Day 90--Managing Time And Social Accounts With Hootsuite

I signed up for Hootsuite today. Hootsuite works with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace and Mixi. The purpose of Hootsuite is to manage multiple social accounts from  one dashboard. There is a free account and a Pro account for 5.99 a month. I signed up for the free account.

My Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are already synched. When I tweet, my message shows up on LinkedIn. When I post on my author Facebook page, the post is automatically published on Twitter. Sometimes, I don't like this automation. Some tweets are for Twitter only and some posts are best suited for Facebook. Why? Because I use Twitter for marketing and Facebook Fan Pages for connecting with readers who already know me.

I chose to sign up for Hootsuite because it logs me onto all my social accounts in one place. When I compose a message, I can click on which social accounts I'd like it to appear. I like the control. With the free account, I get to add 5 social accounts for free. I added my two Twitter accounts, my author fan page, LinkedIn and my personal Facebook page.

The second reason I chose Hootsuite is because I can schedule my tweets and posts to be sent later. I can choose any date and time for years into the future. Now, I'm not scheduling my tweets into 2014, but I do like scheduling them in advance. As a mom, I never know when I'm going to have time to post. If I'm up at midnight and I know I'll be busy the next day, I can write and schedule all my social posts on the spot. Then I can enjoy the following day off the computer while Hootsuite takes care of my marketing. It's the next best thing to cloning myself! 

I wrote previously about SocialBro, which is a Twitter-only app and offers completely different services than Hootsuite. However, one of their services works well with Hootsuite. SocialBro analyzes my Twitter community and generates for me a report called "Best Time to Tweet." Using this information, I can schedule my tweets accordingly on Hootsuite.

The unexpected benefit of Hootsuite is the free URL shrinker. When I add a link to my message, I click "shrink" and it's automatically shortened for me. Long URL's take up precious character spaces. When you only have 140 to work with, it's helpful to shrink those long URL's. Rather than sign up for a URL shortening service, Hootsuite takes of it for me. 

Complicated? Yes and no. The idea is that all of this simplifies my life. There is an initial learning curve, but then these services streamline my day and my time. Any service that frees me up to write is worth using. 

Having said all this, I don't believe in spamming or robo-tweeting. There is a fine line between pro-active marketing and spamming. I tweet and post to help others most of the time. For every ten tweets, one might include a link to purchase my book. My primary goal is exposure, not sales. I think my intentions are the difference.

To Do: Don't know how to clone yourself? Try Hootsuite. 

Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
author of The Pet Washer
a novel for children aged 8 and up