We use Hootsuite Pro to manage numerous social media platforms for several different clients around the world. Hootsuite is used by most people within our firm. It helps address the problems associated with scheduling lots of content for clients. We can pre-schedule content to make it easier to get messages out during the early and late hours. We can also tracks the number of clicks in order to better tailor our content to followers.,I like that Hootsuite makes it very easy to shorten a URL into an ow.ly link within the dashboard. I find it very easy to schedule messages and to see all of the upcoming messages for one client or all clients with just a few simple clicks. I like that you can review custom dashboards for each client, such as the Twitter homepage, scheduled Facebook posts, and inbox messages.,I wish that the reports didn't use a "point" system. We have a Pro account and still do not have enough points to generate some of the great reports that Hootsuite offers. Hootsuite should make it easier to schedule messages in different time zones. You can change the time zone of your dashboard but that's too cumbersome when you have employees accessing it from different countries. I want to easily know when to schedule a message so that it will go out at the correct time in another country without calculating the time difference myself. Sometimes profiles randomly get disconnected from Hootsuite and you have to reauthenticate the account by logging in via Hootsuite.,9,8,Hootsuite Pro provides a great return on investment. Without it, we wouldn't be able to send out some messages exactly when they need to go out without difficulty. We can also pre-schedule a lot of messages, which saves time overall. Because Hootsuite Pro is so easy to use, we can have experienced account managers draft the content and then train other workers to simply schedule it for the appropriate time, allowing account managers to focus on other client work.,,Saves time by allowing us to pre-schedule messages Allows us to analyze the results of social media posts for clients Saves us money by reducing the amount of time we spend on social media,We've used Hootsuite Pro to pre-schedule certain posts during a client's tradeshow if we can't be onsite,10,Implemented in-house,No,Change management was minimal,10,10,YesIt's being used by the corporate social media team along with the social media admins from our regional hospitals and service lines.,Publishing to multiple channels Scheduling in advance Content library,It would be nice to be able to add more streams to a page for monitoring. Sometimes have difficulty with geo targeting of search results,9,25,Employee efficiency Social care/customer service Better engagement,Sprout Social,9,2,Publishing Engagement Social Care,Love the content library for creating standard messaging that creates consistency across the organization when it comes to social care. The integration of Nexgate Social Patrol for security to monitor for potential HIPAA or PHI violations Reports on team performance,Further development of the content library for use developing drafts for campaigns that can then be approved before publishing The ability to publish photo galleries Native integration of Instagram and the ability to geotarget Instgram search The ability to monitor competitor and/or industry social channels,Yes,Product Features Product Usability Product Reputation Prior Experience with the Product Vendor Reputation,I don't think we'd change anything. The reality is that there are many platforms and tools that are available for social media monitoring and engagement. It seems like there is a new one every day. Some of them have good features that are similar to Hootsuite. The difference in my mind is Hootsuite's experience and reputation. They are clearly an established leader that continues to innovate.,No,9,Yes,Standard reports Adding social channels Making assignments to team members Scheduling posts,Integration with LinkedIn is not the best. Not sure where the issue lies, but I can't use the Hootlet tool to schedule a post because it doesn't properly import the picture for the post.,Yes,9,10,8,10,10,Hootsuite took the time to learn about our specific needs related to the channels we utilize and the industry in which we work. They provided several potential solutions and variations from which we could choose. We were able to then provide feedback on what we needed and didn't need when it came to the various features like training, crisis management simulations, scanning for any channels related to our company and price.,Don't be afraid to negotiate. Hootsuite is very willing to work with you to create a custom solution that will meet your specific needs. And, the solution can scale as you grow or your needs change or expand. For instance, you don't have to start with a custom training or education solution. The Hootsuite Enterprise comes with access to Hootsuite Universities extensive library of video training. But, if at a later time you want to implement any of their additional custom training, you can do that. And, it's easy to add seats to the platform as your team grows, or as you expand use throughout your organization.We use HootSuite Free to initially examine the cross-social media postings and activities of a client. It is too bad of a UI to use as an enterprise edition and too limited in analytics to use as a true client solution but you get what you pay for and it's a very low cost ($0, no setup fee) way to start getting a grip on a client's state of affairs in social media. Its popularity makes it a good initial sell for research purposes before we move to a solution which both has a better UI and has a more client-specific features (namely in reporting and analytics where HootSuite suffers in, perhaps as it's meant for management). HootSuite Free is also useful for increasing activity on clients' social channels at the lowest price just to get the client to feel confident about their social media activity rate before moving onto a more fully featured service. Pro ($14.99/mo) is required for any useful feature so Free is obviously only intended to get users to pay. We use it only on new clients who have naive or no social media experience. We