Specifications

HootSuite is a social media management system that allows clients to collaboratively execute campaigns and support customers across multiple social networks.

Cost

HootSuite Pro starts at $9.99 per month - HootSuite Enterprise at $1,000 per month. A free version is also available.

User

Lizzie Roscoe, social media manager at McDonald's Corporation, has been using HootSuite since mid-February.

How do you use it?

It's our engagement platform for our social media channels. On the corporate team, we primarily use Twitter. Each member of our social media posting team logs in with their own credentials every morning on their desktops, laptops, or mobile devices.

We use HootSuite to reply to people who are tweeting us, send direct messages, and for all our proactive tweets. We enter messages into HootSuite and it sends them out. You can also schedule tweets ahead of time and assign certain tweets to certain team members.

Though everyone logs in with their own credentials, we have a shared set of streams so we're all looking at the same social media dashboard. Because we can all see the activity of everyone on the team, we're not double posting or responding to the same person more than once. It's amazing for organizing social content.

Each person can also individualize streams, depending on their expertise or focus. It's easy to switch in and out of streams and filter them by subject matter, newsworthiness, and so on. It's a clean dashboard, visually appealing, easy to navigate, and easy to add and delete streams as needed.

If there's a problem we call or email our account rep. They've been extremely helpful and very quick to respond – usually within minutes, and it's never been more than a half hour. Our rep helps us rectify the issue or connects us with the appropriate person, depending on the issue.

Sometimes we get a proactive email or call from HootSuite if it notices an issue.

How does it serve your business needs?

It's an efficient organization platform that allows our team to execute our social media plan collaboratively in one dashboard. We can do everything we need in Twitter and Facebook from HootSuite.

McDonald's has been the official restaurant sponsor of the Olympic Games since 1976. We just finished all our global Olympic activations, and HootSuite was so valuable in helping us organize and engage as a team. With the time difference between London and Oak Brook, IL (our head office), HootSuite made it easy for us to track who posted content and when.

Since some team members were in London, they were able to snap pictures of action at the games and upload them through the HootSuite mobile app to our Twitter page in real time, so there was no detriment due to the time difference.

We also wanted messages to be seen at peak periods in the US and UK. HootSuite allowed us to schedule tweets to go out at times we thought were most relevant for both audiences. We were also able to schedule proactive tweets we wanted to send out to audiences around the world. It was great that no one had to be up in the middle of the night in the US to do that.

How does it integrate with your existing infrastructure from and IT standpoint?

We access it online or through the mobile app.

What are the main benefits?

The ability to look at multiple streams at the same time and toggle between Twitter and Facebook pages on one dashboard.

Being able to upload photos in real time.

When you want to include a link with a message, there's an auto function that shrinks your URLs right HootSuite.

What are the main drawbacks?

Honestly, any time we've found an opportunity it seems HootSuite is already developing it. In some cases, we've been a beta test partner for new functionalities.

What would you like to see improved/added?

We'd like to see integration of the engagement platform with enhanced analytics, and I think HootSuite is working on it. Analytics are available now, so we can run reports on data such as effectiveness and the reach of our links, but as it evolves and we get stronger analytics it's just going to make the tool better.

Competitors

Salesforce's Buddy Media, which offers social enterprise software, and Radian 6.

Spreadfast: offers an enterprise-class social media management system.

Sprinklr: provides a suite of social media management tools.