Something to Hoot about

Posted on: 4:01pm, 2010 June (Tuesday 29th) By: admin

Sometimes, when you’ve been using a really cool piece of software for ages you forget that other people may not have shared your delights, or in this case not heard about it at all. The other day, a work colleague asked me if I could recommend a good multichannel updating service; it was then, that I realized I needed to share my knowledge of HootSuite to the mass. If you’re not familiar with Hootsuite, it is a professional twitter client (although it now includes other social platforms) that can help you to save your time and sanity by managing multiple social networks through one client. It’s great because you can schedule updates and give administration permission to certain networks so clients can manually update their accounts without accessing your whole dashboard.

They have integrated some new features that have taken the service to another level [although still in beta]; my favourite features include:

+ Klout – a zero to 100 ranking that estimates their degree of influence within Twitter based on a whole slew factors like number of active followers, links clicked and engagement with other users. A small slider on the right can be used to adjust the desired Klout Score, filtering out users as the score increases.

+ Insight – HootSuite have also added a new layer of information about each user, in addition to the standard Twitter bio that displays when their user name is clicked. A new tab labeled “Insight” shows the user’s age, gender, additional profile images and a list of other public social profiles for that user, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Amazon.com (including wish lists), eBay, StumbleUpon, Pandora and quite a few others.

+ Sleek new themes – I know this sounds lame but being able to personalize your online environment is a real under-rated value added function that is often overlooked.

+ Analytics – Measurement is everything these days, so with the tied in functions from Google Analytics it allows you to track everything through one platform.

+ GeoSearch – This is an awesome capability as there are so many brands that want to know, who is talking about what and where.

I almost forgot the best bit, it is completely free!

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