HootSuite - The professional Twitter client

HootSuite is a web-based tool that offers lots of goodies for power Twitter users. Let's take a look at some of the cool things you can do with HootSuite.

About Hootsuite

Q. What is HootSuite?Top

A.

HootSuite is The professional Twitter client! If you manage multiple Twtitter accounts or share your Twittering duties with friends or co-workers, HootSuite's for you. If you're interested in tracking how many people click the links you tweet out, HootSuite can help you. If you want to pre-schedule your messages or feed your blog to Twitter, we've got you covered.

Q. Who built it?Top

A.

HootSuite was built by Invoke.

Q. What does it cost?Top

A.

HootSuite is currently free. We are currently investigating pricing plans and exciting new features for paid accounts.

Q. Okay, but how do I use it?Top

A.

Start by creating an account and adding your Twitter profiles. Once you've confirmed your account, you'll be able to log in and see your Dashboard:

HootSuite automatically adds a "Welcome" tab for you with some example columns of content pulled from Twitter. You'll also see a tab for each Twitter profile you've added to HootSuite.

In each tab, you'll find columns, which pull informationg from Twitter. You can use HootSuite's tabs and columns to track conversations happening in the Twittersphere. Use the "Tweet bar" across the top of the page to send out a message from one (or all!) of your accounts, or schedule a tweet to be sent later.

HootSuite also has advanced features for tracking brands, shortening URLs with ow.ly, tracking clickthrough stats, sending your RSS feeds to Twitter, integrating with Ping.fm, grouping your friends, and much more. Read on to learn more about specific features below!

Q. I can't add my Twitter profile when I sign up. What's wrong?Top

A.

Be sure you use your Twitter username, not your email address.

Q. I didn't receive a confirmation email! What do I do?Top

A.

First, check your spam folder -- some email clients may be a bit over-zealous with their spam filtering. Next, be sure to add HootSuite.com to your email client's "safe senders" list.

Also try visiting http://hootsuite.com/resend-email-confirm and entering your email address.

If you still haven't received your confirmation email after a half hour and after trying the steps above, feel free to contact us via Twitter or using our Contact page

Q. How do I delete my account?Top

A.

We hate to see you fly away! To request that your account be deleted, click on the Settings button in the lower left corner of your dashboard. Then click on the "Cancel my Account" link. Be sure to tell us why you've decided not to use HootSuite.

Using the Dashboard

Q. I just logged in for the first time. What's going on?Top

A.

Welcome to HootSuite! You'll notice that each tab has the name of one of your Twitter accounts.

Each tab holds columns. To start with, each tab has the following columns:

• your "Home" feed (tweets from those you follow)
• your "Mentions" feed (any tweets with @yourusername)
• your DM inbox
• your pending tweets (tweets you've scheduled for the future)

You can add additional columns to track groups of your friends, or to monitor keyword searches (e.g. to see who's talking about your brand).

Q. How can I add a tab?Top

A.

If you want to add another tab to organize your columns, just click the [+] Add Tab button.

Give your tab a memorable name (e.g. "Tech news" or "NFL tweets") and decide how often you'd like that tab to refresh. You can add up to 20 tabs. If you have more tabs than fit on your screen, you'll see the additional tabs in the "More" dropdown at the right-hand side of the page:

Q. How do I add columns to tabs?Top

A.

Click the "Add Column" button and choose which type of feed you'd like to add.

Q. What do all these column options do?Top

A.

The "Profile Feed" options allow you to add things like your Home feed, your Mentions feed, your DM Inbox or Outbox, your Pending tweets, Sent tweets, and Favourite tweets. Just choose a feed type and select one of your Twitter profiles.

Keyword Tracking lets you monitor people talking about your brand. Enter your brand name, then hit "Add." You can add up to three different brand names / keywords to track in a single column.

Search columns let you create customized Twitter searches. Searching for twitter search, for example, would show you all tweets containing the words "twitter" and "search." You can also perform searches like "from:username" or @username to see public tweets to or from a user. Click "More examples" on the Add Column pop-up to see more examples.

Group columns let you organize specific Twitter users into a single column. For example, if I wanted to see all tweets from my friends, I could create a group called "Friends" and add "username1" "username2" etc. to that group. All tweets from those group members will show up in the column. Note that you can currently only add up to 20 Twitter users to a single group. Also note that groups are currently limited to users with public profiles.

