Social Media Primer, pt 4: HootSuite

Today we wrap up the social media primer series. If you’ve missed the previous blogs in the series, I covered the background and why in week 1 and Twitter in week 2. After a break for #ArchiTalks, a recap on Instagram, and a vacation – we returned last week to take a look at some of the behind-the-scenes curation (Feedly). This week we’ll wrap up the series with how to take that curation and schedule it into your different platforms.

As I mentioned in the Twitter primer, putting out consistent, quality content is important. And not all of it should be coming from you. This means you need the ability to schedule out content as well as keep an eye on what others are saying about specific subjects. This is where a scheduler like HootSuite comes into play. I use the free version of HootSuite. As with Feedly, there are a variety of other options available to you – but this primer is more about the “what” than the “who”. So let’s dive into what you should be attempting to accomplish.

Scheduling with HootSuite

Let’s get the “you” stuff out of the way. I mentioned in the Twitter and Feedly primers about scheduling content. HootSuite lets you do that in a variety of ways, but the point is simply to do it. You can either set information to AutoSchedule or set it to a specific time. Most of my content goes to a specific time based on ever-changing SEO feedback about keywords, but it trends towards leadership and high-level brain stuff in the morning and design and easier to understand stuff in the afternoon as your brain becomes mush for the day. Either way, it’s really easy to do with their schedule feature.

I also mentioned in the Feedly primer that I save articles that appear interesting for future reading and potential sharing. This is how/where those articles go if they appear to have value. Every person’s idea of value will be different, but the gist is: if you wouldn’t recommend it to a friend, it doesn’t go in your scheduled content to share.

The important piece here is to do what’s most efficient for you. I try to get most of my scheduling done Sunday night so that I’m set for the week. I still pay attention to what’s being said through the week to stay up to date, but the effort level is less because I know I’m already putting out good content on regular intervals. HOWEVER…being efficient doesn’t mean scheduling out a month in advance. The only content I even consider scheduling out that far are the inspirational quotes that I curate and share every day. You can’t go wrong with those. But as quickly as world events happen and markets change, you’re much safer being within 2-5 days of information. Heaven forbid if something were to happen, you have a better recall of information in the queue for 2 days than for 28. No one wants to be the butt of a joke due to a poorly timed tweet, so use scheduling with purpose and keep an eye on it.

Watching with HootSuite

This piece becomes very important if you want to stay connected with peers or keep tabs on your brand or competitors (and if you’re doing good business, you want to do those things). HootSuite lets you have 10 “streams” or tabs of search or subject-specific recall. This means on the Twitter side, you can watch a list, mentions, your tweets, and SEVEN other things all without having to go to Twitter and type them all individually into the search bar. For example, I pay attention to “#AREsketches”, “www.L-2-Design” (because people will invariably share your link and not your handle), “#AIAchat OR #YAFchat”, #ArchiTalks, the company I work for (trying to get them on the Twitter bus), etc. You can like, rely, retweet, etc…all within that stream on HootSuite.

This is the biggest piece that helps me stay up to date on the current events within different platforms and helps me interact (next topic). This is also, especially for Twitter, a MAJOR reason to set up lists. I rarely if ever look at my home feed of all the people I follow. But you can bet I pay attention (within HootSuite) to my private list I’ve created of people I’ve deemed worth paying attention to. Even more of a reason to make sure you’re putting out good content. Otherwise…what’s the point?

Interacting with Hootsuite

If you’ve set up the streams properly, that means you can quickly and easily see who’s finding value in your content as well as who’s providing their own great content that is important to you. Share, like, and support those people. We all grow together by sharing knowledge, so if you seem something interesting – let that person know!

This wraps up the Social Media primer series. What did you think? Is there any other piece of the digital world you’d like to hear more about? Let me know! In the meantime, happy scheduling and sharing and interacting, architweeps!