ultimately usher them to mostly SproutSocial (most clients, small to mid) or Percolate (big, corporate clients).,Web-brower based (no more Adobe Air, thankfully) Very fast setup Free means no payment or client billing needed Widely known so easy to sell clients on it The original in social media management remains useable, relevant,Reports are overviews only thus user needs to pay for anything more thus condemning HootSuite Free to management only Publisher, Conversations & Analytics in Free do nothing without Pro payment, so remove it Far slower stream updates than native platforms Questionable security (2FA not defaulted = problem) given sensitive nature of its associated credentials Apps are many & seem useful but no ratings for the developers disallows vetting trust,5,3,Cheap (free) to start monitoring a client's streams & thus how they can make quick changes to posts/content Reasonable functionality given the sheer array of social platforms Increases client confidence as they & we can view the whole social media stream at once for free,,,Initial client social media use monitoring Most basic levels of posting Initial push to increase social media management for early-stage clients Basic UI which anyone can fearlessly use,5,No,Price Prior Experience with the Product Existing Relationship with the Vendor,We can't sell clients immediately into a high cost thus fully featured solution so our social media entry points must start at these lower price points then move up as client confidence grows. Our business requires this gradual development.,Implemented in-house,No,Change management was minimal,5,No,3,No,None, HootSuite Free has no support possible, only Help Desk read-only articles, no contacting possible without Pro ($14.99/mo).,Web-based Reasonable self-explanatory UI Free cost still includes basic management,No reports beyond overview No Analytics No Conversations No ROI/Metrics No confidence in platform-specific features being supported,5Effective overview of Social Media environment thanks to the well-developed dashboard and customization options. Good tracking & monitoring capabilities thanks to the simplicity of adding required data (tweet) streams. Easy-to-use communication capabilties. The highly intuitive HootSuite dashboard makes it very easy for users to publish new content, and reply to other users, on various different platforms, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Integrated link shortener. Effective & customized KPI reports that offer good first overview of business performance with an additional option to integrate your Google Analytics account.,Competitor analysis could be improved in the future. At the moment, HootSuite is lacking superior capabilities around tracking competitor performance. Access to historical data is rather limited, but this is a common issue for most of the tools in this category.,Increased social media community that generates more leads can be partially attributed to the integration of HootSuite into our business activities.,9,,9,2,Social Media management Communication "Buzz" monitoring,9,,Implemented in-house,9,Online training Self-taught,8,From my personal experience and the experience collected from other clients, including complete newcomers, there are no big issues encountered in learning this tool. In case some tips & tricks are necessary, most of answers can be found on the web.,No,8,8,10,9,Integration with Google Analytics may be done in the future, and this is already supported by HootSuite.,Clients considering Pro and Enterprise plans can negotiate on different topics, including how many users are going to work with the tools; what kind of support is necessary; and the amount of credits required to track the data via analytics reports. For this reason, it is advisable to decide exactly how the tool will be used before engaging into a firm business relationship. Bear in mind that you have an option to try things out with a trial account, so use this trial wisely!.We have tried many different tools and HootSuite is definitely one of the best: We have a huge social media team and one of the best features is the Teams functionality that enables us to configure the product to reflect the way we are structured We can build separate organizations with different team Each team member is in turn mapped to a social media profile, or account (several people can then contribute to a single profile discussion). This functionality enables us to build a highly collaborative platform where we can have multi-threaded conversations with This allows for much deeper conversations that are possible in the single response model of other tools. In addition, product support is highly responsive and We always get our questions answered / issues resolved They are also really good at building in new functionality based on client suggestions. The UI is extremely clean and Great user experience. We do use Radian 6 for analytics – much deeper than HS…search across blogs and forms…don’t use as response tool We use HootSuite for FB and Twitter only,The product does not have any obvious weaknesses, however it cannot do everything we need: HS does not offer sentiment We use Radian6 for this. We also use Radian6 for analytics as the analytics functionality in Radian6 is much deeper and it can search across a wider range of channels, including blogs and In addition, we also use another product called Simply Measured to perform an even deeper level of social Simply Measured has a powerful reporting engine that allows us to build custom reports to drill into any metric we The reporting capabilities in HootSuite are much more pre-packaged,Team functionality is a highly efficient way for groups to manage many different social teams The product is configured to match our organization. Scheduling of tweets and FB posts in advance is also a great time saver.,10,9,97,1,Social listening Publishing / Engagement Team management / workflow Customer support Marketing campaigns Main task is to respond to comments made over social channels to our various game communities Each game has its own Twitter and FB Gamers leave comments / ask questions / makes suggestions (often negative, sometimes / request status updates on unreleased games / ask