Tweetdeck may be the one that has just sold to Twitter for $40 million
- but there are a couple of reasons why you should consider rival HootSuite. And not just to be different.
Key advantages of using HootSuite for Twitter
Built-in .owly link shortener which provides in-app click analytics
Useful for: tracking the success of content and real-time analytics.
Compared to Tweetdeck: sure you can include link-shorteners on Tweetdeck, but the analytics is less immediate.
Team Collaboration - access for multiple people to the same account
Useful for: when you have a handful of people contributing to one account
Tweetdeck: of course if you give everyone the same log-in you can do this on Tweetdeck, HootSuite just gives you a bit more control over multi-person accounts.
Access to different social media accounts: Facebook, Linked-In etc
Useful for: Those multiplatform accounts, when you want to get content out across different platforms quickly.
Tweetdeck: does this too, but one upside with HootSuite is that your .owly account will measure clicks across all platforms and aggregrate useful info from all over, good if you need to present a report about the reach of your content to clients.
Support for many accounts
Useful for: managing 5+ Twitter accounts - probably if you're in social media for work, rather than just pleasure. Downside - you have to pay for this.
Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck is good at this too.
Scheduled Updates
Useful for: lots of reasons, but especially if you want to optimise content because there are certain times of the day when content does better than others.
Tweetdeck - not yet available.
Conclusion
- if you're a social media professional then this is a handy way of managing multiple accounts and the easy-access social analytics is a real asset. We also love the scheduled tweets functionality.
If you have cash to spend on Twitter, then the HootSuite professional package is really useful.
More on HootSuite Features
[thanks @tammielovesyou for the HootSuite pep talk]
Into fitness and health gadgets? Check out our new site, Connected Health
