Welcome to Instant Social Media Marketing with HootSuite. This book is an explanatory guide to HootSuite and its features. This book will help marketers to manage their multiple social media profiles and create reports to track client engagement.
HootSuite is a social media management tool that helps you to manage multiple social networks, and offers direct support for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, and WordPress from a single dashboard. Its Apps feature allows you to integrate with Gmail, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, Instagram, Evernote, SlideShare, Vimeo, Storify, StumbleUpon, reddit, among others. We will learn several possible options to create a HootSuite account.
A marketer needs to have an account on any of the previously-stated social media platforms.
- Go to http://www.hootsuite.com/ and sign up from your Facebook account or by entering your e-mail address, full name, and desired password.
- You will find three plans: Free, Pro, and Enterprise. For the purpose of this example, we will select Pro.
- Select from an Annual or Monthly payment option and provide payment details to create the account.
Go to http://www.hootsuite.com/ and you will see the Sign Up section to the right that allows you to instantly create a HootSuite account using your Twitter or Facebook login. Alternatively, you can also use your full name and an e-mail address to create an account.
It is advisable to sign up on HootSuite using the latter option as it provides an the advantage of creating a completely new password for managing your account. This works as an additional security to all linked social profiles that you are planning to link with this tool. You can refer to the following screenshot for reference:
HootSuite provides plans and features that suit individuals, SMEs, and large-scale organizations, depending upon their social activities. The available plans can be seen at http://signup.hootsuite.com/plans-cc/. HootSuite's FREE plan allows you to connect up to five social profiles and generate basic analytics reports, whereas a PRO account allows you to connect to 50 social profiles, Google Analytics and Facebook Insight integration, detailed reports, and an additional user. You also get a 30-day free trial with your PRO plan.
You can select between Monthly or Annual payment options and can get a 10 percent discount while opting for the latter method. You can make the payment through your credit card or PayPal account.