Hootsuite review

• Do more with your social media
• Manage all social media accounts from one platform
• Improve social ads, amplify your content, make data-driven decisions, monitor your reputation and more

 

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite was created in 2008 as a way for online marketing agency Invoke Media to manage the multiple social media accounts of their clients. On recognising the need for other businesses and organisations to manage all of their social media accounts from one dashboard, Hootsuite was launched to the public.

Over the years it has developed into one of the most effective, and popular, social media management tools - enabling business, agencies and organisations to manage their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest accounts from one place.

What does Hootsuite do?

Hootsuite's service can be broken down into seven main areas:

• Scheduling
• Monitoring
• Content curation
• Analytics
• Team management
• Security
• Boosting

Scheduling

Hootsuite's scheduling platform helps save you and your team time by scheduling posts across your social networks. This means you can keep your social channels live 24/7, and enables you to plan posts and content launches in advance.

Hootsuite allows you to upload hundreds of posts in CSV format, so campaigns can be planned in meticulous detail and then launched with the click of a button.

Monitoring

Hootsuite's social media monitoring tools enable you to effectively track topics important to you - whether that's how people are talking about the products or services you sell or your brand name.

Hootsuite allows you to set up custom feeds from the major social networks, populated only by the content you care about. You can then respond quickly to social posts by notifying relevant team members and quickly approving their response.

Content curation

Hootsuite also has tools to help you efficiently find, manage and share content across your social channels.

Create content streams by hashtags, keywords or locations to find the best content to share, organise all your own content into designated libraries for your team to view, edit and collaborate, and even sync with cloud platforms like Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive to pull in content.

Analytics

All of these management tools would not be anywhere as effective without a robust analytics platform to help you make sense of your social activity, and provide insights and data to drive future business and marketing decisions.

Hootsuite's analytics options don't disappoint, allowing you to see the impact your social media activity is having.

Get an overview of the key social metrics that matter to you to track trends and progress, as well as creating custom reports you can easily export in Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and CSV formats.

Team management

For brands and agencies with large social teams, Hootsuite offers a range of team management tools to help you keep control of your team and organise your social output.

Manage access to social accounts, approve posts, set assignments and allow your team to collaborate effectively on social marketing from one platform.

Security

You can set custom permission levels across all of your social accounts, helping to avoid any errors or rogue posts from team members - who can only access and post on the channels you allow them to.

Hootsuite also helps you stay compliant with bodies like FINRA and HIPAA through integrations with Proofpoint, ZeroFOX, Smarsh, Global Relay, and Actiance.

Boosting

Rather than having to log in to Facebook to boost your posts, Hootsuite now offers full integration with Facebook's ad service so you can set up boosted posts directly from the Hootsuite dashboard.

How much does Hootsuite cost?

There are three pricing plans available for Hootsuite: Professional, Team and Business.

Professional - £25 per month

The entry-level package allows one user to work on 10 social profiles with unlimited scheduling.

You also get bulk scheduling options, unlimited RSS integrations and a limit of £400 per month of boosted posts.

Team - £99 per month

The Team package is for up to three users to work on up to 20 social profiles, and also comes with custom analytics reports, team assignments and £1,600 ad spend per month for boosted posts.

Business - £520 per month

The Business plan allows up to five users to manage up to 35 social profiles along with a host of added features such as analytics data exports, publishing approvals, premium app integrations and £4,000 ad spend per month.

If you have a bigger team and need more from Hootsuite, there are also bespoke packages available.