Small Business Strategies

How to run a successful online business

Ten Tips & Tricks to Get the Most Out of HootSuite

f you have multiple Twitter accounts, want to schedule your tweets, want to see stats on your tweets, and want it all in a new user interface, then try Hootsuite. I used to use TweetDeck but have moved to Hootsuite as it offers better stats and integration with Facebook. Here are 10 tips to get the most out of this desktop twitter client.

1. How to add multiple Twitter accounts

To add multiple Twitter accounts (ie profiles), click Settings and then the Social Networks tab.

Enter your Twitter credentials and it will display in a new tab (usually to the right).

2. How to allow an Editor (e.g. friend) to access a Twitter profile?

Once you have added an editor to your account, click the Social Networks tab in Settings. Select the Twitter profiles an editor can have access to.

Click the box next to the editor(s) name in order to grant access to the Twitter profile.

3. How to monitor my brands?

Set up a search column or a keyword column.

Click Add Column and enter the keywords you want to track. This column is displayed to the right of the screen.

4. How to add tabs?

To add a tab, click the [+] Add Tab button next to your current tabs .

Name it and decide how often you’d like that tab to refresh.

Hootsuite gives you 20 tabs – should be enough!.

5.. How to add columns to tabs?

Click Add Column and choose which type of feed you’d like to add.

6. How to configure column options?

The Profile Feed lets you add your Home feed, Mentions feed, Pending tweets, Sent tweets, and Favorite tweets.

7. How to use Keyword Tracking

Enter the keyword and then hit Add.

Hootsuite lets you create customized Twitter searches and perform searches like “from:username” or @username

8. How to change refresh frequency?

Click Edit Tab and select the frequency.

The default is 30 min.

9. How to change the user interface layout

You can drag and drop the tabs to change thee layout.You can also drag/drop the columns in each profile.10 How to create a List?

Create a new column and click Lists.

Enter an existing list or create a new one.

Here I’ve added a LinkedIn list. This let’s me see all the people I have ‘tagged’ as having useful links/info regarding LinkedIn.

Do you know any other good Hootsuite tricks? If you do, please add them below.

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Should Gmail be the Hub of Your Company's Social Media Strategy?

Gmail-universe

Louis Gray makes a case for putting Gmail as the heart of your Social Media Strategy. Does it add up? Well, Yes and No.
Let’s start with why use a Google account?
1. Access to Google Reader
2. Create a link blog using Google Reader
3. Use Feedburner to distribute your blog through RSS 
4. Tracking statistics via Google Analytics
For most of us, this makes sense and we’re probably doing it already. 
However, Louis argument that: 
‘By using Gmail, companies can centralize all social media-related communication, make it available to third-party vendors who may be participating, and easily integrate with other Google tools.
Needs a little re-think. 
Why?
Well, later on he concedes that Gmail can't solve every account. You still need a Facebook ID to start a fan page, and a Yahoo! ID to use Flickr. 
Ok, so it’s not perfect 
But if Gmail can accelerate your social media strategy, then take what you can and run with it. 
Here’s Louis plan of attack
1. Secure an official company Gmail ID (my italics)
2. Use it as the hub of you social networking activity. 
3. Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, SlideShare accounts should use that same e-mail
4. Setup new connection notifications and direct messages through Gmail and stats from SocialToo 
Now, I go along with this.
Indeed, there are other smart ways to integrate social media activities into Google.
These two from Digital Inspiration show you how to monitor your website/blog with Google Docs and how to track changes automatically
Even better is this Google Docs trick to find Your Most Popular Web Pages on Twitter 
Ok. Back to Louis.
However, others have pointed out that the following suggestion may violate Gmail’s terms of service. 
 ‘Whether you structure the e-mail address as companyinc@gmail.com or companycorp@gmail.com doesn't matter, so long as it's clearly official, and the "From" data is a company name, not that of an individual.’
Daniel Pritchett sees it as a bad plan. ‘Shared accounts tend to violate TOS.’ While John Wang hopes that Google Wave will make this all easier. “It looks more and more like what SharePoint should've been but never became.”
Perception is (almost) everything 
My concern is a little different.
If you surrender or retire your corporate email address (hard to see that getting signed off!) you also run the risk of how customers, especially new ones, and potential clients will react to your Gmail account. 
It might be an ‘official’ Gmail account but the question in many minds will be: ‘Why can’t they get a real one?’