Why We Don’t Use HootSuite
October 19, 2012
We here at Social Marketing Solutions don’t use HootSuite and some people have wondered why that is. We’d like to share our reasons on why we don’t incorporate it into our social media and why we think you shouldn’t either.
- Posts show up via HootSuite which shows your audience you didn’t take the time to check your social networking pages and update them on your own.
- It leaves room for error. There’s a lot of information on social media networks anyway but using HootSuite to check them all instead of individually checking each one may cause you to miss something and that something could be extremely important!
- You’re relying on an outside app to monitor your engagement on pages but that means you’re losing the personal connections.
- You’re forced to use the ow.ly url shorteners. As well as broadcasting to everyone that you are using Hootsuite (which, to be fair, happens with any non-custom url shortener) you can only track any click throughs that have been added from within Hootsuite. This is a real problem, as if like many, you use other services.
- Data won’t appear in Facebook insights. When posting new content to Facebook via Hootsuite, those posts do not track the, likes, shares, and comments that you received in Facebook’s Insights analytical data for that post. The likes, comments and share do exist when viewing from the front end Wall and Feeds, but the “credit” for getting them is not recorded in any way by Insights.
These are just a few of the reasons we prefer to not use HootSuite and instead give our personalized attention to each social media platform we use. Personalized attention is important in today’s marketing world and people want to know that you’re taking the time listen to them.
Comments
2 Responses to “Why We Don’t Use HootSuite”
Got something to say?
Author
- Kelly Jones
Social Media Manager
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts but as a proud Owl, i must chime in with a few friendly opinions of my own.
Keep in mind, i use HootSuite to manage dozens of social profiles and monitor dozens of conversations so my experience is a bit unique.
1) Attribution: Simply because HootSuite appears in the post attribution doesn’t mean you care less about social media. Instead, it shows that you are on-top-of social and use a tool to make sure you are capturing all the conversations.
Keep in mind, Twitter.com no longer shows attribution and all sorts of power-users, successful brands and beloved institutions’ posts show up as “via HootSuite” and this does not effect the compellingness of their messages.
The thought of being “trapped” inside of Facebook or logging in and out of Twitter.com accounts is enough to make me holler! #yikes My job would be simply impossible as would as social media managers.
2) Error: I monitor HootSuite in many languages and many misspellings so i make sure to miss nothing even if was addressed incorrectly. Plus i can route requests to appropriate departments while not “stepping on each other’s toes”. Plus, i monitor mentions in G+, Instagram, Flickr, Youtube and many more so i can reply quickly and without changing tabs. Way more efficient than using native platforms.
3) Personal Connections: Not sure how using HootSuite impacts personal connections. Does replying from Facebook.com or Twitter.com do something to make your tweets less sincere, interesting or timely? Sure doesn’t in my case and we engage like champions.
4) URL shorteners: We encourage use of our in-house URL shortener notably Ow.ly because we know its a great tool which measure social interaction more accurately than others. However, you are not forced to use it – simply paste in the URL from whichever tool you prefer to use. No big deal. Keep in mind, the fluffy numbers delivered by some are measuring shared instances of your short URLs, not your engagement.
5) Facebook Insights: HootSuite features a lovely integration with Insights and adds all stats to the mix. As a Preferred Developer Partner, we work closely with Facebook to ensure port parity and data exchange. Perhaps there was something amiss but i see the Insights frequently and enjoy the display and data.
Overall, i find that using a social media management tool (in my case HootSuite), allows me to reply to many more messages, surface more conversations, share at better times, and get to know our audience far better than using the native platforms.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts – we’re listening and here to help. Hope you’ll come along with us after all.
@daveohoots
Hi Dave,
Thanks so much for your comment. We greatly appreciate it! You make several excellent points and we realize HootSuite can be useful for some things but for our business we think that personally logging in does make a difference. Thank you for stopping by.
Respectfully,
Social Marketing Solutions, LLC