Hootsuite

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that helps organizations deliver enhanced social media experiences to their customers at every stage of the customer journey. The platform includes numerous features to manage social media channels; create content; and plan, schedule and optimize social media interactions.

Hootsuite helps all kinds of businesses connect all social media accounts and manage all activities from a single centralized management console. The platform provides a unified dashboard to create, schedule and publish posts and ads. It also provides real-time insights and reports to help optimize content, ads and audience engagement outcomes. It is scalable and available as a cloud-based software-as-a-service offering.

Enterprise social media teams and managers can use Hootsuite to develop a social media strategy, plan and schedule content to all social profiles, interact with their audience, and monitor the performance of their efforts in real time. The platform can also help companies do the following:

• Increase the volume of top-performing content.
• View all scheduled and published content in a single calendar.
• Organize new posts.
• Monitor key trends related to the business, audience, market and competitors.
• Get useful insights on the best times to post content.

As of 2023, Hootsuite is used by 200,000 customers in more than 200 countries to engage with their target audiences via social media.

Key features of the Hootsuite social media management platform

Hootsuite's social media tools and features helps users simplify and scale their social media marketing programs. They can also inform an organization's social media policy. Some of the platform's key features include the following:

• Social media calendar and planner. These tools make it easy to create, schedule and publish content for all accounts.
• OwlyWriter AI. This component generates captions and post ideas when given simple prompts.
• Social media scheduler. The scheduler simplifies bulk post scheduling for hundreds of posts ahead of time.
• Content generator. Hootsuite can automatically create content intended to capture the attention of the target audience.
• Hashtag generator. This generator suggests hashtags for each post, with the goal of increasing the chances that the post will reach the intended audience.
• Canva templates. Each template can be accessed from the Composer window and customized to create on-brand content.
• Content discovery streams. Search streams can be created by hashtag, keyword and location. Content can be shared from all networks.
• Streamlined approvals workflows. A simple approval process lets team members collaborate seamlessly, review each post and reduce the risks of low customer engagement.
• Social listening tools. These tools are helpful for understanding what people are saying about the brand and for keeping an eye on the competition.

In addition to the above tools, Hootsuite also includes tools for audience engagement, social media monitoring, advertising and analytics.

Three key applications: Social media, social commerce, social care

Hootsuite offers three key applications for companies looking to improve their product branding and to scale up their social media presence:

Social media

Hootsuite's Social Media product is for companies looking to manage their brands content and ad campaigns across all their social accounts. Its OwlyWriter AI writer, post idea generator, built-in templates and collaboration tools speed up content creation. Other features, such as a social media scheduler, hashtag generator, Grammarly spellcheck, bulk post scheduling, etc., simplify content publishing and maintenance.

The platform also includes numerous features for audience engagement, such as monitoring and listening streams, messaging inbox, autoresponder, saved replies, and automated tagging and assignments. There are also features for brand monitoring, including brand sentiment monitoring, social mention streams and brand mention volumes.

Built-in social media analytics such as performance reports, industry benchmarks and custom reports let users see what's working and what's not on their social media accounts. They can see the best time to post based on the defined audience and social media goals, compare performance with peers, and find new ways to maximize audience engagement.

Social commerce

Hootsuite's social commerce feature, named Heyday, is a customer messaging platform for retailers. Heyday includes conversational AI capabilities to help retailers deliver exceptional customer experiences at scale.

The AI chatbot can deliver personalized recommendations to enhance customer experiences on e-commerce sites. It also provides an always-on first line of support to reduce the load for human support teams and let them focus on non-repetitive, higher-value customer conversations.

Social care

Hootsuite's social care features helps businesses easily manage all customer conversations from one dashboard as well as provide seamless, personal service to customers. They automate, prioritize and triage conversations across multiple channels in real time so support teams can improve response times and resolve customers' problems faster.

Hootsuite versions

Hootsuite is available in four versions intended to meet social media management needs for a variety of users:

• Hootsuite Professional. This is the cheapest version of Hootsuite and is suitable for one user and up to 10 social accounts. Users can create, schedule and publish an unlimited number of posts. They can also access all messages from a single inbox.
• Hootsuite Team. Hootsuite Team is suitable for a team of up to three users and up to 20 social accounts. Like the Professional version, the Team version lets users create, schedule and publish unlimited posts as well as access messages from one inbox. In addition, they can assign posts to team members. Team also includes roles and permissions.
• Hootsuite Business. Hootsuite Business is intended for teams of up to five users and organizations with up to 35 social accounts. It includes all the features of Hootsuite Team as well as other features like approval workflows, inbound/outbound tagging, saved replies and auto-resolve conversations. Business also includes a regularly updated content and asset library as well as access to Hootsuite customer support.
• Hootsuite Enterprise Custom. Hootsuite Enterprise Custom starts at five users and 50 social accounts. This version includes all the features of Hootsuite Business plus social ads management, social ads analytics and reports, employee advocacy, and team productivity reporting. Additional tools to automate social media customer service are also available.

The versions are billed on either a monthly or annual basis. A free 30-day trial is also available for the Professional and Team versions. Business and Enterprise Custom users can also ask for a free demo. Nonprofits can get discounted rates on Professional and Team plans.

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