for others to participate in MMOs (massively multi-player online games). Originally they were surprised to get a rapid response, but know they have come to expect Secondary task is scheduling FB posts / Tweets to multiple accounts and centrally managing multiple accounts,,Implemented in-house,9,Self-taught,My boss trained me, and I did not get any formal training. Occasionally I look at HS University to figure something out.,No,9,9,9,No,,We were on older pricing scale. That account had 30 seats. Recently we added additional seats and in order to do that, we migrated to new pricing scheme. This is more expensive, but HootSuite justifies the higher price by including unfettered access to analytics for all users at no extra cost. However, as we use Radian 6 for analytics, this doesn’t really affect us. Under the new pricing model we can add additional seats for an additional price.Scheduling capability is excellent Analytics package is also very strong. Allows us to share detailed campaign performance metrics with our clients. Channel reach is also a key feature. We can post once to five or six channels at the same time which is a huge time saver.,Biggest issue for us right now is the Excel bulk up-loader. Our client firms typically build out content for the month. They share the content with us and we modify and improve it and then schedule out discrete posts on different channels for the month. The easiest way to get client data for the month is to use the bulk up-loader which brings in all of their content in an Excel file. Unfortunately, there are some limitations with the up-loader. Biggest issue is that pictures cannot be uploaded, and we cannot add pictures to content that has been uploaded in this way. This means that we have to schedule posts one at a time which is a big time suck. There have also been some other minor hiccups where items don’t post correctly when using the up-loader.,The biggest operation advantage is automated scheduling which frees up everyone’s time to work on other higher value projects.,10,8,8,2,Initially, our biggest problem was the ability to schedule posts to multiple social channels simultaneously FB, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+) on behalf of our clients. The ability to schedule posts to Google+ was actually the reason for upgrading to HootSuite Enterprise. It’s also important for us to monitor and respond to tweets in the same tool For example we have been running hiring campaigns over Twitter and Facebook for some of our clients, and we need a platform that allows us to react quickly. However, we quickly realized that although scheduling is important, the analytics capability is just as important, if not more so. The detailed analytics package not only lets us see how we our campaigns are performing, but it also allows us to share detailed metrics with our clients to justify the fees we charge them. This is now very important. We can export key metrics to CSV or PDF and share with clients.,Yes,Vendor implemented Implemented in-house,10,Online training,10,No,9,10,10,10,We are not integrated to any other systems, but we are connected to multiple social media products: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ etc. Apart from that, we have considered integrating to our built email tool MailChimp (which is possible) but we have not felt the need to do so yet.,Supports all the following processes very well: Property (social media channel) Management, Publishing, Scheduling, Team Workflow, Listening/Engagement, Mobile Offering (iPhone / iPad apps are very nicely setup and are crucial for us),Some integrations to social media channels to be improved. For example, publishing photos to Facebook or G+ is problematic. This is important because posting pictures to Facebook has been shown to be the highest performing engagement metric. The issue is that pictures are posted to a single generic photo album and cannot be posted to photo albums specific to our game titles. Photos are posted in a single place and the timeline suffers as a result. In Google + pictures cannot be posted at all through HootSuite. It just creates a link No sharing of posts on FB & G+. Posts to FB from HootSuite cannot be shared. Some analytics modules need improvement, such as those for Twitter and G+ Follower counts, and Click Summaries. These are issues HS are currently working on.,This allows us to maintain our properties globally, even in resource strapped regions or where agencies are being used. Managing a team of this size would be inefficient and/or difficult without a system like this in place.,10,9,20,Publishing data to multiple social channels and having a centralized place to manage them with team functionality are the primary functions we care about, but we also use HootSuite for listening, customer support and marketing campaigns too. Team functionality is particularly important: We really needed a publishing platform for a global team. It's not feasible to share logins to individual properties. Workflow and scheduling are next in order of importance.,Implemented in-house,10,Online training,No,10,10,9,Nothing outside of the provided apps. The social channels we monitor are: o Twitter, Facebook, G+, Instagram and YouTube. These allow us to publish updates to our properties, engage our audience and do some social listening/intelligence. We are not using some 3rd Party Services available in the App Directory (like Constant Contact, Orkut & Get Satisfaction plug-ins). These do not align with our current implementations. However, the App Directory features many integrations (ZenDesk, Evernote, Storify, GoPollGo, etc. and this is a great resource.,• Service, support and training program (Hootsuite University) are all included. You will receive a discount if you pay annually rather than monthly.Reliable. HootSuite is a very reliable and easy-to-use tool. Good analytics. Scheduling capabilities are really great. We use many student volunteers and this capability makes it possible to manage the entire program with one full-time person managing it. We can maintain an active presence over several channels without having to be post live.,The only drawback is the delay between what is being posted and what I’m seeing on the