If you’re using Hootsuite for your not-for-profit, there are some features that often get overlooked but can help you manage your social media accounts and campaigns better.
Keeping track of your not-for-profit's social media accounts can get tricky and if you want to save time trying to manage it all, then a good third-party tool like Hootsuite could be the key to success.
Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management tools out there and comes with some handy features that can help you monitor, engage and report on your organisation's social media activity, but some of them can get overlooked.
Here are five ways to make the most of Hootsuite’s features and get more out of your social media strategy.
1) Use geo-located Twitter searches
If you’re running an event, tapping into a global hashtag or simply want to see what people are tweeting about near you, geo-located searches can be a powerful tool. To use it from within Hootsuite follow these steps:
- Click Add Stream
- Make sure ‘Twitter’ is selected and choose the ‘Search’ tab
- Select your Twitter profile
- Enter your search term (e.g. “charities”)
- Click the crosshairs in the bottom right to add your current location
- Click Add Stream
If you need to, you can manually change the longitude, latitude and radius of the search to suite your needs.
3) Post photos to Twitter natively
According to Twitter’s own research, tweets sent with photos average a 35% boost in retweets. If you’re a Hootsuite Pro user, you can use Hootsuite to post images natively to Twitter instead of publishing through their usual ow.ly channel.
Go to your Twitter profile settings in Hootsuite and look for the ‘Image Uploads.’
3) Change your auto-schedule frequency
Hootsuite’s AutoSchedule tool is a handy way to make sure your updates get posted at next best time. If you use it a lot, you can space out your tweets by choosing the times you’d like to post, how often and what days of the week. Find the adjustments under in the settings menu under ‘AutoSchedule’
4) Remove URLS from Facebook posts with link previews
If you use the Desktop version of Hootsuite, when you add a link to a Facebook account (Profile or Page), it will create a ‘link preview.’ You can then delete the link to make your post look cleaner. In this example, we've used the Hootlet for Chrome that lets you share content directly from the link you want to share.
5) Access resources from the Hootsuite blog and resources
Ever visited the Hootsuite blog? You’ll find a treasure-trove of useful resources such as white-papers on developing social media strategies, webinars and regular commentary on the social media scene.
The materials you’ll find there are mostly free. You may need to enter in your contact details to download some of the resources but they represent a lot of value when you’re looking at establishing your social media presence.
Head over to the Hootsuite blog at blog.hootsuite.com
Hootsuite Pro for not-for-profits
While the free Hootsuite account gives you a great feature set, the Pro version adds a lot of additional benefits for not-for-profits looking to manage their social media presence.
Thankfully, Hootsuite’s commitment to supporting not-for-profits means they’re offering a 20% discount to eligible not-for-profit organisations through Connecting Up’s Donations and Discounts program.
To find out more, read our blog post “Hootsuite offers 20% discount to Australian Not-for-profits”