Whether you’ve been managing social media for your business for a few weeks or for several years, you’ll know that unless you manage and schedule your content efficiently, the process can take up every waking moment and send productivity levels crashing through the floor.

There are several platforms and services that allow you to schedule content across multiple social media accounts, and a preferred utility for many is Hootsuite.

Using Pro plan for your business

Hootsuite offer Free, Pro and Enterprise plans (the latter of which is used by governments and corporations). The Free version of Hootsuite is great for personal use, so if you’re looking to boost your personal brand, increase your interactions and push your own content schedule, this plan can offer management of up to three different accounts.

Hootsuite Pro is where the tool really becomes powerful in business and where it can save you heaps of time across multiple Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress and Google+ accounts. It also means that, as long as your content is within the character limits for the specific platform, you can send out content simultaneously across several different platforms without manually replicating it.

Different tools

The Publisher tool on Hootsuite allows you to schedule all your content, as well as attaching images and files, adding a location and manipulating your targeting options and privacy settings. You can also save drafts of posts if you need to come back to them later.

As well as scheduling content, Hootsuite has an Assignments tool, which allows you to add team members and assign them different tasks to make sure that an interaction or comment from a follower is picked up and responded to by the most suitable, or capable team member.

This is particularly handy if you have a high level of interaction on your social media platforms, as they can all be managed within one interface.

Tip: Hootsuite charges for each additional user to the Pro plan, with up to 10 team members able to be added. To save money, you can share the login details amongst you, i.e. if there are four people working with your social media, start by adding just two users. You only need additional accounts for each person if you all need to be logged into Hootsuite simultaneously.

Another benefit to using Hootsuite is that it allows you to add apps from a selection of 130, including YouTube, Instagram and more. Whilst adding these apps won’t allow you to schedule content, it does allow you to carry out interactions such as liking, commenting and sharing as well as simply browsing these streams. Another handy one if your community management is a top priority.

Hootsuite also provides a useful Analytics tool, which provides insights, overviews and summaries of the impact your social media campaigns. You can also build custom reports for any specific platform within Hootsuite.

 Are you already using Hootsuite, or have you found another service that you prefer? Let us know all about it in the comments below.

By Olivia Rose French

Olivia is an expert writer, blogging specialist and Copywriter at Shake Social.

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