interface. Use it for weekly reports. Don’t see the most recent posts. For management, I just go to FB. Analytics. Hard to measure. Would love an easier way to track metrics. The reports in HS are helpful but they do not show everything I need to share with management.,10,20,The main ROI is around the efficencies we get from the scheduling functionality.,10,1,The use case is primarily scheduling. Also listening for Twitter mentions. and engagement with propsective students (questions, etc). This is our primary tool for engagement across the board. We use social media to present a positive image of the school. A huge number of high school students use social media to decide where to go to school. Facebook is a great recruitment channel. We use the tool primarily for relationship building and retention. We primarily use the Facebook and Twitter channels to build relationships with current and prospective students and other stakeholders. Centralized management of social media accounts is also very important. We manage multiple accounts and HootSuite is the best way to keep track of them all: Use team functionality. We have eight FB pages, eight Twitter accounts. We also have Google + and Instagram channels but our use of these is much more limited. The primary functions we use the tool for are social listening, publishing and engagement, and centralized team management and workflow.,,Don't know,Self-taught,We have access to HootSuite University, but I have never used it. My former boss trained me on the product, and anything else I need to know I was able to figure out on my own.,No,10,8,10,8,We negotiated an annual contract which included unlimited access to analytics.HootSuite is an intuitive tool. It really doesn’t need much training The UI is quite similar to Twitter or FB. It’s quite easy to ramp up – especially with access to HootSuite University and the broad range of online training tools. By contrast, Radian6 is not intuitive at all. HootSuite is good at releasing new functionality – there are frequent new releases. For example, they have just released a Chatter like feature. Even though our company has not figured out how to use Chatter effectively and think that it’s probably not for our organization, it does show innovation and a desire to want to keep up with new developments. This is clearly a response to Marketing Cloud. Our Professional Services rep is fantastic. The support team is also very responsive and effective. They always resolve issues immediately. This is particularly impressive considering how much we pay. We use some far more expensive applications that do not have anything close to the same customer service—both from the Support team (bugs) and the Client Success Manager. Thought leadership and category leadership. Hootsuite Enterprise has been adopted by top brands. Perhaps 20% of top brands are using the HootSuite product. This makes it a very easy internal sell.,The number of bugs is surprising. This is not a critical issue– just annoying. They do resolve them quickly, but still a surprise. The Enterprise version has additional analytics. I wish there was a little more sophistication here. Although they are not bad, they are not at the level of Radian6 which has very strong analytics. For example, you can export data as a PDF or export data to Excel for further manipulation. Radian6 also allows for Boolean logic while HootSuite does not. In HootSuite, the reporting interface is very clunky. It does not look like a professional interface. You can definitely see the legacy of the mass-market tool in that the UI has not yet caught up with the Enterprise level product. No SFDC integration. They have not adopted the idea of closed loop marketing. For example, the capability of tying social media campaigns to sales (this tweet contributed to/ resulted in this sale. This does not seem to be part of their DNA. Not as much clarity on future roadmap as we would like. Adding accounts for users is a bit awkward. Still evolving into an enterprise solution—in some ways, parts of the free or freemium tool are still visible in the Enterprise interface.,8,7,Productivity. Scheduling is great. I particularly like the Hootlet button installed in browser. When searching on the Internet, and I want to promote brand / industry content, I click on the button and HootSuite automatically shortens the URL, pulls in the title, etc. This simple thing is a huge time saver. I don’t have to do any cutting and pasting. Also the auto-scheduler is a very cool feature. It’s a set and forget thing which allows HootSuite to decide on the best time to push out a tweet. Looking at re-tweets that catch fire, I can say that this works extremely well. Whatever algorithm they have is very effective. Anything auto-scheduled does better than content that is not auto-scheduled. This is kind of amazing. It also allows you to tweak the time (for example, we may not want posts to go out to close to each other).,,0,The primary processes are Publishing /Engagement and Team Management / Workflow (centralized management of multiple accounts) As social media has burst onto scene, every department is doing some kind of social outreach which makes for a management problem. We had no centralized way to manage all of various social media accounts. We wanted a hub with all identities in one place and a way to manage all the various handles. We also wanted a way to respond to posts across different accounts across channels with some workflow management. You can set permissions on accounts so that people can do certain things but not others. Permissioning is actually more flexible than in Pardot—you can adjust read-only versus publish privileges for each social network and designate an admin for each team, so there are more options than with Pardot, which only has a few set roles. Related to this is employee turnover. We need to be able to manage “ghost account” created by employees who have left. For many of our accounts, people who had ownership were had since left the company and we could not access these accounts. The other primary use case was to increase overall productivity. By being able to post to several networks at once.,8,,Implemented in-house,9,Online training,7,No,10,7,10,10

