Earlier this week I was going through my Feedly RSS feed reader collecting articles for my Sunday Smash post, “25 Best Blogging Tips and Social Media Tips of the Week” when I came across Hoot Suite thanks to a post on Shout Me Loud titled, “Hoot Suite Review: Ultimate Twitter Client“. With some of the recent changes to Seesmic I found myself looking for a new twitter manager that would make it easy for me to manage not only my personal twitter account @extremejohn, but also make managing our business twitter accounts @insanelimos and @etasflorida much easier.
This wasn’t my first time hearing about Hoot Suite, but to be honest before I read Harsh’s article on Shout Me Loud I never really considered using Hoot Suite before. Actually never even went to the website to see what Hoot Suite was about, that was a big mistake on my part….
Hoot Suite Twitter Client
Hoot Suite is a very smooth twitter client that would suite even the most novice twitter users, it makes tweeting and managing your twitter friends extremely simple. Since we do have multiple twitter accounts to manage we need a twitter manager for power users that will allow us to keep our social networking profiles active, Hoot Suite is the perfect twitter client for small business power users.
Hoot Suite Pros
- Makes tracking any @mentions about our companies easy, I am tracking Extreme John, Extreme Tan and Insane Limos. Anytime any of those phrases are mentioned on Twitter it will show up in this column.
- Managing multiple accounts is as simple as one click
- Retweet function still allows for additional text to be entered
- Easily track conversations so you never lose track of what you were tweeting about
- Track featured Tweeps (people you follow on twitter)
- Following and Unfollowing on Twitter is simple
- Tabs to manage individual accounts
- Schedule tweets
- Stat tracking of clicks on any links you tweet with Hoot Suite
- Support for Ping.fm and Linkedn
- Connect your RSS feed to your Hoot Suite account
- Easily view scheduled tweets
Hoot Suite Cons
- I wish there was a way to customize colors and font sizes
- Grease Monkey scripts are limited to language translators
- The Firefox Hoot Suite Hootlet is useless (my opinion)
- There needs to be more Hoot Suite Apps
- Number of tweets displayed in each column is limited to between 3-5 tweets
Hoot Suite is packed with features that are sure to be a tremendous help to any small business owner that is looking to expand their social networking presence by using sites like Twitter, Facebook and Ping.fm to name a few. If you give Hoot Suite a try stop back and leave a comment with your own personal Hoot Suite review, it’s a great way for others to see a different opinion besides just mine.
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{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
You know me, I had to be a non-believer at first, but I don’t see myself going back to Seesmic even if they get the RT issue fixed. There’s a few things I’d like to change about it. I’d love to be able to see more columns and more tweets. I’d like to have notifications of just @replies and DMs. I’d love to change the color. But overall, it’s great. Plus, it’s nice that I don’t have Seemsic hogging up all of my system resources.
@Mike @DailyShotOfCoffee, you want an audio notification right? Makes two of us.
I tried getting Growl to pop a notification every time something came in from Hoot Suite but it’s not working
As far as I can tell, HootSuite is the only one to use if you want to schedule tweets. I can’t compare to Seemsic as I’ve never used it but on the basis of scheduling tweets, that alone makes it worth checking out. The version for iPhone is still too buggy for my liking but that can only get better.
All that said, I still prefer Tweet Deck ;)
Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..#GiveABrickTwitterChallenge
@Eleanor Edwards, thank you for taking the time to leave a comment Eleanor. I haven’t gone back to Tweet Deck in a long long time, Seesmic was my main mixer now Hoot Suite just kills it for me. The scheduled Tweets is huge and it’s showing a big pay off for me on my personal and business blogs.
@Extreme John I can understand why scheduled tweets would be an advantage and agree, the way it handles multiple accounts is cool.
However, I love that when you leave a half written tweet in Tweet Deck, it gives you the option of saving. Great for someone as rubbish at spelling as me ;)
Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..#GiveABrickTwitterChallenge
@Eleanor Edwards, that is a pretty handy little feature, I wouldn’t mind having that feature.
I’ve been a die hard TweetDeck user for sometime now and I have used HootSuite a few times, but maybe I should stop by the site and give it another run, it can’t do any harm, specially after your informative post, I don’t what it to go to waste
Karen @ Blazing Minds´s last blog ..How to make your FireFox Browser look great with Personas
@Karen @ Blazing Minds, I think you might like some of the features Karen, just take a little bit to adjust things and see how they flow for you.
