Hootsuite Review – A Look At This Social Network Content Manager

About Hootsuite

Hootsuite is no novice platform, boasting over 18 million users and growing, featuring recognized companies with established social media influence such as Safeway, Herschel, Five Guys, Bob’s Red Mill, and Domino’s.

Hootsuite is an all-in-one social network content manager that allows you to manage multiple social media profile accounts from a single dashboard, including the major platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It also allows you to execute more, across more platforms, in less time and tap into your audience’s buy tracking trends, increasing engagement across networks. 

Plans range from tools ideal for the one-player team to a widespread organizational tool allowing management of up to 35 pages for 35 different clients with shared access to team members for the ultimate networking management tool.

Hootsuite also strives to offer extensive resources to take your business expertise to the next level, including a catalogue of news articles and thought pieces offering anything from the latest digital trends to tips on creating effective social media strategies. Take your knowledge to the next level with case studies, white papers, and guides getting detailed synopses on social marketing, selling, customer service, media management, and trends.

Hootsuite Pricing 

Hootsuite offers a solution for every budget, with one free plan and four paid plans based off potential scope of business. 

The free Hootsuite is ideal for anyone looking to dip their toes into the world of effective social media communication, especially the user who is new to the digital marketing space and unsure of where to get started.

Hootsuite Free features:

• Management of up to 3 social media profiles
• Up to 30 scheduled posts

The Hootsuite professional plan is best suited for entrepreneurs ready to elevate their personal business. This tier is billed annually at a rate of $29 a month or $45 a month for those who are unable to make the up-front financial commitment. This plan comes with a 30-day free trial, giving you the opportunity to take Hootsuite’s main features for a spin before deciding on permanent implementation. During your free trial, you are free to downgrade or cancel at any time. Hootsuite will notify you in advance of your trial ending about upcoming charges. 

Hootsuite Professional features: 

• $ 29/month (based on annual billing)
• Single user
• Management of up to 10 social profiles
• Unlimited scheduled posts
• Automated and bulk post scheduling
• Publishing Calendar
• Access to apps
• Reporting and key performance metrics
• Message monitoring
• Social Inbox 
• Integrated security
• Ad spend limit of up to $500 per month to boost posts

For teams who need a solution encompassing effective collaboration, Hootsuite has three plans to choose from. Hootsuite Team is best for small teams, especially developing digital marketing companies just getting their feet wet.

Hootsuite Team features everything included with the Professional plan and the following: 

• $129/month (based on annual billing)
• Up to 3 users
• Management of up to 20 social profiles
• Unlimited scheduled posts
• Team message assignments
• Custom analytics
• Exportable reports
• Ad spend limit of $2,000 per month to boost posts

Hootsuite Business is best for established businesses looking to increase their digital presence by investing in a social network solution. Hootsuite Business is available for demo by request.

Hootsuite Business features everything included in the Team plan and the following: 

• $599/month (based on annual billing)
• Management of up to 35 social profiles
• Unlimited scheduled posts
• Included support for 5 users and up to 10 users maximum
• Flexible approval workflows
• Onboarding
• 5 social media certifications
• 24/7 support
• Ad spend limit of $5,000 a month to boost posts

Hootsuite Enterprise is the best solution for large teams and organizations looking to add an edge to their digital strategy. Hootsuite Enterprise is available for demo by request.

Hootsuite Enterprise features everything included with the Business plan and the following: 

• Contact Hootsuite for pricing
• Enhance results of social media strategy by providing advice, individualized training and advanced analysis for an effective customized solution

Hootsuite offers a discounted rate for non-profit organizations when selecting professional or team plans. Those who are interested must submit an application to be considered and if approved may receive a 50% discount on preferred services. Imagine the possibility of your team able to access to post publishing, engagement, and analytics tools to let you manage your efforts more effectively without breaking a limited budget.

