Hootsuite Review: Should Your Team Use It? (Review)

It is not easy to manage any form of business. Although there are a lot of social media platforms available, managing them and catching your audience’s attention is not easy to do. Tasks such as running several profiles, posting content, and interacting with your audience are integral in building your brand. With that, you need to look for any social media management tools that can make things for you easier. You can try Hootsuite to help you promote your content and increase brand awareness on different social media platforms.

In this review, we will discuss what Hootsuite is and how effective it is as a social media management tool.

What Is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a hub that allows you to manage your social media accounts. Instead of logging in to all your social media accounts to post, you can do it in a single dashboard. You can post updates to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and many others with just a single click. With that, it will be easier for you to organize and manage all your social profiles. Moreover, it lets you monitor all that’s happening on social media most conveniently.

Since Hootsuite makes it easier for you to update all your profiles, connecting with your audience and sharing links and files are always within reach. It will help increase your audience’s engagement on your different social media accounts. It can do a lot for your marketing strategy while letting you save time, effort, and money.

What Does Hootsuite Offer?

Hootsuite offers a wide range of social media marketing tools that are beneficial not only for individuals but also for businesses and organizations. These include influencer identification, social media publishing suite, and engagement tools. It also offers extensive resources that can bring SMBs (small- to mid-size businesses) to a higher level. Furthermore, it provides not only competitive features but also articles and ideas in creating effective social media strategies. This will allow business owners to showcase their catalog. For ordinary users, not only that it can help them in sharing their content but also lets them save useful information for future reference.

In addition to this, Hootsuite is boasting its Hootsuite Academy. It offers certification courses for those who want to build their skills in social media marketing.

Certification Courses

• Hootsuite Platform
• ROI and Value Analysis (Social Media)
• Social Selling
• Social Marketing
• Advanced Social Advertising
• Advanced Social Media Strategy
• Foundations of Social Advocacy
• Social for Health Care
• Hootsuite Enterprise Platform

How to Register to Hootsuite

1. Go to www.hootsuite.com.
2. Click the Sign Up button. You will be led to a different page where you can have an overview of the offered plans.
3. You can choose the limited free plan to try Hootsuite. After that, click the Sign Up button. The page for signing up will open.
4. Enter your credentials starting with your full name and email address. You also have to enter your password to create your account. After that, click Create My Account.
5. You also need to add the social networks that you have. Click Continue after adding your profiles. You can add one social network account, and you can add the others later.
6. Click “Done Adding Social Networks.”
7. You will now see the Hootsuite dashboard on your browser, and you can now enjoy using this tool.

How to Login and Add Your Social Network Accounts to HootSuite?

1. Go to www.hootsuite.com.
2. Click Log in option and enter the credentials you registered. Alternatively, you can use your Facebook, Twitter, or Google account to log in.
3. Click on Settings then select Social Networks. After that, click on Add Social Network.
4. You can now on the social network account that you want. If you want to add your social media account, say for example your Facebook account, just click on Facebook and then Connect to Facebook. The same goes for Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and any other social media accounts that you have. Even though you already added these accounts on signing up, you still have to do this process.
5. Enter the details that you are using on your social media account to connect it. After that, click Log in.
6. Click on the page of your chosen account, then click Finished Importing.
7. Click on the tab for the applicable page that you want to manage.

You have to remember that you need to authorize Hootsuite to access your account if you are using your social media accounts.

Hootsuite Pricing Plans

Hootsuite offers a pricing structure that is beneficial to professionals, business owners, teams, and entrepreneurs. It has one free plan and four paid plans, which business owners can choose from depending on the potential of the business. Here are the pricing plans that Hootsuite offers:

Hootsuite Free

This free plan comes with limitations. However, it is the ideal plan for individuals who are just starting their journey on online marketing. Moreover, you can try this tool if you have no idea where to start with your social media marketing campaign.

• Manage up to five social media accounts
• Accounts can be managed by one user
• 30 scheduled posts per month
• Basic analytics reports
• Conduct a promotion every 30 days with a spending limit of $100
• Up to two RSS feeds
• Unlimited apps

Hootsuite Pro Plan

For $19 per month (based on annual billing), this Hootsuite plan is ideal for entrepreneurs, owners, and consultants who want to level up their reach on social media. It comes with a 30-day free trial, which allows you to maximize its amazing features and decide later whether you will continue your subscription. If you feel that it doesn’t meet your standards during the free trial, you can cancel it anytime.

• Accounts can be managed by one user
• One extra team member
• Unlimited scheduled posts
• One enhanced analytics report
• Conduct a promotion every 30 days with a spending limit of $500 to boost posts
• Unlimited RSS feeds
• Content apps
• Report templates
• Access to free apps
• Automated and bulk message scheduling
• Publishing Calendar
• Reporting and key performance metrics
• Incoming messages monitoring
• Social Inbox
• Compliance integrations
• Conduct a promotion every 30 days with a spending limit of $500 to boost posts

Hootsuite Team Plan

For $99 per month (based on annual billing), this plan best suited small teams and teams who are after effective collaboration to achieve goals.

Hootsuite Business Plan

For $599 per month (based on annual billing), this plan is ideal for small businesses and agencies who are into establishing their digital presence through different social media platforms. This plan is available for a demo by request.

Hootsuite Business Plan Add-Ons

• Social listening
• Ad campaign management

Hootsuite Enterprise Plan

This plan offers custom pricing. It is an ideal choice for large teams and organizations that are into leveling up their digital strategy. This plan is also available for a demo by request.

Enterprise Plan Add-ons

• Ad campaign management
• Paid and organic ROI reporting
• Competitive benchmarking
• Social listening
• Single sign-on (SSO)
• Employee advocacy
• Social selling

Enterprise Plan Automated

• Team assignments
• Messaging tagging

Payment Methods that Hootsuite Accepts

HootSuite accepts payments using Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and JCB. It also accepts payments through PayPal.

