But what exactly is a social media management platform, and what benefit does it provide?
What Is Hootsuite?
Formed by Ryan Holmes in 2008, Hootsuite is a social media management platform, taking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Youtube, and combining them into the form of a shared dashboard.
What Is A Social Media Management Platform?
The main thing to understand when it comes to social media management platforms, is the purpose: interconnectivity.
This is the big selling point of packages like Hootsuite, who boast supported network connectivity, linking all your important and frequently used social media accounts, and combining them in one handy place, allowing you to share, view, send messages between accounts, and basically properly manage all of your different applications.
What Is Hootsuite Good For?
Predominantly, Hootsuite is designed for people who are either running a professional business, operating a small startup company, or indeed those who are a private seller looking to sell certain items or wares online.
Of course, with this key demographic, there are numerous benefits to using systems like Hootsuite.
Interconnectivity
If you are a social media manager, it is your job to operate, manage, and interact with all of the different social media accounts for the company you work for.
This can be a difficult job, and one where things can easily slip through the cracks. However, with something like Hootsuite, you have everything in one place, allowing you to methodically progress through them all, and check notifications when they arise.
User Friendliness
Of course, with this interconnected process comes a certain level of ease, streamlining what would have once been a cumbersome, difficult task, and making it as user friendly as possible.
This can make daily tasks far easier, and can be a great way of reducing workload for yourself and your employees.
Responsiveness
Another benefit of this service is responsiveness – that is, your responsiveness as a social media manager when it comes to answering emails, checking notifications, and replying to queries regarding your business or terms of service.
The key to a good online presence – particularly as a business owner – is a prompt and appropriate level of interactivity with your client base. This can be the difference between a good review and a poor one.
Poor business practices can be a good way of losing trade and alienating existing customers, thus a sense of responsiveness is key to only establishing good business relationships, but also patterns of spending and overall customer satisfaction.
Is HootSuite Free?
Hootsuite offers a number of different packages and tiers, ranging from free to ‘business’, all of them offering different features, and coming at different monthly subscription rates.
Free Package
This is the package most new users opt for, as it allows them to get a gist of the program and what it has to offer, as well as letting them see whether it will be useful for their business practices.
This allows one user, three separate social media accounts, and 30 posts per month across all platforms, making it the perfect starter package for potential customers to get used to the features.
Professional
Then comes the professional package.
This jumps up significantly in price ($49 per month), and still only allows for one user. However, it does allow for ten social media accounts to be integrated, as well as unlimited posts per month, allowing as much connectivity as you might need.
Team
The next tier is the ‘team’ package. This has a subscription fee of $129 dollars per month, and allows for three separate users to be signed onto the system, a total of twenty social media accounts to be integrated onto the dashboard, and unlimited posts to be made by any and all users.
This package is designed for small businesses, where there might be two or three workers operating in different locations but working towards the same goal.
Business
Costing a subscription fee of $739 dollars per month, this is quite a leap, however it allows 5 users to work on the same subscription, 35 social media accounts to be integrated onto a single dashboard, and unlimited posts to be made by any and all users.
This is designed for a small IT or social media section of a larger business, where colleagues working towards the same end can all combine their efforts, work together, and interact with one another on their own computers within the office or home.
Enterprise
The final and highest package, there is no official pricing for Enterprise, due to the fact that it is specifically aimed at companies, and includes a personalized service based on their needs and requirements.
Obviously not designed for consumer use, this has many different features, all of them similar to the smaller packages, but with much more scope for customization and expansion.
The standard features include everything in the above plans, team productivity reporting, single sign-on, quarterly business reviews, live training for the entire team, automated team assignments, and social listening add-ons.
Is Hootsuite Good Value?
This really depends on the needs of you and your business.
Based on face value, Hootsuite is the best social media management platform in the industry, and offers a lot for new and seasoned companies looking to streamline their social media.
However, due to the price, you really need to have a clearly defined plan of use to get your money’s worth.
Final Thoughts
And there we have it, everything you need to know about Hootsuite, and the uses and benefits it has for modern business practices.
If you are a small business owner, or indeed a larger professional entity that can afford such expenses, then why not give Hootsuite a try?
These days, everything is online. You can’t get your business anywhere without a great online presence. With search engines forever changing, it’s difficult to stay on top of it all! That’s where I’ll come in.
Hello, my name is Jack O’Neil and I have been in the marketing industry for almost 10 years. I focus on online marketing, SEO, advertising, and more.
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