Hootsuite Features

Hootsuite Academy

The Hootsuite Academy offers invaluable resources for entrepreneurs and teams alike, from free courses to industry-recognized certifications that can take your branding to the next level. The Hootsuite Platform Training course and Learn to Succeed at Social Marketing course are both free resources. The academy offers a total of nine paid certifications: Hootsuite Platform Certification, Social Marketing Certification, Advanced Social Advertising Certification, Social Media ROI and Value Analysis, Social Selling Certification, Advanced Social Media Strategy, Foundations of Social Advocacy Certification, Social Selling for Financial Services, and the Social Health Care Certification from Mayo. The Hootsuite Academy has over 45,000 certified professionals who are using their certifications to boost their skills and rapport within the industry!

Hootsuite Help Page

The Hootsuite help page is a user-friendly directory of resources to get you started using the platform immediately as well as a place to check out the latest software updates, such as last year’s removal of native WordPress integration and improvement on analytics. This offers platform transparency and keeps users up to date versus the surprise changes without explanation that most platforms tend towards.

Customize Your Social Network Dashboard

Upon initial setup of your Hootsuite account, you will be prompted to connect your social profiles. This allows you the ability to publish content as well as schedule content to be published and monitor audience engagement all from a single dashboard. Social networks that can be incorporated include:

• Twitter 
• Facebook profiles (streams only)
• Facebook Pages
• Facebook Groups
• Instagram profiles, both business and personal
• YouTube channels
• LinkedIn profiles
• LinkedIn pages
• Pinterest profiles (publishing only)

If you’re looking to add a network that is not directly supported through the Hootsuite platform, you can browse the app directory for a third-party app with the ability to support another social network.

If you reach your plan’s limit of social networks, you can choose to either upgrade to a new plan or simply remove networks to create space for new ones. 

Adding multiple social media profiles from within the same platform is simple. Add your first profile, then log out and log back in using information for the next profile. 

You can add profiles for your personal use or to an organization using the correct drop-down menus under your profile picture. 

For LinkedIn and Facebook, you will need to take care when attempting to add a profile or group across Hootsuite accounts. If you are trying to add profiles that use the same login credentials, the profile will effectively be disabled on another Hootsuite dashboard. You will need to give team members access to groups or pages within the social network platform so they can use their credentials to connect with Hootsuite successfully. 

Organize Your Dashboard With Tabs And Streams

Once you’ve added the social media accounts you want to track to your dashboard, you can set up streams for each account to monitor conversations and allow you visibility to determine when engagement is needed. 

Search streams are available to find current trending activity around pages, hashtags, and keywords to better pull in your audience. 

You will need to add social media accounts to your dashboard first before you can progress with streams. Once you’ve added your social networks, you can add streams for each one. 

Tabs are available to organize your streams into groups and give you the peace of mind that comes with organizational structure. Each Hootsuite dashboard can support up to 20 tabs, which in turn each support up to 10 streams per tab. That’s up to 200 streams! Tabs can be renamed for easy navigation, moved to streamline workflow, or deleted once no longer needed.

Each new tab in the dashboard has recommended stream builders that guides you according to your goals. Or, if you’re feeling particularly ambitious, dive right into building streams on your own by using the “Browse all Streams” builder to select an available stream for the social network in question. Streams can include everything from your posts, to scheduled posts, to likes and mentions.  

Streamline Publishing

The key to successful digital marketing is consistent posting of content to keep your audience intrigued and engaged. Hootsuite streamlines the process by allowing you the ability to publish posts to each account from one central dashboard. Eliminate the endless tabs and repeated logins. Schedule a single uniform post across multiple social media accounts at one time. Use Hootsuite’s Publisher for the ultimate content-creating experience that allows you to preview posts across social networks before committing to publishing.  

Once you’ve opened Publisher, you can select one or more social networks you wish to publish to. You can favorite networks you publish to often by selecting the star next to the network or team name. Favorites will appear at the top of the list for efficient access when you open Publisher in the future. 

In the text field of Publisher, you have the ability to include varied media from text, emojis, links, and mentions. You can add images and videos to content by dragging and dropping files to the Publisher box, selecting to upload a file directly from your device, or browsing the “Open Media Library” for access to a multitude of stock images or GIFs. Additionally, you will be able to crop, add filters, and add text to your image before publishing. 

Once you’ve completed your ideal post, you can publish immediately, select to publish later using the scheduler, duplicate the post, or save the post to a draft for later use.

