Transcript
Hootsuite is a social media management system which allows you to manage various Social Media accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and WordPress all at the same time. For learning the basics of hootsuite their help section is incredibly useful, especially when setting up your hootsuite, you could also subscribe to the Hootsuite University for more detailed videos. In this video we are going to focus on the advantages of scheduling messages.
So what advantages come from scheduling your social media updates? One large advantage is that it saves you time. If you do three updates a day for a week for LinkedIn and twitter on Hootsuite you do not have to log onto 2 sites 15 times a week, also as you are doing them in bulk you can monitor the topics of your updates helping you to keep your online presence varied. You can also guarantee a social media presence on all of your accounts even when you are busy, so you can just focus on your day job. Hootsuite can also be used to respond to any comments or replies to your posts.
To post an update enter your text into the box in the top left hand corner. If you want to add a link then paste it to the box below and click shrink this will shorten the link for you so there is no need to use external sites such as bitly. You then chose which of the social media accounts you have added to Hootsuite you wish to send the message out to by clicking on the drop down and selecting the appropriate ones. If you wish to remove an account then simply click on it again. You can attach a file or image by selecting the paper clip. This could be useful for adding forms or images of recent events or products. You can also change the privacy settings for FB, Google+ and LinkedIn posts to determine who will see your update.
You can then send the update immediately by clicking on ‘Send Now’ or schedule your message by selecting the calendar icon. From here you have two options, the first option allows you to use the Autoscheduler. This will send out your update at an ‘optimal delivery time’. This essentially means that Hootsuite will post it to your Social Media site when you have the highest activity so the time it posts the update to twitter may be different to the time it posts the same update to LinkedIn. The other way is to schedule the postings by yourself. This means you can hit your social media sites at specific times when you know your followers will be online, usually if your stakeholders work a 9-5 they will look 8.30 – 9, 12-2 and 5-6pm. This way means you have more control and you can even try different timings to see which are the most effective.
No matter which scheduling method you choose you can edit the post after you have scheduled it. To do this find the column where your scheduled posts are and click ‘edit’ next to the appropriate update. You can edit any part of the post, including timings, social media accounts you are posting it too and text afterwards if necessary
Hootsuite means that you can plan your posts across various platforms in advance leaving you time to focus on your day job whilst still creating a social media presence.