Monday, July 16, 2012

Organize Your Social Media With Hootsuite

I recently shared how easy it is to use Twitter to connect with your Etsy customers.   So you've done that, you're on Facebook, LinkedIn and a whole bunch of other sites you were told to join to promote your shop. Then you learn about ANOTHER site to join and you're ready to throw in the towel and never go online again.    I use to get that way too until I learned about Hootsuite.   I recently described Hootsuite to someone as "Information Overload!"

Hootsuite is an online brand management service which publishes to websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, and WordPress. It is also a Twitter client.  There are SO many features to Hootsuite that I won't get into (because I don't want to pay extra for a premium account) so I'll just keep it simple with an introduction.

If this screenshot of my personal account doesn't scare you away, keep reading. :)

Instead of posting the same annoucement to different websites, Hootsuite is set up to be your one stop promo hub.  I currently have three twitter accounts, my personal Facebook, my Etsy shop Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram set up- I know! Crazy right???

The buttons next to the Compose Message box represent my different Twitter and Facebook accounts (the two Facebook icons are question marks, not sure why). These are the icons you click when you're ready to post. You can click more than one.  You can set up your dashboard with one or multiple tabs. The tabs are just for viewing, the buttons next to the message bar are for when you want to share something. The way I have mine sorted doesn't have to be the way you set up yours.

By selecting the buttons I mentioned, you can tweet to multiple accounts, share an Etsy link on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook at the same time. Another bonus is schedule posts ahead of time.  It's really fantastic! Don't be too hard on yourself if you don't "get it" right away. I know it's overwhelming at first, it took a while before I added Facebook, Tumblr & Instagram (which I call Tumblrgram) to the mix because I really wanted a good grasp of how the site works.  But it is a great way to keep your Social Media sites in order and see everything at once and not go from one site to the next.

If you have questions about setting up, or you use this for your business and love it/hate it, feel free to share in the comments.

7 comments:

becky nielsen said...

very cool! I'll have to play with it - it drives me crazy to try to remember where all I need to put things up. Maybe this won't work for me, but it's worth a try.

Unknown said...

It's less passwords to remember too once you have everything set up. :)

Unknown said...

Hootsuite is my lifeline to promos... I can't see how I was doing it earlier. Just the scheduling option makes it all worth it. I'm off the computer in a few hours instead of having to be on and off all day. Nice article, Marilyn.

Connor from HootSuite said...

Thanks for sharing Marilyn! We love hearing stories like this one of how people (like yourself) use HootSuite to make your life easier.

Let us know if we can help with anything and HOOT ON!

-HootSuite Community

Shannon Chomanczuk said...

Thanks of sharing. I love the hoot suite app on my iPad and am starting to get more comfortable using it on my computer. Information overload is right but I am hoping once I get the hang of it it will actually save time.

Neely Coyote McCormick said...

An answer to many prayers.

Debi said...

I just set this up on my Android phone & my laptop at Jess & Marilyn's suggestion. I'm learning it and think that once I get the hang of it, this is going to be a big time saver!
Thanx for this great intro article M.