Update November 2021 – Due to massive price increases, I no longer use HootSuite Pro as my main social media scheduler – opting for Later.com instead.
If you want to scale your business, it’s imperative that you do something that can save you time.
After all, regardless of how hard we work, we only have 24 hours in a day to get things done.
In the past, this meant hiring employees to take on projects for us so we could allocate our resources elsewhere. However, for those of us who work online, we’ve also been granted some amazing tools that can save us hours of time each day – at a much cheaper price as well.
HootSuite Pro is one of those tools.
If you do any social media marketing at all (which you should be if you’re running any sort of business) then read on – the way you manage your social profiles may be about to change forever. Here is my ultimate review for HootSuite Pro.
What Is HootSuite Used For?
So what the heck is HootSuite anyway?
HootSuite is a social media management platform that grants you the ability to manage all of your social profiles in one place. This means you no longer have to hop around from site to site – you can manage and monitor all of your networks on one convenient dashboard.
In the picture above, I have tabs for my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram account. In the Twitter tab I have a stream with my Twitter feed, mentions, scheduled posts, and a stream for a search. There are more stream options available if you want them, and you can organize them any which way, so this is nice.
Even better though is that you can take certain actions (such as scheduling a post) and send it to all of your social networks at one time. This is huge if you’ve been previously doing this manually, because it’s a lot easier to type something out once and press a button than it is to have to copy and paste it to 5 different profiles.
The great thing about this is HootSuite’s autoschedule feature, which will space your posts out throughout the day, assuring you’ll reach people in all of the various time zones. This makes it easy to create all of the day’s post at one time and schedule them throughout the day with just a few clicks. You can configure HootSuite’s scheduler to fit specific settings, so it can work really well to get your posts seen by as many people as possible.
…And this is just in the free version, which on its own is a fantastic product.
However, is it worth upgrading to HootSuite Pro? Are all of the extra features worth it? Let’s talk a bit about the benefits of HootSuite Pro, and then you can decide for yourself. Because like anything, it will be great for some people and pointless for others.
What Makes HootSuite Pro Different?
More Profiles
First of all, HootSuite Pro practically lifts the limit on the number of profiles you’re able to manage under one account. With the free version of HootSuite, you’re limited to managing only 3 profiles – maybe enough for some people, but for those looking to maintain at least a minimal social presence on all of the major social networks, it won’t be enough. And if you’re managing social media for clients, you can forget about the free version of HootSuite altogether.
HootSuite Pro allows you to manage up to 50 different social profiles – far more than most people will ever need.
RSS Feeds
The free version of HootSuite allows you to pull from up to 2 RSS feeds, which isn’t bad if you’re just looking to pull your own content, but if you’re a blogger for example you’re going to wantย to share other people’s content as well.
Now look, over-automating your social posting is an incredibly stupid idea.ย ย However, as a blogger, there are certain people whose content I always read and share anyway, so the task of sharing can be done automatically by setting up HootSuite Pro to pull from that website’s RSS feed – and notify the author that you’ve shared their post!
Of course if you’re going to do this you’ll want to make sure you still go back and read the article you’ve shared. You should also only ever pull from RSS feeds from exceptional websites. However, automating this task is a good way to save a bit of time and help strengthen connections with other marketers in your niche.
Advanced Analytics
I have always believed that one of the key differentiators between good marketers and great marketers is the fact that great marketers are able to take the data at their disposal, and use it to improve their marketing campaigns.
While HootSuite Pro does not give limitless access to advanced analytics reports on its own, you are granted more access than you had previously with the free version of HootSuite – which contains unlimited access to basic reports.
Add A Team Member
If your company has an employee that handles all of the social media management, HootSuite Pro allows you to add a team member to your dashboard to carry out tasks. This is a great option for many small businesses as it prevents you from having to share sensitive information, like account passwords or giving access to a page directly.
Bulk Message Uploading
If you have a large amount of messages you want to schedule, HootSuite Pro allows you to do this easily with their bulk message tool. This is done by uploading a spreadsheet of messages and dates – allowing you to schedule an entire week’s or even an entire month’s worth of posts at one time!
This has been a lifesaver for me personally as I had previously uploaded one day’s worth of posts when I woke up in the morning. However, occasionally I’d either forget or wake up later than expected, meaning there was a long period of time without any posts at all. As someone who posts on Facebook between 5 and 10x a day, this was aย problem. The bulk message uploader has made this no longer an issue.
Should You Buy HootSuite Pro?
Whether or not you buy HootSuite Pro can really be answered by asking yourself one simple question:
Will you take advantage of all of the exclusive features HootSuite Pro offers?
If so, than you should absolutely upgrade as soon as possible. HootSuite really does pay for itself, because the amount of time it will save you over the course of a week, month, or a year is huge. Again, we all only have 24 hours in a day to get things done, but we can practically create time for ourselves by using great tools that carry out tasks for us – which we can then put back into growing our businesses.
Based on the features available, I’d say HootSuite Pro is a great tool for:
- Bloggers who have been or want toย harness the power of networking.
- Small business owners with an employee that handles social media and wants additional security.
- Anybody who manages social media for other businesses.
- Any entrepreneur who utilizes more than 3 social networks. (HootSuite currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest)
- Anyone who schedules lots of posts throughout the week (for the bulk messaging tool alone!)
If this sounds like you, do yourself a favor and check out HootSuite Pro by clicking here. At the time of writing, HootSuite Pro is $49 a month if you choose to be billed annually. I promise, the time it saves you will be well worth the cost!
Looking forward to hearing how you like it, and if you have any questions about HootSuite Pro, help us all out and leave a comment down below. No doubt others will be wondering the exact same thing!
– James McAllister
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