Introduction to Hootsuite – The Social Media Dashboard

Why should I bother with Social Sites?

We all know that social media sites are key to growing your business. It’s important to understand  that this is not a passing fad, there are vast amounts of people signing up to new accounts each day all of which can be targeted and will appreciate your brands online presence, social media marketing  is clearly here to stay. Once you know where to find your audience, you can move on to account management and in particular, Hootsuite.

Understood, so what is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is an application that allows you to manage your entire social feeds though one dashboard. For instance, your company is likely to be on more than one site such as Twitter and Facebook or Google + and LinkedIn etc. Usually in order to manager these accounts you would need to sign in and out of each site as you wish to use it. This is a slow process and may mean you miss customer interaction simply because you just signed out. By using the social media dashboard you can view the feeds of all of your social sites and engage with people as soon as their comment arises leading to great levels of customer satisfaction.

You would not usually have the ability of scheduling by manually entering posts, what you post will go live as soon as you hit the enter button. Hootsuite allows users to schedule posts to go up at quite literally any time of day, be it tomorrow or in 3 months’ time. This is an incredibly powerful tool. It means you can spend a day or two creating a month’s worth of social content which leads to creating an even and constant flow of updates which your customers will see and want engage with, thus increasing your presence and establishing your brand as a known name within your sector.

-Dashboard Layout: Here we track our OKO Wall posts of Facebook, Home feed of Twitter and Home stream of Google+

I don’t know how to use the application and no one in our office is trained either?

This is where Hootsuite University comes in. This is online walkthrough which compiles sections of text, images and videos alongside multiple choice exam questions all of which will train you in the use of the application. The University is well worth taking the time to complete as the knowledge you gain is invaluable. Also included within the university is an extra insight into the world of social media such as social etiquette, creating a social media strategy, an introduction to social selling and how to set up your online accounts if you haven’t done so already. Once you’ve completed the individual sections and completed the course you will become ‘certified’ which is a recognised certificate to anyone within the social media marketing world.

-Read, watch and learn all the information in each SCMD Section then complete the relevant exam (1). You then must complete the final exam here (2) to earn the above certificate (3).

So in conclusion, I personally rate Hootsuite very highly. I think it is a great tool that enables users to control multiple social feeds with ease and connect with customers on a level that otherwise is unreachable. I strongly suggest that users complete the University course before embarking on their own social media empire. However it is worth noting that in order to earn the certificate you have to pay $21/month until completion and then you can cancel this cost. The course itself can easily be done within a month if a few hours in the day are set aside to completing units.

Good luck with all your social conquests. Once you’re up and running tweet @okonaut and let us know how you’re getting on!

Main site: https://hootsuite.com/

University: http://learn.hootsuite.com/