What Is Hootsuite? How Does It Work? and Is It Free to Use?(Everything You Must Know)

What is Hootsuite? How does it work?

The need to control of the social media in our businesses is what provoked the creation of Hootsuite toolkit. Due to its importance, it is created to ensure it is compatible to nearly every ecommerce site.

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a social media management tool used by business people to manage and monitor all social media channels from one place. With the growing number of social medial channels and their impact to businesses is one factor leading to the high number of Hootsuite app downloads. It was launched in 2008 by Ryan Holmes and named as BrightKit to help manage several Twitter accounts on one platform. In 2009 it changed to its current name Hootsuite.

What is the function of Hootsuite?

Hootsuite has several uses which are very vital to any business looking forward to maintaining better engagements with social media users. Among its uses include:

1) Monitoring

Social media monitoring involves gathering of all media mentions relating to your brand, products and services you deal with, your competitors and market trends relating to your fields of operation. To get the right information easily and fast, you need to use keywords and hashtags.

Monitoring these social medial channels enables businesses to take control of their competitors and emerging market trends.

2) Scheduling

To respond to messages at the right time and effectively, it is advisable to use Hootsuite to schedule when each will be send automatically to their recipient. Messages from Twitter, Facebook or any other Social media are auto scheduled after every 5 minute.

You can respond to all your social media queries 24/7 according to your scheduling needs. This app helps saves time by allowing you to write your posts in advance and then scheduling the day and time you want them to be sent to your social media followers.

3) Information research

This refers to selecting relevant content with the use of hashtags, location and keywords, creating or organizing it to make it customer compelling and presenting it at your most convenient time. Hootsuite cloud storage further enables collecting of information stored in your favorite cloud file service and sending it your target audience.

4) Analytical function

Hootsuite helps in tracking the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other media channels trending activities and knowing how your content engagement levels. It further enables you to know how your team responds and resolves social media issues related to your business.

You can import or export your ROI to your clients or followers to prove your positive progress directly from your dashboard.

Hootsuite review: is Hootsuite good?

Everything in this world has two sides-the good or the bad. With the complexity and the booming of use of social media, without social media management tools like Hootsuite would be like driving a vehicle that has no any measuring gauge. Companies would be facing great brand reputation control risk.

Before making any conclusion, below are five Hootsuite reviews.

1) The ability to draft and schedule when to post the messages on different social media channels is great advantage business marketers. This helps concentrate on other issues as this Hootsuite tool automatically sends the posts.

2) The Hootsuite free plan is highly preferred by business startups and even though it is limited to three social media channels, you can schedule up to 30 posts at a time from one consolidated point. Hootsuite also gives you the opportunity to increase the number of social media channels as your business grows as you want as they easily integrate with Hootsuite.

3) The hootlet plugin on the dashboard enables site managers upload article or blog posts from other online sites that are relevant or beneficial to his customers directly without saving on Hootsuite.

4) Businesses at times find themselves in circumstances the need immediate change of tactic. If you had already scheduled you posts them you are in the worst position you would have ever expected because the only way out is deleting the messages which normally should either be pausing or queuing as is done in Sprout Social.

5) In big business with worldwide social media followers, they always receive hundreds of posts that are irrelevant or injurious to their brand. Dealing with these posts in Hootsuite is really hard because it has no extension or plugin that can allow bulk dismissal or deletion of the messages.

It only allows deleting of messages one by one.

Is Hootsuite free? How much does Hootsuite cost per month?

Hootsuite has five plans.

• · The free plan
• · The professional plan
• · Team Plan
• · Business Plan
• · Enterprise Plan

 The Free Plan

This is the most basic plan and as the name suggests, it is free to use but is limited to only three social media channels.

 The Professional plan

This plan costs $29.0 per month and is limited to 10 social profiles and has unlimited scheduling. This plan comes with a 30 day free trial and has automated post scheduling.

 Team Plan

The team plan has some few additional features and costs $129.0per month. It has a limit of 20 social profiles with unlimited scheduling and 3 users.

 The Business Plan

It is a bit expensive and goes for $599.0 per month and .is paid annually. It is designed to accommodate up to 35 social profiles and the unlimited scheduling system can be used by at most 5 users.

To keep in touch with the business plan users, Hootsuite provides a 24/7 customer care support.

 Enterprise Plan

The Enterprise plan customized according to customer requirements. The amount charged for this plan can only be defined once the customer has outlined all that he needs.

How to use Hootsuite?

Using Hootsuite is quite simple and involves few stages. Follow the below steps and to start using Hootsuite.

Step 1- Create a Hootsuite account by clicking this link (https://hootsuite.com). Select the plan that suites you and fill all the information required in the prompts.

Step 2- Add your social media channels

The plan you chose will determine the number of social profiles you can add. On your dashboard menu, click Streams and add social networks or click here Add social networks to start adding your networks.

Step 3- Now that you have added your networks, select streams from the launch menu and start adding streams for each social profile.

Step 4- You are now ready to publish your messages to your customers. To do this, click new post to create a new message, schedule and publish it.

Requirements for use

1) The first requirement is a business whether it’s a new startup of an old business.

2) It will be useless to think of signing up to use Hootsuite toolkit if you have no active social media accounts.

3)  For the paid plans you are required to pay the annual payments before you start your free trial.

4) If you want to use it with the Enterprise plan, your business has to be duly registered with the necessary.

But Is It Free?

Yes, HootSuite is free. You get access to all of the above main features without any cost to you. But a premium account will get you so many other options.

If you’re serious about social media management and analytics, you can get a 30-day free trial of HootSuite Pro, which costs about $29 a month after that and allows one user to manage up to 10 social profiles. There are also options for teams, businesses, and enterprises.

Tips for using Hootsuite

For you to get the best out of Hootsuite, you need to have the following insights.

1)  You need to know the mostly used social profiles by your customers. This will help you add the most relevant social media channels.

2) Using paid Hootsuite plans require planning in advance as it may need more users and may be an expertise which may be costly to your business.

3) Hootsuite is a good social media management tool but it does not offer everything a user may need and not much you can do to suite what you need.

4) Even though social media control is important, it is Hootsuite does not cover every customer and should therefore not be over relied.

5) Even though the ads you use to promote posts are paid for, the amount you can use on Hootsuite ads is limited according the plan you are registered on.

What is Hootsuite app? How to use?

Hootsuite app is a paid third-party extension to extend the functionality of the Hootsuite dashboard.

  Steps to use Hootsuite app

Step 1- create an account with the Hootsuite and from the launch menu, click Apps Directory.

Step 2- Beside the app click install app, and add your stream to link to your all your social media

Step 3- Very simple, click finish and you will be done.

Tips for using the Hootsuite app

• · Hootsuite app is a third party and to use it you must may the developer.

• · You can only install the app after you have created account and verified it.

• · Once you have paid the annual outstanding fee, you will a whole year without any other cost.