As a business owner who is on the road most of the time you will never see me without my smart phone. I will forgot allot of things but my phone is not far from my hand at any time. Having a teenager in sports and a young son coming up in sports I spend alot of my time in my Honda Odyssey or at ballgames.
When I first began my business, I had to figure out away to stay in touch and run my business with my very busy schedule. My day starts at 4am to head to the time clock, not getting back home until around 4 pm, just in time to gather one son or two to head to their games. With very limited time some days began using my smart phone as a very important tool for my business.
I discovered twitter and facebook around the same time and love social media, however I did not want to login to both accounts each time I wanted to make a post. That was time consuming; I wanted a quick easy access on one convenient place, that is when I discovered “Hootsuite”
Hootsuite has become my favorite app on my smart phone.
Hootsuite is the Social Media Dashboard! It helps organizes the social web to launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels. Using Hootsuite, schedule updates to leading social networks via web, desktop or mobile platforms plus track campaign results and industry trends to rapidly adjust tactics.
Rather than being on one social network, Hootsuite allows you to connect to multiple social networks from one app. Facebook – Twitter – Linkin – and now the new Timeline pages without moving from site to site. I can read all my social media pages in one place from my Smartphone.
Less time and less surfing
Launched in Dec. 2008 by Invoke Media, HootSuite’s rapidly growing user base includes governments, artists and organizations like The White House, Martha Stewart Media, and Zappos. Mashable’s Open Web, Canadian New Media, and Shorty Awards.
I have tried to use several twitter desktop apps such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Twhirl and a few others, but have found Hootsuite to be the most useful. Through Hootsuite you can schedule tweets, save drafts of tweets to send later, and send and schedule feeds to post on twitter. I had been searching for a desktop app that does it all and so far this is the one for me.
It has a feature to auto shrink the text or url’s to fit within the 140 character limit on twitter. I’d also like the ability to use other url shorteners like Bil.ly and still be able to track statistics.
Hootsuite offers is the ability to track your tweet stats, allowing users to see which tweets are most popular and how many people clicked your links and what sites/sources referred them.
All you have to do is set up a free account with hootsuite.com A screen will come up that is blank, then set up your social sites that you want to read and post through hootsuite. On your left you will see an image of a house. Click on the house – scroll down to the image that looks like a cog or wheel and click on social media. It will walk you through how to add the different platforms that it supports and it will set up a “stream”.
The paper clip under the message bar is where you will place your links. Then click the “shrink” button to shorten your links to stay in the 140 character posting. There’s a small wheel that will show you the advance settings to change the ow.ly to other URL shortening sites. I just use ow.ly for hootsuite. Tracking for your post to see the analytics and know who is reading your post.
Once you get your streams set up for facebook – twitter -linked in – you will be able to post your first tweet/status update from hootsuite. At the top of the window you will see the “compose message” window to type your 140 characters for Twitter or longer post to facebook. At the bottom of that same window you will see a small image that looks like a calendar – you will click there and set the date and time you want a post to go out. A tweet can go out every hour – a facebook post doesn’t need to post more than 3-4 per day. Remember that FB moves slower than Twitter. I look at facebook as conversation and twitter as casually talking to someone as you pass by them in the store.
There is a tear drop beside the calendar that will post “places” or your location. I personally do not use that feature, even though our cell phones are tractable.
Now you know as I sit at my son’s games enjoying spending time with them, I can also keep up with social media from the stands of a ballpark, the grocery store shopping, sitting in the airports, or the back of a Limo.
If you are like me and have a busy schedule to follow put your smart phone to work for you and stay on top of your competitors. Allow people to see you living your life, while working your business without being tied down to a desk, a lap top or an office. I don’t know about you but I want to experience life on the go not from a window of an office. Angela is now teaching others how she runs her business. Click here to learn more
Angela a social media holistic nurse whom was voted 110th Leading Moms in Business she is also Silver Director for her achievement of being the first in her business to build a solid Silver 2nd level Team Performance and over 30,000 in volume without using the phone. She is setting a model of how to build relationships online, through social media, blogging and email. She was also named #22 in the Top 50 Blog of 2012
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Hi Nice post. Thanks for sharing. Hootsuit is a good app to manage all social media accounts. HootSuite supports Facebook profiles and Pages, as well as multiple Twitter accounts. It supports LinkedIn profiles and also LinkedIn
Company Pages and LinkedIn Groups and also so many social media platforms
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