How to Effectively Manage Your Online Brand with Hootsuite

Public Relations professionals should be hooting and hollering about Hootsuite, an effective tool for managing today’s ever so important social media. This social media manager is a browser-based dashboard that integrates common social media platforms including, but not limited to, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Therefore, every business and brand should utilize this fantastic tool.

Hootsuite is free of charge.  Perfect for Public Relations professionals who are all about budgeting and saving money.  See, already Hootsuite seems to have its perks. Hootsuite is available online with no necessary downloads or software. It is easily accessible to anyone with access to the Internet.

So now you’ve downloaded Hootsuite, what can you do with it? This third-party platform essentially organizes and divides the work of maintaining a strong online social media presence. With tools for publishing and directing content, as well as built-in analytics, Hootsuite is an all-in-one strategy ideal for any business or brand.

Here are 5 important features showing how Hootsuite can be essential to your PR work.

1. Organization: Hootsuite allows you to view your entire social media on one dashboard. You can view your Twitter home feed, mentions, direct messages, and any specific hashtags you want to follow, all on one page, above the scroll. Hootsuite assigns each social media platform its own organized tab, allowing a user to hop from Twitter to Facebook and back to Twitter all with just a few clicks of the mouse.

2. Publisher: Schedule your tweets and posts in advance. Have great ideas? Compose your tweets, shrink your links, and schedule them for X day at Y time. Post the same content to multiple accounts or hand select which platforms receive which messages. Hootsuite’s publisher capabilities allow for timely posting in a trusted manner.

3. Presence: Use Hootsuite to help grow and expand your online presence. Every business and brand should be using a manager such as Hootsuite to ensure consistency among all social media platforms to get important messages out there.

4. Analytics: Measure what you do. Evaluation is the last step in any successful PR campaign. What have you accomplished? Hootsuite’s built-in analytics tools help decipher your accomplishments. Hootsuite makes it easy to see the numbers you’re reaching on Twitter, how many have clicked your links, etc. Taking it a step further, upgrading to a Hootsuite Pro account will allow for all-in-one Facebook and Google Analytics, as well.

5. Mobile Capabilities: Lastly, Hootsuite can be used on the go. Take your social media manager anywhere you go with the handy apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Hootsuite’s simple design is easy to understand and allows for an effective social media management experience, a seemingly essential tool for Public Relations. Social media has become an integral part of all PR, and social media managers like Hootsuite offer everything you need to successfully build and maintain your online presence.