Item: Hootsuite
Rating: 10
Author: Roland Millington

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have a large number of ministries under our main ministry umbrella, and we use Hootsuite to make certain our branding is adhered to, our messaging is consistent across all social media platforms, and that we have an effective impact within our market. Seeing as we are a non-profit org, being nimble and thrifty at the same time are two things we value a great deal. Hootsuite's cost structure allows us an affordable way to achieve our social media marketing goals across a wide range of platforms.

Pros and Cons

Multi-platform, multi-entity social media programming
Reporting
Content creation and workflow management

Having a direct injection into Instagram stories would be a great feature, however, that is more a limitation of Instagram than it is of Hootsuite.
I would love a management system for a Youtube video that does a bit deeper dive on analytics, tags, etc. TubeBuddy comes to mind.
Creating content is easy and fast, but one of the things I like about Adobe Spark is that they can catalog logos, brand identity, etc., within their visual content creation tools. I'd love it if Hootsuite could do that without having to continually import the logos for each image. Applying a templated system would make content creation very quick and easy. When you're programming a month at a time, with three sub-accounts over 3 different platforms, that would really save a great deal of time.

Return on Investment

We've noticed that speed and efficiency are increased over many social media channels. As we have only one person managing our marketing, this is very helpful in maintaining brand accuracy.
Engagement with Hootsuite-deployed products is typically no better or worse than non-HS deployed products. So there's no negative we've noticed in programming content vs. organically firing one out to social media on the fly.
Our analysis has been improved, as Hootsuite's analytics seem to be a bit easier to navigate and understand for upstream decision-makers with regard to social media investment decisions (budgeting).

Alternatives Considered

Hootsuite offers an easy-to-understand tool that empowers the user to focus more on content creation and analytics-based strategizing than it does on working in a spreadsheet-like environment trying to understand how code works within certain environments. While I do appreciate the in-depth approach of Google's marketing tools, and Facebook's ad-buying system might take a bit to understand the flow without some immersion, Hootsuite gets you up and running quickly, simply, and then allows you to get in-depth with content creation as you move forward.

Support Rating

Key Insights

Do you think Hootsuite delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Hootsuite's feature set?

Yes

Did Hootsuite live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Hootsuite go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Hootsuite again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

I can describe a scenario where Hootsuite is both well-suited and less appropriate all in one. Hootsuite, as we use it, is fantastic for doing long-term social media programming across multiple platforms for a number of pages. But at the same time, content creation is more cumbersome to customize due to the back end of Hootsuite's content creation platform. Watermarking our work, or putting a "Donate Now" graphic on images is something that could be done with a saved template (as we do on Adobe Spark), but if that were brought to Hootsuite, it would be a tremendous time-saver, as well as making branding of images far simpler. The engagement would be much better, I feel.

Social Media Marketing You Can Understand

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Hootsuite