Customize Your Target Audience

Hootsuite allows options for targeting audiences for both Facebook and LinkedIn pages. This lets you specify which user groups will be have your content promoted in their feeds. For LinkedIn pages, you must have at least 300 followers within the specified target region. Facebook pages do not have this restriction for target audience. You can select your target audience based on age or various location preference from zip code to country.

Customize Your Experience With The Hootsuite App Directory

Explore the Hootsuite App Directory for free third-party apps that expand and improve the functionality of your individual Hootsuite dashboard. Hootsuite offers a diverse selection of apps including Adobe Stock, an app that allows you to both license and share Adobe stock assets all from within your Hootsuite dashboard. The Yext Reviews app allows you to manage your business’s listing and reviews from within Hootsuite. The addition of apps creates an all in one business management solution at your fingertips. The success of your business is in your hands. 

Review Effectiveness Of Engagement With Analytics

To the left of your dashboard, select the Analytics tab to get a quick view of the success of current engagement. Reports are broken down by network platform and include metric such as posts, fans, and clicks.

Install The Hootlet Extension

Hootlet is a Chrome browser-extension that lets you browse the web and easily share content to your social networks as you come across relevant content for your platforms. Content compatible with the Hootlet extension include embedded media such as images and videos as well as links and quotes. Hootlet allows you to customize your shared content with a customized message or create a scheduled post. 

Download the Mobile App

Managing your social media on the go is made easier with the Hootsuite mobile application available across Apple devices and Android. 

Incorporate Team Functionality

The advanced tiers of Hootsuite allow team cooperation and collaboration. Easily invite your team members and dole out access to social networks for efficient management. 

Uses Of Hootsuite

Simplify Your Workflow

Create a one-stop-shop to manage your social media streams and get rid of the time waste that comes with logging into multiple platforms while crowding your screen with distracting browser tabs that will most assuredly take away from productivity. 

The ability to bulk publish even further eliminates time spent on content management which opens the door for more consistent and qualitative audience engagement, allowing you more time to devote to individual connection.

Never miss out on opportunities for creating engaging content by employing the Hootlet Chrome extension to capture all your brilliant ideas as they come to you.

Organize Your Team

Integrate team capability within your dashboard to more effectively drive digital engagement. Invite team members to your Hootsuite Professional, Business, or Enterprise account, allowing you the ability to connect in one place. 

Manage team responsibilities by assigning and allowing access to specific tabs and streams at your discretion. 

Alternatives to Hootsuite

As digital presence becomes an essential aspect of any successful business, tools are being created to keep up with the new demand for effective social media management systems. 

Hootsuite, while an all-in-one solution for network management and team collaboration, is often criticized for its high price-point, especially past the Professional level. 

Buffer, another contender in the social media management space, offers a business plan comparable to Hootsuite’s for a sixth of the price. This price difference is a game-changer when it comes to tools that offer similar results. The major reason consumers chose Buffer over Hootsuite in the past was its capabilities for WordPress integration, which it dropped as of 2019. With this change in platform support, Buffer will continue to be a major rival for Hootsuite.

Is Hootsuite Worth The Investment?

Hootsuite offers a selection of invaluable tools for improving digital footprint and creating effective solutions for connecting with select audiences. However, Hootsuite is most definitely an investment at advanced levels of the platform. 

For the limited free Hootsuite edition and Professional plan, you are receiving enough bang for your buck to justify the investment as something that will be returned twofold in effective marketing. This justification begins to fall off at the Team and Business levels which are considerably more expensive then the leading competitor’s very similar tools. 

At the Enterprise level, Hootsuite is the preferred choice over its competitor as it offers a more user-friendly experience for managing large teams. 

Pros

• Hootsuite Apps allow customized experience
• All-in-one media content publishing and editing solution
• Extensive access to invaluable resources including industry-recognized certifications
• Hootlet extension to capture content easily while browsing
• Only social media management platform to currently offer ad campaigns

Cons

• Removed native WordPress integration in 2019
• End of support for Google+ in 2019
• Hefty price-point past Professional Plan
• Significant price difference if billed monthly versus annually