Hootsuite Review for those who do not 'do' social media for a living
Updated November 11, 2015
Hootsuite Review for those who do not 'do' social media for a living
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Hootsuite Pro
We are a small consulting business. I am the sole user and I use it to co-ordinate my outgoing communications across LinkedIn's various groups, Facebook & Twitter
- Easy to send and schedule - once you figure out where you do it from. The instructions for scheduling are straightforward
- The Hootlet on my Chrome toolbar has increased efficiency with communicating interesting web links being easy to spread
- It is easy to add LinkedIn groups to a communication message, again, once you have done it once or twice (first time was a bit tricky)
- The link shrinking is a good feature - saves having to go to ow.ly
- I find it is not as intuitive as I thought it should be, although easy once you know how (& remember how!). I found myself guessing where stuff might be and some things still baffle me! As it is not my 'day job', I can only spend so much time trying to uncover the benefits.
- The vertical slider is very narrow. A small issue but an irritating one! I notice this is a trend on software but I don't like it. My Windows vertical slider on my screen now at 3 to 4 mm (1/8th of an inch) is a lot easier to control.
- I find the whole 'streams' concept a bit confusing and don't know what to do with it other than look at it. I might be a bit of a social media laggard but I find myself in the 'one way' (outgoing) communication stream - and don't know how to readily respond to others.
- Adding new LinkedIn groups is a bit of a hit and miss challenge. I have to remember which screen to go to (which reminds me, I will have to do this again soon). It would be good for Hootsuite to reach out to LinkedIn and offer me to sign up those groups which I am not using through Hootsuite rather than wait for me to go through another screen (when I find it!) and to this.
- I would like to have the option of grouping LinkedIn groups so that I could short cut selecting groups for particular messages. For example, I am a member of a number of Australian based groups, as well as HR groups, Insolvency groups, Restructuring groups, Business Owner groups. It would be good to have the ability to 'group' the groups to save time posting.
- The posting process is not a check box but you click on the link and it disappears and reappears in the links to be posted to. Again, a bit of a challenge the first time to intuitively know how this works.
1 - Marketing & Communication
- I use it to reduce my stress of feeling that I should be communicating. It has achieved that to a large extent as I have increased my knowledge of how it works.
- I can't say I have obtained any direct leads from it but I notice that my postings are getting some traction which is good
- It is the usual '100 hours' to learn the software. I find most software - even relatively simple to use software like Hootsuite, still requires a level of trial and error and study - oh and mistakes!
I saw a recommendation and bought it - at $6/mth I thought I cannot go too far wrong with trialing it.