This past December and January we ran two “Introduction to Twitter” sessions for individuals at our nonprofit member agencies who were interested in learning more about Twitter, the free social media tool. The sessions were very well received and we were able to share some of Volunteer Victoria’s own story about how we have been successful with our social media campaign – in particular with our use of Twitter – since we began it last year.
The workshops were for beginners so we thought it best to start with simply talking about Twitter itself and why and how people use it. Not surprisingly though, at both sessions, we couldn’t help but mention that at Volunteer Victoria we actually use Hootsuite (another free web-based program) to run our Twitter activity. We actually hardly ever login to our Twitter account at all, yet we still are very active on Twitter.
Huh?
To someone that is new to Twitter or other social media tools this statement can be confusing. You might ask, “Why would you use one program to run another?”, or “How can you use Twitter without even logging in to it?” To help explain why and how this happens, I turn to Wikipedia, which tells us: “Twitter’s application programming interface for sending and receiving text messages by other applications often eclipses direct use of Twitter.”
Here’s what that really means in plain language: Twitter lets hundreds of other programs (sometimes called “clients”, of which Hootsuite is one) talk to it. And Twitter talks back. Hootsuite allows you to do everything Twitter does, and then gives you the opportunity to do more. Hootsuite offers extra tools which make everything a bit easier for the Twitter user.
Essentially, if Hootsuite and Twitter were both second-graders, Hootsuite would have this to say to Twitter: “Everything you can do, I can do better.”
But how? Here are just three examples of things you can do in Hootsuite that you can’t do in Twitter:
- Stats: Wouldn’t you like to know just how many times people have clicked on the links you’ve inserted in your tweets? Hootsuite graphs link click activity over the last seven day period, and tells you exactly how many times your tweet links have been clicked each day as well as how many times your tweet links have been clicked in total.
- Built-in URL shortener: To save space in your tweets it’s best to use a URL shortener for your links. Unlike Twitter, Hootsuite has a built-in URL shortener, which saves you from having to use yet another website to shorten, copy and paste links into your tweets in Twitter.
- Scheduled tweets: What if you can’t (or don’t want to) log in to Twitter every day? Hootsuite allows you to schedule your tweets so they go out at predetermined times in the future, a feat that is not possible to accomplish in Twitter. Schedule one or two tweets every day for a week if you’d like to. Hootsuite gives you more control of when your message goes out to your followers.
These are just three of the ways we have used Hootsuite – one of the top Twitter clients used worldwide – to efficiently manage our Twitter activities, and we’ve come to appreciate its capabilities.
Want to know more? Sign up for our “Using Hootsuite to Manage Twitter” workshop, this coming February 17 from 9am to 11am in Victoria. We’ll show you - hands-on in a computer lab – exactly how you can use Hootsuite to better manage your account activities on Twitter.