Q. How can I change how often the columns refresh?Top

A.

Click the "Edit Tab" button in the upper left.

Q. Can I re-order tabs?Top

A.

Yeah! Just drag and drop 'em to change your layout.

Q. I want to change the tab that I see when I first log in. How can I do this?Top

A.

It's easy. Just drag and drop the tab you want into the left-most position. When you log in, you'll see the left-most tab first.

Q. Can I re-order columns?Top

A.

Yep. Grab a column by the green title bar and drag it around to move it.

Q. How can I fit more columns on my screen?Top

A.

See the slider in the upper-right? That controls how wide your columns are in the HootSuite dashboard.

Slide it left and right to adjust your column widths. Also note that if you resize your window, the columns will resize to fill the available space.

Q. How can I edit a column?Top

A.

Click the Edit Column button (pencil icon) at the top of the column to edit it.

Q. How do I create a group?Top

A.

Create a new column and click "Groups." Then start typing your friends' Twitter usernames (without the @ symbol).

Q. How do I add people to a Group column?Top

A.

It's simple. You can add a user to a group column by grabbing their avatar and dragging and dropping it into the group.

You can also click on a username to see that user's information in a pop-up. In this pop-up, you can also add them to any of your existing group columns.

Q. How do I refresh a column or tab?Top

A.

To refresh a column, click the green refresh button at the top.

To refresh the whole tab, click the chrome refresh button at the upper-left of the tab.

Talking to the Twitterverse

Q. How do I send tweets from HootSuite?Top

A.

See the text field at the top of the page?

Start typing in there, then select one or more Twitter profiles to send the tweet from. Easy!

Q. Hey, I can't tweet anymore! My tweet bar went away. How do I get it back?Top

A.

You may have accidentally hidden the tweet bar. You should see a thin grey strip at the top of the page with a small arrow in it.

Click that to expand the tweet bar again. If you want it out of the way (to read more tweets!), click the tab again to hide it.

Q. How do I schedule tweets for later?Top

A.

Click the "Send Later" icon and choose the date and time you'd like to send your tweet.

Be sure you've got your time zone set correctly! Check the Settings page if you need to double-check it.

Once you schedule your tweet, it will appear in the "Pending" column for that Twitter profile.

Q. How do I view upcoming tweets that I have scheduled?Top

A.

If you haven't already done so, add a "Pending" column to your tab:

Q. I scheduled a tweet for later, but now I want to change it. How can I do that?Top

A.

No problem! Find your Pending Tweets tab, and find the tweet you'd like to change. Then click the "Edit" button.

Q. A scheduled tweet didn't get sent! What now?Top

A.

Sometimes Twitter's not working as expected, or there was a problem sending out your tweet. You should see any failed tweets in your "Pending Tweets" column, along with a reason explaining what went wrong (if we know).

Simply click "re-schedule" on one of these tweets to re-schedule it and try again.

Q. How do I send an @reply or DM to someone through HootSuite? How do I Re-Tweet?Top

A.

When you mouse over someone's tweet in a search column, a group column, or your Mentions/Home feeds, you'll see small buttons appear in the upper-right corner of the tweet.

These buttons let you reply to the tweet, DM that user, re-tweet the message, or mark it as a favorite.

Also, if you click on a username, you'll see a pop-up window with their information. There are buttons to DM, Reply, Follow/Unfollow, or Add to Group.

Q. How can I see someone's follower/following count? How do I follow someone?Top

A.

Just click their username!

You can easily Follow or Unfollow someone using the buttons in their user info pop-up.

Q. I want to see someone's bio, Twitter profile page, and website. How do I do that.Top

A.

Click on their username and you'll see more information about them.

Q. How can I see someone's recent tweets?Top

A.

Click on the user's name, then click the "View more tweets" link in the pop-up.

The results will appear in a separate Search window.

Q. This dude's a spammer! How do I report him?Top

A.

Click on their username, then click the "report spammer" button.

This will add the text "dm spam @username is a spammer!" If you send this tweet, it will send a DM to @spam (Twitter's spam-evaluating account) reporting the user.

Q. Can I mark tweets as Favourites?Top

A.