I’m trying new ones all the time and they all have their pros and cons. I’m going to stick with Hoot until the “perfect” one comes out. Maybe I’ll even create the perfect one. Oh yeah, I’d probably need a good amount of capital to do that.
@Anthony @ Jumpness, all it takes is a $1 and a dream
Another negative about the HootSuite application is the automatic shortening of links with http://ow.ly which frames content and makes it difficult to shorten linked articles. I elaborated this in a screencast at http://screenr.com/sc8
Ari Herzog@Online Media Strategies´s last blog ..Satisfying Saturday: Where You Can Find Ari Herzog Online
Hoot Suite is really a great Twitter Application for business.. I have been using it for a while now and i loved it..
Kevin S @Free Vector Graphics´s last blog ..Funny Emoticons
I Love Hootsuite, not only does it have features like multiple accounts, but also you can add feeds, schedule and communicate easily
Along with statistics, this is the best app for twitter
gautam hans´s last blog ..5 reasons why bloggers quit blogging
@gautam hans, I would have to agree with you.
I still like Tweetdeck the best, and I have multiple accounts too. I guess I prefer a desktop app over a web app because I usually have too many tabs open while I am working.
Keith@BloggerLuv´s last blog ..Dani’s health information.
@Keith@BloggerLuv, that’s one advantage of a Mac, I use Fluid which treats any web page like an app so it can sit right in my doc and not tie up a tab ;)
@Extreme John, Always with the Mac’s! LOL one of these days when I make it big maybe I will get one, for now I have to stick with my souped up PC though….
Keith@BloggerLuv´s last blog ..Dani’s health information.
@Keith@BloggerLuv, I never thought I would use a Mac or even talk about one then this guy Steve started telling me about them, I’ll never go back now.
I love Hootsuite. the only issue is that it tops out at 20 tabs which is pretty much 20 different social accounts. I am considering creating a second account to get 40 tabs so I don’t have to swap them in and out. Other than that, it’s awesome.
Steve @ Turbo Tax 2009´s last blog ..Pay For College With Tax Credits
@Steve @ Turbo Tax 2009, I can’t go that far in depth and handle that many accounts. I give you props on wanting even more tabs.
Are Hoot Suite and Tweet Deck basically the same thing?
I’ll be getting re-twitterized very soon and would like to use ONE and do things right, right from the jump…I’d LOVE a real comparison/review if possible somewhere.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..The Time Has Come. The Deal Is Done. It’s Time To Move!!
@Dennis Edell, yes they are.
@Extreme John,
In reading this thread it seems the main hiccup is their shortner…do you have to use theirs if using them?
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..The Time Has Come. The Deal Is Done. It’s Time To Move!!
I use hootsuite and tweetdeck. I use tweetdeck on my desktop and hootsuite on my laptop and public computers.
I have been using hootsuite for quite a while and I have not found a good replacement. I do wish colors font and column width could be customized.
As for the hootlet, I find it works well. I use it all the time. When I am sharing links, or want to share a new post. This booklet is so much faster than TweetMeMe and it also has built in tracking. But if you do not do a lot of link sharing, then this may not be all that use for you.
element321´s last blog ..Blogging Tips – Starting a New Blog
@element321, now your making me think that it might be something I have to try out. Ok I will.
A very important con for me with HootSuite is the lack of Bit.ly integration. Their own URL-shortener is not as good and they don´t give me the option to go with bit.ly instead.
Normally a deal-breaker for me, but the rest of the tool is really good so right now I am sticking to it.
@Lars Tong Strömberg@marketing, I haven’t had any problems with the Hoot Suite link shortner service and it seems to have a really nice tracking feature as well.
I heard about HootSuite a few times but never really took a second look parhaps I might take another look and see what its like. everyone seems to good feedback about so im gonna have a second look.
James´s last blog ..Unsecured Vs Secured – Which To Choose?
@James, it really is a life saver for me that’s for sure, tie that in with Ping and you have a great social networking combo for small business owners.
I have never tried hoot suit before but after reading this post I cant resist myself for trying hoot suit.
My business applications generates many announcements, events etc, and I use TweetTwain to integrate these applications with Twitter and Facebook fan page. I really like this feature which no others offers.
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