How to Use Hootsuite in 4 Minutes!

Hey there, I’m Maddy from the Hootsuite Academy  Team, and in the next few minutes, I am going to show you everything you need  to know to get started with Hootsuite. Buckle up. If you haven’t already you’re going to need to  connect some networks to use Hootsuite’s features.

And you can easily do that  from the Homepage at any time. The Homepage has everything  I need to start my day. With a cup of coffee, I can check how my  posts are doing, review my drafted content, and, when the caffeine kicks in,  start working on a brand-new post.

Or if I am not feeling particularly inspired, I can check what's trending on social and  have a post automatically drafted for me. I can Search topic ideas to see if there are  any trends I can hop on, or use OwlyWriter, our friendly caption-writing assistant, to  help me create a brand new post in seconds. You can find the rest of Hootsuite’s  powerful social tools in the nav bar.

Let's start with Create, Here I can build posts to share across  multiple networks or multiple posts to share across one network, saving  me time from moving between apps. For example, I have a post here & I want  to share variations of it on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I just select my networks, and then  cycle between them to adjust the copy and media included.

Here I can add media from  my computer, the media library or Canva. Now I have three unique posts,  for three different platforms. Before you publish, check out the  AI Hashtag suggestions.

I like to get OwlyWriter to spellcheck my work, and even  give some tips on how to make it stronger. Now that my post is good and ready, I can immediately  share my content on my selected networks or schedule it for later based on a recommended  time when my audience will most likely be on. Looks like this time is the winner.

Now, let's head to Plan, where you'll see your  released and scheduled content across all your networks, helping you see what’s ahead  and find gaps in your content calendar. I spot one here, so I'm gonna just  quickly drag and drop an existing post, but we can also create a new post right here. Change your calendar view, or filter by  things like post status.

It’s also worth playing around with your Plan settings to  find the setup that works best for you. Now that my content is planned, I’m  ready to check my inbox. Inbox shows you all of your private and public social  messages in one place - like, all of the messages… we’re talking Instagram DMs, public  comments, public story mentions, you name it.

I see I have some messages in my queue,  so I am going to reply now. And, oh, here’s a message that I am  not really sure how to answer, so I am going to assign it to one  of my colleagues to take care of. To keep track of any shifts in  my numbers, I use Analytics.

Here, you can stay up-to-date on  the changing numbers that impact your overall account performance, and  check out how your brand is doing on social. All of the best times to publish data  that I mentioned earlier are housed here, so I can check in on what’s working  best and adjust my strategy. And to prove my strategy is working, the report templates help me break down  the data so my leaders can understand it.

Finally, when it’s time to  advertise, I go to…. well, Ads Here is where I manage & publish  ad campaigns and I can boost old top-performing posts to get more eyeballs on them, or I can make ads from scratch in Create, like  you would do natively, but with the extra bonus of being directly connected too Hootsuite, so  I can use it’s advanced tools like Owlywriter. I’ll finish my ad and -BAM-  it’s already in your calendar, ready to be tracked in analytics  alongside your other content.

That’s it for now! If you need more help, check  out Hootsuite help centre, and swoop over to Hootsuite  Academy anytime to learn more.