Certainly. Just mouse over the tweet you like and click the "Favourite" star.

Q. How can I find new people to follow?Top

A.

Try creating a search column that performs a search on things you're interested in. Find people talking about the things you like and follow them. Find out who those people are talking to, and start following those people as well.

Searching

Q. I use search.twitter.com all the time. Does HootSuite have anything similar?Top

A.

Totally. If you'll be performing a search over and over, you probably want to set it up as a column. Click "Add column," click the "Search" option, and type in your search terms.

If you just need a quick one-off search, type your search term into the Search box in the upper-right. The results can even be saved as a column if you like.

Q. How can I track people talking about my brands?Top

A.

Set up a search column or a keyword column.

Click "Add Column" and set your parameters, then add the column and watch the tweets roll in.

Q. How can I perform more advanced searches?Top

A.

See this page for more tips on how to perform advances Twitter searches.

Q. I want to embed an auto-updating Twitter feed search on my blog! How do I do that?Top

A.

Any search column can be embedded on your website. Click the [< >] embed button at the top of the search column. You can change the title of the embeddable column and modify its height/width. You can also set how often you'd like the column to refresh.

Once you've set it up, click "Grab Code" to generate the HTML for the embeddable column.

Q. Why can't I find someone when i use search?Top

A.

Suspended accounts or accounts set to private do not appear in searches. Only the last two weeks of updates appear in searches.

Although all newly created public accounts should show up within 24 hours of sign-up, it may take longer. Twitter also may filter search results to retain information quality.

Adding links and using ow.ly

Q. How do I add links to my tweets?Top

A.

Very easily! Copy the link and paste it into the box right below the main text area.

Click the "shrink it" button. This will create a shortened ow.ly link and automatically insert it into your tweet.

Q. What's this ow.ly thing?Top

A.

Ow.ly is a URL shortener on steroids. You can use it to shorten long URLs, but it does so much more.

When you send out an ow.ly link through HootSuite, we'll track how many people click on that link, and we'll show you stats within HootSuite!

Also, on every ow.ly link you send, you'll notice the ow.ly social bar. This bar allows your readers to easily re-tweet, share, and vote on your links. This means the links you tweet are much more shareable. The ow.ly social bar expands the viral potential of all the links you send through Twitter!

Q. How can I add multiple links in one tweet? Top

A.

Easy. Once you've shrunk one URL (link to 1.5.1) as above, you can add another. Repeat as many times as you like (or until you've reached the 140-character limit!)

Q. If someone retweets my ow.ly link, do I see all the clicks?Top

A.

Yes. Each ow.ly link is tied to a particular HootSuite user and Twitter account. If you use an ow.ly link, you will see all clicks on that link, no matter how many times it has been retweeted. If you get retweeted again and again, sit back and watch your clickthrough rates soar.

Q. Can I view ow.ly link stats outside of HootSuite?Top

A.

Not yet. Currently, the only way you can view ow.ly link stats is within HootSuite, but we've got some exciting things planned for ow.ly. Stay tuned!

Q. What are the benefits of the ow.ly social bar?Top

A.

We've packed the ow.ly socal bar with a lot of fantastic features that come along with many benefits, including:

• Sharing functionality is the primary feature.
• It is slim and non-obtrusive.
• It will allow you to bookmark links that you have retweeted. (coming soon)
• It will drastically increase the amount of clicks on every submitted link thanks to sticky and versatile sharing functionality.
• Ow.ly links won't harm SEO as they're designed to allow Google and other search engine spiders access to the content without stealing any Google juice.
• This allows for increased brand recognition via brand/logo recognition that links to your website/twitter account.
• Statistics are also accessible via API where you can also monitor the velocity and dissemination of shared content. (coming soon)
• Readers can vote on shared content and give you their valuable yay or nay assessment.
• One click opt-out. If you don't happen to like it? No a problem. One click and anyone can opt-out of ever seeing an Ow.ly social bar again.

Q. Is there an ow.ly API?Top

A.

Owls are currently hard at work on our API. Want to be the first to know when a developer's API is released? Click here to get on the list.

Stats

Q. What does this "stats" button do?Top

A.

It is the portal to your ow.ly statistics world!

Here you can choose to view a "Summary" of your profile's statistics, or "Individual Tweet" statistics.

