Quantcast
10 September 2012 / 175 ReTweets

6 Good Reasons to Upgrade to HootSuite Pro

By
Buffer
try-hootsuite-pro-risk-free-30-day-trial

Six good reasons to upgrade to HootSuite Pro. At $9.99 a month and a risk-free 30-day trial, what have you got to lose?

For many professional social media users, social media dashboards are a personal matter. Sometimes we have no choice and we use whatever dashboard our company has invested in for our business, but sometimes we might use something else for our “private” use. For more and more enterprises implementing standard dashboards, this is sometimes becoming a social media monitoring with added engagement solution such as Radian6 and Sysomos or a “true” dashboard product built for engagement such as Vitrue or Argyle Social. But as I mentioned in my Top Twitter Clients post, HootSuite is currently the social media dashboard used most for tweeting by agencies. In fact, more people use HootSuite to tweet from than tweeting directly from Twitter.com!

I will be honest in saying that I use a variety of Twitter tools to tweet, as I outlined in my Twitter Tools and Apps I Use Everyday post. Right now, for the purpose of purely tweeting, I am using a combination of HootSuite, SproutSocial, Buffer, and Triberr, with an occasional tweet from Commun.it, Pinterest, or even Foursquare or Empire Avenue. However, out of all of these apps, when I think of a social media dashboard that I use most broadly both inside and outside of Twitter, my tool of choice is HootSuite, and that is why I immediately upgraded to HootSuite Pro when it was first introduced.

Based on the statistics, you’re probably already using the free version of HootSuite and have a good idea of what it provides. Monitoring up to five of your social media profiles at once and being able to schedule messages in advance enables you to manage your efforts such that you wouldn’t even attempt social media marketing without it. But as you expand your efforts, it’s possible that HootSuite Pro will be the tool you can’t live without. Go through these six reasons to help decide if you are ready to upgrade to HootSuite Pro – you never know what you might be missing out on for a mere $9.99 a month!

1. You Can Manage Unlimited Social Profiles. The first and most obvious reason to upgrade is quantity. With the free version you’ve learned the benefits of accessing five social profiles from one dashboard, letting you simultaneously update your personal Facebook as well as fan page, your personal and branded Twitter account, as well as your personal LinkedIn profile. But the year is 2012, and with the emergence of Google Plus you’re probably managing more than 5 social profiles. HootSuite Pro gives you the ability to manage unlimited social profiles, which means you can now add your LinkedIn Company Page, Google Plus Brand Page, and even Instagram stream to engage from one single location. Actually, there are some pretty cool things you can do once you can manage unlimited social profiles on HootSuite Pro, such as:

  • Monitor multiple LinkedIn Groups more easily to find engagement opportunities
  • Easily share your MailChimp campaigns on your multiple social profiles
  • Engage with your Instagram commenters from your computer instead of your smart phone!

Every LinkedIn Group counts as a profile, so if you are a member of 50 LinkedIn Groups like me, you can see why you will want to upgrade once you see how much more efficient you can spend your time managing them through HootSuite!

hootsuite-pro-manage-linkedin-groups

Managing my “Social Media Strategies for Business” LinkedIn Group from HootSuite.

2. You Can Manage Unlimited RSS Feeds. While many question whether or not you should automate your tweets with automatic RSS-fed posts, in strategic moderation it could add value to your followers, especially if they are trusted sources where you are tweeting most of their posts anyway. While the free version let’s you add two RSS feeds, with HootSuite Pro, you get unlimited RSS Feeds, so you never have to worry about adding too many. If you are looking to rev up your content curation efforts through partial RSS automation, this is nice add-on to the other benefits you have of being a Pro user.

hootsuite-pro-managing-multiple-rss-feeds

Managing multiple RSS feeds for @MSocialBusiness.

3. Two Users Can Manage Your Dashboard, with the Ability to Add More. As you expand your social media marketing efforts, the time you – and your organization – will spend managing conversations will only increase. As a natural extension of this, it is only logical that at a certain point of time there will be a need for multiple people to begin managing your account, even if it is simply the ability to assign a task to someone else seamlessly through a social media dashboard. With HootSuite Pro you are able to create as well as assign posts for more than one user and thus have multiple people managing multiple accounts. This is a must as your organization, and your organization’s role in social media, gets larger.

hootsuite-pro-upgrade-multiple-users

Easily manage a large social media team with HootSuite Pro.

4. Facebook Insights & Google Analytics are Integrated into Your Dashboard. While HootSuite is merely pulling in the same data that you can see separately on Facebook and Google, the ability to see this information right inside of your social media dashboard is of extreme value if nothing more than to help you make the most efficient use of time – and provide you immediate feedback which you can then utilize in your social media postings.

hootsuite-pro-upgrade-faceook-insights-analytics

An example of Facebook Insights integrated into your HootSuite dashboard.

5. You Can Segment Streams by Influence. While there is debate as to the usefulness of Influence Scores such as Klout, the ability to segment streams by Klout scores will seen by some as being a useful way to pinpoint those users that are at least more active in social media – and thus might have a larger social media reach than others.  You can set up your tweets to only display for those users above a certain score, which allows you to potentially pinpoint and engage with these “influencers” if you so choose.

hoostuite-pro-upgrade-segment-klout-score-influence

An example of only showing @Mentions of those who have a 60 or higher Klout score.

6. HootSuite University is Available – With HootSuite Pro, you have the added option of HootSuite University for a monthly fee. In addition to helping you learn how to navigate through HootSuite and use the tool more effectively, you can progress to sections that offer general strategy on using social media in your business and learn advanced tactics and strategies to get the greatest impact with your social media efforts. There’s even a certification program – as well as directory – available for those who want to become “certified” social media professionals.

hootsuite-pro-upgrade-hootsuite-university

HootSuite University.

In a nutshell, HootSuite Pro provides the added features you need to expand your marketing reach through social media and be able to manage that reach in a time efficient manner.

What do you use for your social media dashboard?

Have you upgraded to Pro? Any other features you like that I missed? Do you prefer a different social media dashboard? Let’s start a discussion for all to learn by!

Buffer

Related Posts

If you enjoyed this article, sign up for my newsletter and get FREE chapters from Neal's Books!

27 responses to “6 Good Reasons to Upgrade to HootSuite Pro”

Leave a Reply

Windmills Marketing, 14271 Jeffrey Rd., Suite 177, Irvine, CA 92620 | (888) 541-3429 | info@windmillnetworking.com