One of the biggest frustrations small business owners have with social media is trying to manage it and their company operations at the same time. This is particularly true of solopreneurs. I feel your pain, because I have the same challenge! It’s not easy balancing client work with my own social media marketing. But I have found a tool that has helped me manage my time more effectively, and is one that I recommend to my clients as well. It’s Hootsuite.
Social Media Management Tool
I use Hootsuite to schedule posts to my social media platforms ahead of time, so I don’t have to manually go to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ each time to share content. You can schedule up to a year in advance, although I don’t recommend doing that.
Hootsuite also lets me monitor the activity from those social media platforms. Instead of going to Twitter.com, for instance, I can go to Hootsuite and create multiple streams of activity on Twitter. For instance, one is the home feed, which shows what everyone is posting. Another includes all the posts that mention my Twitter username. I can also set up feeds to monitor my Twitter lists and keywords related to my business, like SEO or social media.
Hootsuite offers both free and paid versions of its service. I use the pro version, which is only $5.99 a month, and includes unlimited social platforms, so I can post to the big four social platforms and several of my LinkedIn groups. The free version limits you to five social platforms.
Hootsuite provides a basic analytics report in its free version, while the pro version also incorporates Google Analytics and Facebook insights.
Since I have been a satisfied Hootsuite user for the last several years, I recently decided to become an affiliate. That means, if you would like to take a test drive and try out their pro version for free for 30 days, and then become a paid user, I will earn a small commission on the sale.
While I recommend using a third-party tool to post to sites like Facebook, you shouldn’t overuse it. Schedule one or two posts per day maximum through Hootsuite, and then do any other posts manually so you have a better chance of engaging with your followers.