The "Summary Statistics" will show you:

• Total clicks (for the past 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or from within a certain date range)
• Daily clicks
• Clicks by region (overall)
• Top referrers (overall)
• Most popular tweets

The "Individual Statistics" will show you:

• The total clicks on an individual ow.ly link you tweeted out

Q. Why don't I see any stats on my tweets?Top

A.

Because statistics measure clicks on ow.ly links, you can only see stats on the tweets that have ow.ly links in them.

Also note that you need to create and send an ow.ly link through HootSuite in order for us to know which Twitter account it belongs to (and therefore whether to count it on your "Summary Stats" page).

Q. What does "direct click" mean in my stats? Top

A.

A "referrer" tells you which website someone was on when they clicked your link. You'll see clicks from HootSuite, Twitter.com, and other sites. But you'll probably also see a lot of "direct clicks."

A "direct click" means that the reader went straight to that ow.ly link -- either by typing it into their browser's address bar, or by clicking on the link in a Twitter application such as Tweetie or TweetDeck.

RSS feeds -- feed your blog(s) to Twitter

Q. How can I send my blog updates to Twitter?Top

A.

Click the "Settings" button on the lower left corner of the browser.

Then click the RSS/Atom tab.

Then click on the "Add New Feed" button on the right hand side of the browser

Paste the RSS link into the "Feed URL" box.

Q. What do the "Update Frequency" options mean?Top

A.

Often times there are numerous daily updates to an RSS feed. We want to you tell us how we should check back for new content on the RSS feed.

If we check your RSS feed and find more than one post to send, you can tell us how many would you like us to push to Twitter each time we check it. We can only publish a maximum of 5 posts per cycle.

Q. What does the "Prepend to Tweets" field do?Top

A.

Tell us what you want the RSS tweets to start with, i.e. "New Blog Post:" or "News update:". This is an easy way to show your readers which tweets came from which RSS sources.

Q. How to I pause a feed?Top

A.

Just click the "Pause" button on the feed. You'll notice that the feed changes to say that it's paused. Click the Play button to un-pause the feed.

Q. What happens if I send a feed to multiple Twitter profiles?Top

A.

It's not a problem. Each post will be sent to both Twitter profiles, and each will have its own unique ow.ly link, so stats can be tracked individually for each Twitter profile.

Q. I added a new blog post but it's not showing up in Twitter. What do I do?Top

A.

Check the 'Update Frequency' in your RSS/Atom settings.

This is how often HootSuite will look for updates.

If your update frequency is set to 'every 2 hours' and you add a new blog post right after HootSuite has checked your RSS feed, then it will not be picked up for another two hours.

Ping.fm integration

Q. I want to update multiple social networks at once. How do I do that?Top

A.

Sign up for Ping.fm of course! You can do that here.

Then you want to hook up all your social networks to Ping.fm. (Don't worry about adding your Twitter account to Ping.fm - HootSuite will handle your Twitter updates.)

In HootSuite, as an admin, click on "Settings." Click the "Ping.fm" tab and insert your application key. Don't know it? Click the "Application key" link:

Then chose which Twitter profiles should send data to Ping.fm and magic presto! You're set up!

Q. What does the "Group" option do?Top

A.

The "Group" option allows you to create a subset of social network accounts that you can post to at the same time. For example you can create a group called "status" and have that group only send updates to Facebook and Twitter.

First thing to do is create one! Go to "Posting Groups" under the "Serivces/Tools" heading on Your Dashboard

Choose your method of posting then name the group

Q. Why aren't RSS-generated tweets sent to Ping.fm?Top

A.

Any RSS feeds you've set up in HootSuite will not be sent to Ping.fm. This helps us avoid issues where a Ping.fm-enabled blog is linked via RSS to HootSuite, which sends to Ping.fm, which sends back to HootSuite... eventually destroying the internet.

Using the Hootlet

Q. Hootlet? What's that?Top

A.

The Hootlet is your secret weapon for sharing internet content over Twitter. Want to share a link? No need to even click away from the page. Hit the Hootlet button in your browser's tool bar and a new window will pop up with a shortened ow.ly link and text from the site's <title> tag.

All that's left to do is add any additional text and choose which profile you want the tweet sent out from. Sharing on the internet can be that easy.