Hootsuite Reviews

Score 7.9 out of 10

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Listening/monitoring

Boolean keyword searches (55)

7.3

Filtering out noise/spam (58)

6.5

Sentiment analysis (52)

6.8

Broad channel coverage (71)

8.2

Publishing

Content planning and scheduling (89)

8.9

Audience targeting (67)

6.9

Content optimization (71)

7.5

Workflow management (75)

8.0

Engagement

Automated routing and prioritization (54)

7.5

Customer interaction histories (60)

7.3

Bulk actions (67)

7.6

Marketing

Lead generation (41)

6.8

Content marketing (68)

7.8

Paid media management (37)

6.5

Campaigns and promotions (58)

7.4

Channel coverage/integration

Twitter (88)

9.3

Facebook (87)

8.8

LinkedIn (78)

8.2

Google+ (55)

8.7

Instagram (70)

7.7

Pinterest (40)

8.5

YouTube (38)

8.5

Reporting/analytics

Campaign success analytics (72)

7.1

Real-time tracking (72)

8.1

Competitor analysis (50)

6.8

Account management

Role-based user permissions & privileges (72)

8.4

Mobile access (79)

8.3

About Hootsuite

HootSuite Enterprise provides a centralized platform for managing streams from different social media channels and posting/ engaging across channels simultaneously. It also has strong team / workflow features and good mobile apps.

Categories: ,

Hootsuite Integrations

Google Analytics, Allocadia, Brandwatch, 123FormBuilder (formerly 123ContactForm)

Hootsuite Competitors

Adobe Social, Conversocial, Sysomos Expion, Falcon.io, Oracle Social Cloud, Radian6, Sprout Social, Viralheat, MavSocial, ThoughtBuzz, Khoros Care (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium), Khoros Marketing (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium), Sprinklr Social + Messaging Suite

Hootsuite Technical Details

Operating Systems:	Unspecified
Mobile Application:	No

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Hootsuite Scorecard Summary

Feature Scorecard Summary

About Hootsuite

Hootsuite Integrations

Hootsuite Competitors

Hootsuite Technical Details