Up until the last six months or so, I was a frequent user of Twitter. I used it to send around information and make real time connections with all sorts of people. But over the months, I have stopped feeling the Twitter love, and become a Facebook recluse.
This has partly been because the tool I was using to manage my Twitter accounts was closed down. And the other main reason was that with three Twitter accounts - my own personal account, the Australian College of Midwives, and the Virtual International Day of the Midwife - I started to feel completely over-whelmed.
For a number of years I have heard about Hootsuite, which is a tool that allows you to manage all your social media accounts in one place. I had played with it about two years ago, but never really got it. But this weekend I decided I would give it another go.
Hootsuite is web-based, which means I can access my account anywhere as long as I have Internet access. It allows me to manage and monitor multiple social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so. For the time being, I have chosen to use Hootsuite for managing my three Twitter accounts.
I have to say that after only a couple of hours I am totally hooked. I have set up all three accounts so I can see who I am following, who is talking about me and who is talking to me. This will make it so much easier to monitor conversations and to answer messages in a timely manner. This is turn will improve engagement, especially for the two professional accounts I manage.
The other thing I have done is set up several hashtags I follow on Twitter, including #VIDoM14 and #phdchat. It is so much easier to have them all in one space, and will make it especially easier to manage at times of intensive use, such as the weekly chats such as #hcsmanz - a chat every Sunday evening about health care and social media.
A further feature that I may find very useful is the ability to schedule messages, or tweets. This will make it so much easier to plan what and when I am going to post.
Do you use Hootsuite? How do you use it? What other social media management tools would you recommend?
This has partly been because the tool I was using to manage my Twitter accounts was closed down. And the other main reason was that with three Twitter accounts - my own personal account, the Australian College of Midwives, and the Virtual International Day of the Midwife - I started to feel completely over-whelmed.
For a number of years I have heard about Hootsuite, which is a tool that allows you to manage all your social media accounts in one place. I had played with it about two years ago, but never really got it. But this weekend I decided I would give it another go.
Hootsuite is web-based, which means I can access my account anywhere as long as I have Internet access. It allows me to manage and monitor multiple social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so. For the time being, I have chosen to use Hootsuite for managing my three Twitter accounts.
I have to say that after only a couple of hours I am totally hooked. I have set up all three accounts so I can see who I am following, who is talking about me and who is talking to me. This will make it so much easier to monitor conversations and to answer messages in a timely manner. This is turn will improve engagement, especially for the two professional accounts I manage.
The other thing I have done is set up several hashtags I follow on Twitter, including #VIDoM14 and #phdchat. It is so much easier to have them all in one space, and will make it especially easier to manage at times of intensive use, such as the weekly chats such as #hcsmanz - a chat every Sunday evening about health care and social media.
A further feature that I may find very useful is the ability to schedule messages, or tweets. This will make it so much easier to plan what and when I am going to post.
Do you use Hootsuite? How do you use it? What other social media management tools would you recommend?
4 comments:
I use hootsuite for rare occasions when I need to schedule tweets, but for day to day tweeting I use Tweetdeck to manage multiple accounts, follow hash tags.
I knew there was another tool, Peta, that sorted out Twitter but I just couldn't think what it was....now you've reminded me.
Hi Sarah, I also love hootsuite and probably use it in a similar fashion to yourself. I dont find it so useful on the smart phone however as the columns cannot be laid out so logically. Great blog by the way.
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