Q. How do I start using it?Top

A.

On the HootSuite login page, find the handsome looking owl directly beneith the "Login" button and the title "Get the HootSuite Hootlet".

You can find the same Hootlet owl if you are logged into HootSuite at the bottom right cover of your browser window. All you have to do is drag the owl to your bookmark toolbar and drop it in.

If you are using IE, you'll need to right-click on the Hootlet icon and save it to your favorites.

If you aren't sure how to do this, click "watch demo" to see a video tutorial.

Q. I can't drag the Hootlet to my toolbar!Top

A.

You can also right click on the owl and select "bookmark this link". In the pop up box you can then choose where to store the Hootlet in your bookmark toolbar.

Again, if you are unsure of how to do this, make sure to click "watch demo" to view the tutorial.

Adding Twitter profiles

Q. How can I add more Twitter profiles?Top

A.

To add more Twitter profiles to your account, click on "Settings," then click the "Profiles" tab. In the upper-right, you'll see an "Add Profile" button.

Enter your Twitter credentials. If you've added editors to your HootSuite account, you can give them access to post on this Twitter account via HootSuite by clicking their names.

Q. How do I remove Twitter profiles?Top

A.

Click on "Settings," then click the "Profiles" tab. You'll see a red X next to each Twitter profile you've set up in HootSuite. Click this X to remove a Twitter profile from HootSuite (NOTE: This will NOT delete the account from Twitter.)

Q. I changed my Twitter password or username, and now HootSuite can't send tweets. What do I do?Top

A.

Click on "Settings," then click the "Profiles" tab. Click on the "Edit" link next to the appropriate Twitter profile and update your login information.

Q. I changed my Twitter profile image, but it hasn't updated in HootSuite. How do I update it?Top

A.

Click on "Settings," then click the "Profiles" tab. Then click the "Sync Profile Avatars" button. This will check Twitter for your latest profile images.

Q. What if one of my editors wants to manage his personal Twitter profile through HootSuite?Top

A.

Currently, only admin users can add Twitter profiles to HootSuite. If one of your editors wants to add their personal Twitter profile, you can simply add their profile as an admin, then give only that editor access to that Twitter profile.

We are considering changing this in future versions of HootSuite.

Managing users

Q. How do I add other people to my account?Top

A.

From the HootSuite main page, click the "Settings" button. Then click the "Users" tab. This will take you to a User Management page which will show you all the people currently allowed to access your account.

To add other people to your account click the "Add User" button on the top right hand of the tab.

Fill in the email address and full name of the person you wish to add to your account. You can choose to send the welcome email to the new user if you want, or you can have it sent to your own email address and send this to your editors at your leisure. Editors can change their passwords after they log in for the first time.

Q. How do I allow an editor to access one of my Twitter profiles, but not the other?Top

A.

Once you have added an editor to your account click the "profiles" tab in Settings. Here you can select which Twitter profiles an editor can have access to. To do this, click the "edit" link to the right of the Twitter profiles you wish your editor to have access to.

Under the heading "Editors" click the box next to the editor(s) name in order to grant access to that particular Twitter profile.

Repeat process within other profiles.

Q. How do I remove an editor's access to a Twitter profile?Top

A.

Go into the "profiles" tab within Settings and click the "edit" link of the Twitter profile you would like to restrict access to. Under the heading "Editors", click the box beside the person whose access you would like to remove so that the check mark is removed. Then save changes.

Q. How do I remove someone's HootSuite access completely?Top

A.

Go to the "users" tab within Settings to see everyone who has access to your account. Find the editor you would like to remove and click the red X to the right of their name. When asked if you are sure you would like to remove this user, click 'yes'. Unless, of course, you are not sure. Then click no.

Q. When I try to add my friend, HootSuite says they already have an account. What's the deal? Top

A.

Your friend probably already has a HootSuite account, and they are an Admin. Currently, a user can only be an Admin or an Editor, so when you try to add the user as an Editor, you're not able to do so.

How can you solve this? One option is to have your friend cancel their existing HootSuite account, then (as an Admin), you can add any Twitter profiles they had on their account. Once your friend's account has been deleted, you can then add them as an editor and give them access to the appropriate Twitter profiles (see above).