Internet for sharing images. Hootsuite has a featured app that will empower you with the ability to not only share and schedule the sharing of your awesome graphics, but will also enable you to share to multiple boards simultaneously.
HootSuite Pricing
Considering how Hootsuite arguably offers some of the most comprehensive social media management tools on the planet, you quite frankly can’t argue with their pricing.
There are three plans to talk about, and the plans are mostly based upon the number of social media profiles granted, and also the complexity of the features.
First, let’s discuss the Hootsuite free plan. The free plan is designed for you if you’re a social media enthusiast simply looking to get more out of your time spent on social media. The Hootsuite free plan enables you the most basic features, which includes 3 social profiles, basic analytics reporting, and message scheduling.
Then there’s the pro plan. The pro plan is perfect for you if you’re an entrepreneur, a startup, a consultant or any type of business owner who wants to get superior results on social media. The Hootsuite pro plan comes with a 30-day free trial, and enables you to connect with up to 50 social media profiles. You also get the ability to manage your messages in bulk, access to the entire suite of premium apps, advanced analytics, and the ability to add up to 10 users.
The Hootsuite pro plan is a paltry $9.99 per month, which is quite frankly, ridiculously cheap for what you get.
Finally, there’s the business plan. The Hootsuite business plan is perfect for you if you’re any type of business or agency that needs advanced social media management capabilities. So if you or your organization has a sizeable staff, or otherwise manage the social media accounts for your clients, then the Hootsuite business plan is your top choice.
With the Hootsuite business plan, you get the ability to add up to 50 social profiles, a social media certification (cool!), a vanity URL, multiple user accounts, 24/7 support, customized training, and the most comprehensive real time statistics and analytics. To get started with the business plan, simply visit Hootsuite and contact them for a custom quote.
HootSuite Support
Hootsuite is one of those companies that offer an unprecedented level of support. Hootsuite literally exerts great effort to ensure that you’re fully supported, one way or the other.
Hootsuite seriously and literally offers a massive array of support functions, including fully fledged courses that teach about Hootsuite, a frequently updated blog stuffed to the brim with social media tutorials, a massive database of archived webinars and upcoming live webinars, a huge resource library including white papers, guides, and toolkits, a list of events, meetups, and conferences, a searchable help center, and a customizable training service.
Needless to say, Hootsuite goes above and beyond and offers all the training and support you could ever need. One of the coolest things to do, is simply register to one of their upcoming webinars, so you can interact with the Hootsuite team live as they demonstrate their services, and you can ask any questions that you want.
In the event that this ridiculously vast wealth of resources still leaves something to be desired, Hootsuite is very easy to contact. You can contact sales or support via their support form, and they’ll get back to you as soon as you can. Hootsuite is also readily available on almost all social media platforms, which they monitor very closely. Hootsuite also offers 24/7 priority support to their business plan members, so you’ll never be left out in the dark in the event that you need help fast.
HootSuite Reputation
Hootsuite serves over ten million (10,000,000) customers, from over 175+ countries. Their applications have been installed over two million (2,000,000) times. Their reputation is quite frankly, stellar.
Hootsuite boasts a massive list of heavy hitting case studies, such as how the city of New York tripled their audience using Hootsuite, or how Monster.com manages their social media profiles with Hootsuite while saving 80% of their time, or how 1&1 serves over 14 million customers on social media using Hootsuite.
Hootsuite’s impressive accomplishments don’t stop there. They’ve been frantically praised about all over the Internet. Inc. Magazine has been quoted saying how Hootsuite is the Swiss Army Knife of social media. Entrepreneur Magazine says Hootsuite is the top choice. Even Forbes rants and raves about how Hootsuite finally made social media management easy and convenient.
At the end of the day, Hootsuite has amassed a vast quantity of end users, an unbeatable list of testimonials, and all of the accolades that you might look for when trying to find a company that you can trust. Best of all, Hootsuite actually takes your IT security seriously, which is saying something these days in a world where social media gurus are getting hacked left and right, and your company data has never been worth more to black hats, hackers, and pirates.
HootSuite Conclusion
You realize by now that Hootsuite is at the top of the food chain when it comes to social media management, and for good reason.
They’re trusted by over ten million customers. They have arguably some of the best testimonials a social media management company can ever obtain, and they have awesome customer support services that will hold you by the hand, teach you about social media marketing, and ensure that you get the most out of their service one way or the other.
But what about cost? Surely, a company with raving reviews from Bloomberg, Forbes, and Business Insider must cost an absolute fortune, right? Wrong. You can get started using Hootsuite for absolutely zero cost, and even if you decide to get a paid plan, you’ll find that their cost is an absolute joke compared to the beautiful services that you can get in return.
In fact, you can get started without even opening your wallet. Even if you decide to upgrade your Hootsuite account down the line, you won’t pay more than a pittance of what the services are truly worth.
Before you do that, let’s talk about what you really get when you subscribe to Hootsuite. You get something that’s more valuable than having more email subscribers, more sales, or more social media followers. You get something that you’ll never ever be able to get elsewhere, for any price.
You’ll get to save your time. All the while, working with a team who actually cares about your social media results. So you can brainstorm more business ideas, so you can be more creative, and so you can work on establishing the rapport, respect, and authority that your business needs. All of this, without even opening your wallet until you’re ready to upgrade.
About Mike DeVincent
Mike researches and reviews products for Top 10 Marketing Software. Mike has vast experience in blogging, teaching and internet marketing. See Mike's profile on Google+.
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