Hootsuite Features

Helpful Social Media Analytics

This provides an in-depth view of the users’ activity on different social media platforms to help you track them on just a single screen or in an easy-to-read all-in-one report. With that, you will be able to compare their activities and see how often these users liked, shared, and clicked your content.

This feature will help you know and understand what your audience thinks and get recommendations moving forward. Moreover, you will know how your channel is performing and learn what is working well with you. Additionally, you can take advantage of these analytics to have insights into all the activities and engagement of your team members. This will then give you ideas on what to prioritize and improve in your social media marketing campaign.

Assignments and Team Collaboration

With this feature, users can give assignments to their team members. This will help them to work on the tasks assigned to them, leading to an organized workflow. With this feature, each member will have a specific assignment to do that needs to be completed. To view your assignments, you just have to click the Assignments menu. You can respond to the assignment given to you, but you can reassign it to other team members if you think you are not capable of accomplishing it. That will help maintain efficiency since the important task will be given to the more capable member of your team.

Additionally, this feature will lead to great team collaboration as there will always be communication among team members. You can add the members of your team to your chosen social media accounts to monitor their activities.

Aside from giving tasks and adding team members, you can also edit posts if you think that could help the team. Moreover, any queries will be answered by anyone as everyone can see the dashboard. Any information can be quickly disseminated to keep everyone informed. Any means of miscommunication can be avoided as there will always be someone to verify the information.

Scheduling Posts

Hootsuite has a built-in calendar that you can use to schedule your posts to all your social media accounts. This will keep your accounts active as you can schedule all your social updates at times more convenient to you and your brand. With that, you can do other important things during the times your social accounts post their updates. Additionally, it can keep you posted with all the activities that you have to do, including what you have to post and when you should post it. You can also edit your scheduled posts that let you change whatever your plans are.

Scheduling your posts lets you efficiently manage and look over your audience’s responses. You will know the times when your audience gives more responses. Also, you will get an idea of when is the best time to post to be easily noticed by your target market. This feature helps you not only save your valuable time but also ensures consistency across all your social media profiles. You will get notifications once your message fails to publish. Moreover, the information about the involved account and its content will also be given to you.

Streams

This feature shows all your activities on social media. It lets you listen and measure your audience engagement. It also lets you catch your audience’s attention to engage in conversations. You can do this by responding to their comments on your posts.

Since you will see the flow of conversation among your audience, you will have an idea of the keywords and hashtags that you have to use to expand your reach. As your audience types in the keywords or hashtags and it happens that you use them on all your posts, it’s most likely that your audience will come across your profiles and posts. They may or may not like your posts, but at least they were able to click them. Moreover, the keywords can be beneficial to the content that you will post in the future.

 Hootsuite Integrations

• Evernote
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• Google+
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• MailChimp
• Pinterest
• Reddit
• SlideShare
• StumbleUpon
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Via.me
• Vimeo
• WordPress blogs

Hootsuite Browser Integration

Hootlet is Hootsuite’s browser extension. It lets you extend your social media activities and lets you stay updated with the latest news and trends on different social media platforms. You can easily share something using this plug-in. Just click on the Hootlet extension and you are good to go.

Content Library

This is available for Business and Enterprise users only. This feature is of great help for marketing teams as it lets you see drafts, set up templates and pre-approved images, and schedule contents that need approval, which can be used for social posting and marketing purposes.

App Directory

This contains all the extensions and integration apps that can be added to the Hootsuite dashboard. These extensions and integrations are useful for easy tracking, connectivity, and audience engagement.

Efficient Customer Service

Hootsuite lets you view all your customers’ queries in just one place. You don’t have to check all your social media accounts to view and respond to your customers’ queries and complaints. Moreover, you can quickly respond and reach out to all of them. As all the inquiries are delegated to all the team members, they can easily be managed by the administrators. They can easily provide customer service, which can lead to better customer satisfaction.

Pros and Cons of Using HootSuite

Hootauite Alternatives

Buffer Publish vs Hootsuite

This is one of the most popular Hootsuite alternatives. This marketing tool is of great help for sharing content through some popular social media platforms. Like Hootsuite, Buffer offers features that are beneficial for those who are looking for an effective social media scheduling application. It also offers a wide range of extensions for easy accessibility. Buffer is also cheaper than Hootsuite. However, most of the useful features are available on the paid plans. With that, you can’t maximize its usefulness if you are using the free plan.

Buffer offers fewer integrations to different social media platforms, but it offers more control over posting schedules. Moreover, it does not provide analytics compared to Hootsuite that provides basic analytics for the free plan.

Sprout Social vs Hootsuite

Hootsuite offers a customizable dashboard, while Sprout Social offers a classy dashboard that is easy to look at and use. Sprout Social is more expensive compared to Hootsuite, but it showcases CRM integration, which lets you reply to your customers in a personal way. With Hootsuite, you have to buy this tool separately. In addition to this, Sprout Social lets you discover new people to whom you can connect and remove connections that are not good to you.

Should Your Team Use Hootsuite Today?

There are a lot of social media management tools available today, and Hootsuite is one of the few that is worth giving a shot. It offers multiple and useful features on its free plan that its competitors don’t have. Moreover, it offers flexible plans and a 30-day free trial on its Pro and Team Plans. The trial gives you enough time to decide if you will consider continuing or upgrading your plan.

If you are a person who can’t manage time effectively, Hootsuite can be your ideal partner in meeting your business goals. It lets you save time and effort, in monitoring your social media accounts. You can monitor all your activities and get ideas on how to improve your content. You can always try its free plan and see what you will benefit from it.