Hootsuite: social media and analytics

Have you ever wondered how to centralize the management of all your social networks in one tool? Well, today is your lucky day. Introducing Hootsuite:
Let's start at the beginningwhat is Hootsuite? The most purist definition says that it is a tool designed to facilitate the management of profiles in RRSS. It is used to centralize the administration of different accounts, easy to use and with a fairly intuitive interface.
Once the tool has been introduced, let's get to the interesting part, Hootsuite allows the user different options for managing and analyzing our social media. It is constantly evolving, but currently allows you to integrate the management of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Let's take it easy, the main menu shows the following options:

► ColumnsThis option refers to the main panel that appears as soon as you access the tool. We can configure them as we wish. Different networks, metrics and display options.

► Inbox: Inbox, we will find all the direct messages sent to us in the different networks we have integrated.

► Publisher: this is one of the most interesting parts. It allows us to schedule publications in all networks, manage and publish content in all media at the same time and export our scheduled content through a CSV to Google Calendar. In addition, we have the option to directly promote publications on Facebook, the tool itself advises you on the type of campaign you should select.

► AnáliticaAnother of Hootsuite's strongholds: how does our community behave? What opinion do users have of our company? How do they interact with our brand? All this condensed into a series of predefined reports that the tool provides us with for each of the social networks. We also have the option of creating customized reports, i.e. selecting the metrics, networks and display options that we want to appear in our report. However, this option is only available for some contracting options.

► AssignmentsThis option allows us to manage our work team. We can assign tasks and messages to different team members.

► Apps DirectoryIf all this is not enough, Hootsuite allows you to implement different complementary tools that can help you manage your networks.

Content editor: schedule your publications

The preferred choice of Community Managers! As we have introduced, managing all your networks has never been so easy.
Within this option there are three different sections:
► PlannerFind all scheduled content with the arrows at the top to scroll between weeks. Check out all the content for each day with the condensed view or keep an eye on every detail with the expanded view. A count of scheduled messages is displayed at the top right of each calendar day. Simple and intuitive.
Click on all posts in the sidebar or filter by weekly view. Your private social accounts will appear under Networks. If you are a member of multiple organizations, you can select the one you are interested in from the drop-down list in the upper right corner.
We can also manage our scheduled content, which appears in different colors to reflect the status of the publication.

Turquoise  : programmed

Green : successfully published

Red was not shipped.

Gray  : draft programmed or approval expired

Orange  pending approval (approvals are specific to Enterprise plans)

Within this tab we can also compose new messages in the scheduler.

► Content.In this section we dive into the content of our planner, we can perform the following tasks:

1. Display of programmed content
2. Edit scheduled content
3. Edit a publication scheduled to be sent now
4. Delete a scheduled publication
5. Delete multiple scheduled publications
6. Export scheduled messages or scheduled messages already published

► PromoteHootsuite: The newest option of the tool, currently only available for Facebook, allows you to promote your posts in a very simple way. Hootsuite advises you on the most suitable campaign type for your post. However, it is still far behind in terms of functionality compared to Facebook's ad manager.

Analytics: KPI's and Metrics

Have you already defined your goals? Do you know how far you want to go in each of the networks? Then you are ready to dive into the vast world of Hootsuite analytics.
The tool offers you a multitude of customized metrics for each of the networks. Just focus on what you are interested in, otherwise this section can become too tedious.
Like the content editor, the Analytica part of Hootsuite stands out for the simplicity of its interface.
Once in the analytics section, a tab called reports automatically opens. By default, the tool itself provides you with predefined analyses of all the social networks you have integrated.What can we do with these reports? Well, once we open one of our reports, the user options are to modify the metrics we want to display in the panel, according to the setting of our objectives, we will set the main KPIs. On the other hand, we can also modify the display of our metrics at the top right of the interface.
In addition, at the top right of the interface, we can modify both the analysis period and the comparative period that we want to include in our report. We can also filter within each metric a series of conditions that we want the users who have interacted with our brand to meet. This option is very interesting, since a retweet from a user with 10 followers is not the same as a retweet from a user with 10,000 followers.
It should be noted that both the available metrics and the display options vary depending on the subscription plan we have contracted. Thus, a predefined Facebook report could look as follows.

Imagine now that you are the CM of a large company and you manage all their social accounts. When it comes to reporting monthly results, it can be a bit tedious for the client to have to consult a lot of files; What if we could integrate all our networks into a single report? The answer is clear; customized reports.
With these reports you can integrate all the metrics you want, all the available visualization options and, most importantly, all your social media in a combined report that is very practical when it comes to reporting. Great, isn't it? Well now comes the downside, this option is only available for the "business" plan.
A customized report would look like this:

What, you like Hootsuite, don't you? A multitude of features, an extremely simple interface and great usability. Undoubtedly, one of the essential tools for every Community Manager, but, how much does this tool cost? I'm sorry to tell you that once the 30-day trial period is over, you can prepare to get your wallet out.

As you can see, Hootsuite is not a cheap option, but it is certainly a very useful tool if you are big enough to be able to monetize a fairly significant investment.