As social media has continued to grow at explosive rates over the past several years, more and more brands, webmasters and businesses have sought to use this as an opportunity to leverage their presences. In the world of traditional advertising, it often cost an arm and a leg to get the word out about a promotion or product, but social media is virtually free for those who know how to utilize its potential. As a result of these developments, massive changes in how we monitor data have emerged, with some platforms being designed solely to monitor social media performance across multiple networks. One of these tools is named HootSuite and its ability to increase your brand’s performance is phenomenal. In the following article, we will discuss why you should be using HootSuite and the basic elements of getting started.

Why HootSuite Works

There is a chronic need for brands to represent themselves on social media. Not only is this necessary to keep your social clout intact, but it is also a great way to build credibility and authority with select search engines. Whenever you are pinging users with relevant and interesting content, your performance with that audience is sure to increase. Where this becomes an issue is that you cannot realistically create customized content for all of the social media networks in existence. HootSuite allows users to test and try various approaches throughout multiple platforms to see which ones work best and which social media profiles are driving the most traffic to your website or cause.

Obtaining HootSuite

The creation of a HootSuite account takes no more than one minute, but services will then need to be configured. You can monitor up to five social media networks for free or purchase a plan that allows up to 100 networks to be monitored for just $9 per month. Once you have handled this, you will need to proceed to the creation of streams, of segregated elements of content that will display on your HootSuite dashboard. After this step of separating your various feeds, all that is left to do is learn how to use and analyse the data collected by HootSuite. Many social network insights (such as Facebook Insights) can be integrated directly into your HootSuite dashboard. You can still collect data via HootSuite independently of that, however.

Mobile Functionality

Not only does HootSuite monitor social media metrics from traditional and mobile devices alike, but users of the platform can access all of their analytics and streams from their mobile devices. The HootSuite app is available for iOS, Android and Windows devices and is a free download. This will give you the ability to monitor and analyze data while on the go. You can use spare time or otherwise less than productive occasions to determine the best social media strategy going forward – no more excuses to be lazy while on the road!

Conclusion

The power that HootSuite offers social media managers is too vast to summarize in one sitting, but the basics of what it entails and its ease of use make it a desirable utility for any webmaster. If you do not have the time to juggle a dozen social media platforms in order to be constantly pinging users with information, then HootSuite can be a great way to determine which ones are most worth your time.