If you are looking to boost engagement, connect with your followers, and enhance the way that you post your content, it is time to get familiar with Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows you to connect to all of your networking platforms and manage postings, as well as schedule your postings and add them to your calendar. You can connect to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Once your social networks are connected, the possibilities are endless! I will be walking you through step-by-step how to get started on Hootsuite, as well as outlining some of the benefits of the platform’s many features.
Getting Connected to Networks and Streams
Start by clicking on your profile in the bottom left-hand corner and then click “connect social networks”. Once you are logged into any social networks that you would like to stay caught up on, we can head over to the dashboard.
Hootsuite will automatically choose a couple of “streams” for you to get you started on your dashboard. Your streams are customizable feeds, so you have the ability to add sections such as your own postings, mentions of you, or even a search section. Within your streams, you can reply to others, edit postings, and create new ones as well. Adding sections within your streams can increase engagement. ”Mentions” can be a great section to add to your streams because it allows you to respond to followers that may have questions or comments. Within the search section, you can search postings by followers or by keywords. You could also select a comment or mention within your stream and message them directly. You can also add more of your connected social networks by clicking “add board” on the left-hand side.
Scheduling Posts for Your Networks
Most importantly, you can add a scheduling section. This is where you can add postings with text, media, links, etc. to your network(s) and schedule a date and time to post them. This feature allows you to be proactive in your content, and view what will be posted throughout the month/week through the calendar on the left sidebar.
Click on “publisher” to see all of your scheduled posts. Scheduled postings can be filtered by social networks and can be viewed by week or month, allowing you to stay up to date on every platform.
Creating a Post to Schedule
Think you’re ready to schedule a post? Let’s begin! You can do this in several different ways, but we will go the simplest route first. On the left-hand side, you will click on the composer icon. This will give you a few options, one of them saying “post”.
You’ll want to select the networks you would like to post to. I chose LinkedIn and Facebook. Once your network pages are selected, you can add your content. This content can include text, links, and media. You have the option to upload your own media, or you can use any of the images that Hootsuite provides.
Once you have your content filled in on this page, you can click on the “schedule later” option. This is where you can manually set a date and time for your post. Alternatively, depending on the social networks that you select, Hootsuite will recommend times for you to post. Once you are set on a date and time, click “schedule”.
If you want to save this post for later, hover over “schedule” and select “save draft”. If you need to make any edits to your scheduled posts, you can do so in the publisher by going to the date you selected and clicking “edit”.
Benefits
Hootsuite has many beneficial features to take advantage of. You can view streams of content within multiple networks, put together posts for these networks, and schedule the postings in advance to be proactive. There is major potential within this platform to excel in any business. I hope that this was beneficial as a beginner on the platform, and I hope that you have a good idea of how to get started.