Win With Social Media Hootsuite

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984 followers

Hey all,

Today I want to talk to you about Hootsuite. Maybe lots of you know what it is and maybe some of you don't. Basically it's an application that let's you do lots of cool things with your social media including saving you some time.

They have a basic free account that let's you hook up 3 of your social media accounts to it such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You get to choose the ones you want to use so if Pinterest or Google Plus are the ones you want directly hooked up then that's fine too.

If you choose to use Hootsuite it means that every time you first publish a blog post it gets automagically sent to your chosen 3 social media outlets which can be a real time saver. I am all for saving time but that's not the only reason I want to tell you about Hootsuite today.

You see folks, we are busy building our sites and Tweeting and Facebooking and Instagraming:

ALL OF OUR OWN STUFF

Our own blog posts, our own pages, our own affiliate links but we aren't engaging with the rest of the blogosphere in terms of connecting with others and conversating.

Kyle says that you should follow and like others in your niche and he's right. It will look more to outsiders like you are a real person engaging in conversations with others instead of a one-way spammer of your own links everywhere on social media.

Now I am only getting started with this stuff but I had a BLAST today using Hootsuite in a really fun way. In fact I didn't publish a post today but I spent lots of time learning how much of a hidden gem Hootsuite really is. Seeing as how you will have to spend much of your time on social media anyways promoting yourself and your business, why not make it interesting and fun for you? Why not possibly end up with more than you started with?

Okay okay you are probably dying for me to spill it right now and tell you what I found. Check out my dashboard screenshot at Hootsuite:

Have a look at the streams I am choosing to follow.

What are Streams?

Streams are basically content from all around the internet's social media tweets that you can bring right to your dashboard and follow along with. You simply type in the keywords you want and Hootsuite puts the streams you want right there in your dash for you and they are fresh and ready to go.

I chose 3 right now and they are the keywords "cloth diaper", "new followers", and "giveaways".

Have a good look at my screenshot.

What do you see? I have oodles of opportunities to follow new Twitter users which is great.

But have a look at the "cloth diaper" it's filled with giveaways because that's what mommy bloggers love to do.

Have a look at the "giveaways" stream. Of course it's filled with giveaways silly it's what I asked for lol!

So start turning those wheels in your head and think. If you live in the countries that the giveaways are available to, why not try to win something while you do your social media?

Here's how it works:

You see one of those tweets that you like for a diaper giveaway let's say.

You click on it and you can easily enter it.

But then they ALWAYS have bonus entries available for their giveaway if you use social media to promote it. You don't have to kill yourself to do it either. They will have a list of things you can easily do with one or two clicks that will give you 1, 3, or 5 bonus entries to the giveaway. And the best part is:

You will be adding to your social media timelines with Tweets, Facebook likes, Facebook page comments, following others, Pinning things on Pinterest. And the bottom line is that it takes mere minutes to do.

So here's an example:

I see a giveaway for a cloth diaper in my stream that I like so I click on it. Here's a screenshot of what their giveaway asks you to do:


It's all about using social media to promote their giveaway. I can have 1 entry in their contest or I can have 29 entries if I do what they ask with social media.

And the benefits are 3 fold: They get more exposure for their giveaway, you get more conversation going on social media so you look like a well-rounded person, and you just might win something while you do it!

I played with this application today and it was lots of fun. Because I live in Quebec most "brick and mortar" contests are closed to us which is a bummer. But blogger giveaways are perfectly fine as long as they are open to Canadians.

And a neat thing happened today after I played around and entered some of these contests. I pinned one of them on Pinterest and the next thing you know Kisko Freezies company was following me on Pinterest. I thought it was pretty neat that a company chose to follow me instead of the other way around.

So back to how spammy one-way conversations in social media look to outsiders. Here's what Hootsuite has to say on their own blog:

"A good rule of thumb for businesses who want to present a well-rounded and effective social media presence is to maintain an 80/20 ratio for posted content. 80% of your social media posts should be from or about other people, while just 20% should be from or about you. If all you’re doing is talking about yourself, fewer people will be interested. Therefore, finding and utilizing sources for great content to share and re-share is a real challenge. That’s where HootSuite can streamline the process."

Think about that:

80% of what you Tweet, Facebook Instagram or whatever should be about OTHER THINGS YOU LIKE

and only:

20% should be about you

Who knew?

Just wanted to end this by saying that I am not affiliated in any way with Hootsuite and should you decide to purchase something from them at some point in your life, it isn't because of the link I post to them here below. I get zip, zilch, nada. I just wanted to help out with your social media lives folks.

http://hootsuite.com

Take care Lovelies until next time,

P.S. If you try it out leave a comment and let me know what you think about it.

Thischick aka Lori

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Recent Comments

27

Thanks for sharing this. I am not good at the social media thing. I avoided it like the plague until a few months ago when I joined Facebook. I have it setup now because of WA but have no idea how do much of anything except like or share stuff when I find something that interests me. I think Hootsuite might be something that will help me with my business and help me become a little more familiar with social media.

Thanks Lori, needed some of those FuzziBunz clothe diapers!
Now I know where to get them! :)

You best be covering up your fuzzi bunz Chris...nobody wants to lose an eye :)

Thanks for the informative post. I have used Hootsuite for years and absolutely love it. What you receive for the price is well worth it in comparison to other platforms. Very affordable.

Thank you for this post, Lori. I have grown to be totally anti-social media because I am essentially a private guy and have never needed the social interactions.......(don't even have a FB account)....but at the same time, I know I can't be without it if I'm going to be an internet marketer. The subject of your post here seems to offer a way I can get into it and at the same time keep it "for business purpose." When the time comes, I may give you a shout for some guidance.
Thank you again.
Wayne (Gardenguy)

I hope you try it and start connecting socially. I don't like it much either but it's the way to go online these days. And if you ever need help just give me a shout. I'm always hanging about somewhere around WA,

Cheers,
Lori

thanks a lot very interesting!

You're welcome :)

This sounds a-mazing! I will give Hootsuite a whirl. Great info! Thank you!

I think you will really like it and find it very useful. The fact that you can customize what streams you want "to be in on" is amazing. Then you can pay your "social media dues" without being bored or breaking a sweat lol.

Good point about paying those dues. Thanks again!

Thanks Lori. I don't know a whole lot about social media yet, except its enormous potential. I have added the link to my favorites, however, and will definitely look at it soon! Thanks.
Ron

You're very welcome Ron. I hope you find lots of neat tricks for your social media and win some things too :)

Thanks so much! Time to learn and use Hootsuite!!

I know right?! I can't believe I only just got to the Hootsuite party too :)

Cool! Thanks Lori.
All this social media stuff is marveling to me. I wish I had a teenager around to educate me firsthand. LOL.

I have one who could help me with social media because she's in touch with the online world more so than I am. But she'd rather roll her eyes so far back in her head that she can see her own brain than help me.

I love her to bits but she finds it exasperating that I only found out there was a Google Plus like a week ago. What can I say? The rocks I have been hiding under are very nice lol :)

Too funny! I'm sure all teenagers look at us like we are dinasaurs. They don't have patience for that. Lol.

I will study this.

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