Being a small business in the digital age, you know that you need a strong social media presence to help grow your business. While trying to stay hip on all of the latest trends, you are getting overwhelmed with all of your different social media accounts. Allow me to introduce you to Hootsuite. With multiple social media management (SMM) platforms in the market, it is hard to find the right one for your business without trying a demo or trial. Created in 2008, Hootsuite was one of the original SMM tools and is still our go to tool for our social media accounts. 

Dashboard

First logging into Hootsuite, you will be introduced to what they call the Dashboard. It is a very simple set-up and is very user friendly for handling all of your accounts. It allows you to see all of your company’s social media profiles and is broken down by stream. Each stream is a different segment of each social media platform (see below for better understanding). I love this because now I can not only see my most recent Facebook posts, but I can see what I have scheduled or who has mentioned us recently; there really are so many options. Hootsuite also allows you to like, share, message and much more all from within the dashboard. This makes it so that you really never have to leave the platform. 

Hootsuite Dashboard – Different streams for each social media platform

Scheduling

There are many very useful features that Hootsuite has to enhance your company’s social media, but the main reason you will be using Hootsuite is for scheduling. If you wanted to plan your tweets for the rest of the year, then you could do that. Your tweets may not stay up to date with all of the latest trends, but you would never have to worry about sending posts for a long time. This alone makes Hootsuite an incredibly powerful tool. It means you can spend a day or two planning a month of social media posts, thus increasing your presence and making your company brand better known online. 

Hootsuite Scheduling Calendar

No one in my company knows how to use Hootsuite

Hootsuite can be a little overwhelming when first opening it up. Trust me I was not an expert when I started. You can get a good introduction from Hootsuite’s Academy. With their free online classes,  you will learn everything from the beginning steps of scheduling your posts all the way to the advanced tools that will make you a social media expert. Along with the free courses, there are Hootsuite certifications that will make you stand out to any company. Or equip the entire team with skills to master Hootsuite with the available team training.

Retweet, like, comment, and share all within the dashboard

Hootsuite is easy enough for any business that is looking to strengthen their digital presence with over 35 recognized social media platforms. I would suggest testing the water and seeing which of the platforms works best for you. We did a test of Buffer last year and decided that Hootsuite is still a better platform for what we do, but it may be different for you. If all this still seems overwhelming, then take time to learn about Roundpeg and our social media and content marketing.

Hopefully you’ll find this Hootsuite introduction helpful, just make sure you have a social media strategy to back it up with.