Social Media Marketing tout suite with Hootsuite

This guide discusses the steps necessary to begin using Hootsuite to manage social networks. This is not a comprehensive guide, but an ultra-lean how-to for novice users unfamiliar with social network marketing who want to start posting immediately without making a financial commitment.

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a social network management platform that allows users to manage multiple social networks from a single screen, while employing Hootsuite’s studio of social media marketing tools.

Hootsuite is a paid subscription service but offers a limited, free plan that provides a great, risk-free learning environment. Users who find value in the platform can subscribe at a later time if they wish to access a wide range of social network management features.

Hootsuite directly supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Other platforms, such as TikTok and WhatsApp, can be connected, as well, but require the use of third party apps. 

With Hootsuite, users can:

• Create and publish posts to multiple social networks from one place, instead of accessing and creating content for each platform individually. For example, a user can create a single post and with a few clicks publish that post to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn at the same time, with Hootsuite automatically adapting the content to the unique format requirements for each network.

• Monitor audience activity on multiple networks from one screen. The Hootsuite stream feature pulls activity – such as posts, comments, reactions, and inquiries – from connected networks and displays that activity in one place. In other words, users can see, in nearly real time and on a single screen, what is happening on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts (or any other connected account) without having to log in separately to those networks.

• Schedule content to be posted hours, days, weeks or months in advance to ensure social network content is regularly updated even when you are too busy to make time for it.

• Analyze data regarding user activity on your networks to determine how best to engage and motivate your audiences.

Get Started

Begin by creating a free Hootsuite account.

A free Hoostsuite account allows users to connect and manage two social networks. For the purposes of this guide, we will connect a Facebook and Twitter account, but the process is similar for the other supported social networks.

Click this link https://www.hootsuite.com/plans/free-account to access the Hootsuite free account signup page. 

Click Sign Up Now and follow the instructions to create the free account.

Once the account is created, login to your Hootsuite Dashboard.

Click Get Started, and a list of supported social networks will appear. Because you haven’t added a network yet, the list of options will be grayed out.

Click + Add a social network at the bottom of the list.

Select Twitter from the list of supported networks, then click Connect with Twitter.

Enter the required Twitter credentials into the fields provided and click Sign In.

You will be returned to the dashboard and you will see that Twitter is no longer gray, indicating that it is connected to Hootsuite.

Click Next and then click Add to Dashboard. Hootsuite automatically creates a Twitter stream and adds it to your dashboard. 

Understanding Streams

The activity pulled from any given connected social network is called a stream. Thus, the activity pulled from the Twitter account we just connected could be called your Twitter stream.

Hootsuite automatically organizes activity from a given social network into logical categories and displays these categories in separate panels on a screen called a board. Tweets and Mentions, for example, appear in separate panels on the default Twitter board shown in the image below.

Later, you can customize your streams and boards to display activity in a manner that meets your needs.

Next, we’ll connect to a Facebook Page.

Important —  Log out of Facebook

Before connecting a Facebook page you should open a separate browser tab and log out of Facebook. You will login to Facebook from the Hootsuite dashboard during the connection process, and problems can occur if you do not first log out.

Create a Facebook business or group page

It is important to remember that there is a difference between a Facebook profile page and a Facebook Page intended to promote businesses and organizations. Everyone who creates a Facebook account has a profile page for personal use. That profile page serves as a kind of parent page from which business and organization pages can be created.

Hootsuite is used to manage official Facebook Pages and Group Pages only, and cannot access personal profile pages. If you have not created a Facebook Page, do so before proceeding. See Create a Facebook Page for Your Business if you need assistance. 

Once you’ve created your business or organization page, click My Profile, located in the bottom left corner of the dashboard, and then select Social networks and teams.

Next to your organization name, click Manage.

Click + Add a Social Network.

Select Facebook from the menu that pops up.

Enter the login credentials for the Facebook Page you wish to connect in the fields provided and click Log In.

Any Facebook pages associated with the login credentials you entered will appear in a list. Select the page you wish to connect and click Done. 

Your Facebook Page is now connected to Hootsuite. 

Creating posts

Users can create posts from the Hootsuite dashboard and publish them to a single network or to all of their connected networks, simultaneously. 

To create a post, select the Composer on the left, and click Post to open the composer. 

Take note of the preview panel on the right where previews of your post are displayed as they will appear on each selected network. Use the scroll bar on the right side to scroll through the previews.

Use the Publish To field to select the network(s) you want to receive this post. For the purpose of this guide, select both Facebook and Twitter.

The Content field is where you enter the post text along with any necessary links. 

Notice the Shorten with Ow.ly option at the bottom of the Text field. Lengthy links sometimes give posts a cluttered appearance and can be problematic on platforms like Twitter with its character count limitation.  Ow.ly is a tool that shortens the link text without changing the destination. Use it to give posts a more tidy appearance. 

If you wish to add a custom image to a post, click Open Media Library and select an image from the options available there. 

Once you’re satisfied with the post’s appearance, click Post Now to publish it to the selected networks immediately. See the Post Scheduling section below for guidance on creating posts that Hootsuite will publish automatically at the scheduled time.

Post Scheduling

Social network marketing is seldom productive if a user’s pages are not updated regularly. At the same time, if social network management is someone’s part-time task, real-time management is almost impossible. This is why post scheduling is widely considered Hootsuite’s most valuable feature. 

To schedule a post:

Create a post in the composer as you would any other post,  including selecting multiple networks if desired, and click Schedule for Later.

Use the calendar tool to select the day and time the post should be published and click Done. 

Users can view the scheduled activity for any given network in the Scheduled panel of that network’s stream board. 

Conclusion

If you completed this brief tutorial, you know that using Hootsuite to manage social networks isn’t particularly difficult and is actually quite intuitive. We encourage you to explore the platform’s many features which can open to you a whole new world of powerful and cost effective marketing opportunities.

The Hootsuite Help Center offers extremely easy to understand guidance on using the platform, as well as professional tips on maximizing the impact of your social network marketing efforts.