a how-to guide to hootsuite · here at fig, we use hootsuite to help manage a number of social...

www.fig.agency

B2B Marketing & Communications

A How-To Guide to Hootsuite


Has your working landscape changed recently? Is your preferred channel of communication no longer open to you? Have you found yourself having to take a more proactive role in communicating with your client base?

If you’re looking at becoming more active over social media, then it might be worth using a platform which you can use remotely to monitor, schedule and communicate on, and which can house all of your social media channels in one place.

There are a number of useful platforms that will do this for you. Here at FIG, we use Hootsuite to help manage a number of social accounts - our own and our clients’ – and if you’re looking for an easy to use system, we really recommend it.

Here’s our guide to getting started, and a basic round up of how to use it to help you communicate your key messages, and to communicate with your customer base.

The system itself can do much more than we have detailed here, so if you would like to know more about it, just get in touch, but this should serve as a good start.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at 01457 857111 or at [email protected]

Please note, this guide assumes you have already set up a Hootsuite account and have chosen the paid for platform. Whilst

the majority of the guide will lead you through using the free version, please be aware that you cannot upload multiple posts

on the free version, they must all be uploaded manually. Thank you.


1. Log InLog in to your Hootsuite account at: https://hootsuite.com/logged-out

2. Getting StartedFirstly, you need to sync your Hootsuite account up with the social accounts you want to manage. Hootsuite

can be paired up with any Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube or Pinterest account, providing you

have the log in details for them.

To sync up your account, you need to click on your avatar, which is to the right of the ‘Upgrade my plan’ button

at the top right-hand corner.

From here, click on the ‘+Private Network’ button.


This will take you to the following form, where you’ll be required to input the log in details of your chosen

accounts.

Once you have added your accounts,

click on to Streams to get them set up.

Click on the + button which is situated at the top on the grey bar.

This will open up a stream for you which you can rename, and then add the different account activity

you want to see.


Dashboard

Your main dashboard is where you view all your different social accounts and see various activities, such as the

content that is scheduled to go out, the content that has gone out previously and any activity (comments,

likes and messages) that your page has received.

B2B Marketing & CommunicationsB2B Marketing & Communications

3. Streams

Your dashboard is where you set up your Streams. The three most popular Streams to add are Facebook,

Twitter and LinkedIn (which we will detail in this guide), but you can also add Instagram, YouTube and

Pinterest too.

3.1 Facebook

The Facebook stream can be split into 8 x columns.

i) Timeline – this is all of your past posts (that were

scheduled in via Hootsuite – any posts that were added

directly by the Facebook page itself won’t show up

here). Each post highlights the number of likes,

comments and shares it has received, and any

comments it has will be shown at the bottom.

ii) My Posts – the same as Timeline.

iii) Mentions – if a post has mentioned your page

directly in its own post, this will be displayed here. You

can like, share or comment on that post directly from

this column. Simply click on the like icon to like it, click

on the share icon to share or comment and post in the comment box.

iv) Messages – you will have to scroll to the right to see this column (the scrollbar is at the bottom of the

page). This shows you all the direct messages that you have received. You can reply directly to these from this

column.

v) Unpublished – this column displays any posts that were unpublished for whatever reason.

vi) Activity - this column displays any comments that your posts have received in real-time. Whilst the

comments do show up in your timeline column, if someone was to comment on a post you’d made a few days

ago, you wouldn’t see that in the Timeline column as the new content would have moved it down. The activity

column however, would have this new comment up at the top so you don’t miss it. It also shows you if you

have commented on the post too to help you keep on top of your feedback.

vii) Pages – you can add the page activity of any page you follow should you wish to view it (ie, linked

accounts or competitors etc)

viii) Scheduled – these are the upcoming posts that are scheduled to be sent out. You can see the content

and the time and date that they will be released.


3.2 Twitter

Your Twitter dashboard can display the following information:

i) Home – this is your timeline, It shows all of your

tweets and all of the people you follow’s tweets in

real-time.

ii) Mentions – whenever anyone @s you in a post, it will

appear here. You can favourite, retweet or reply to the

post directly from this column.

iii) Retweets – this column shows all of your tweets that

have been RTd by other twitter users.

iv) Followers – this shows you the latest post from your

newest followers.

v) Lists – if you have set up lists on your twitter account,

you can add and view them here.

vi) Likes – this shows you all the tweets that your

account has liked.

vii) My Tweets – this column shows the posts you’ve sent out (via Hootsuite) in chronological order. You can

see how many people have favourited or retweeted on the bottom of each post.

viii) Search – you can set up searches for specific hashtags or search terms that you want to monitor

regularly. It’s worth having a quick scroll on these on a daily basis to just to see what conversations are out

there, and to monitor what people are saying about your business or industry.

ix) Scheduled – all of your upcoming posts will appear in this column, in chronological order.

3.3 LinkedIn

There are just two columns on the LinkedIn dashboard:

i) Company Updates – this is what has been posted out from your company age (via Hootsuite). It shows you

how many views the post has had, along with how many likes and if you have received any comments, they will

be shown at the bottom (you need to click on View Comment to reveal them)..

ii) Scheduled – this column shows the upcoming content that you have scheduled in.


4. Scheduling Content

There are two ways that you can upload content to Hootsuite.

1. Manually We normally only upload manual posts if we need to send something out urgently, or in addition to what has

already been scheduled.

Step 1: Click on the New Post button…

Step 2: Click on the bar which says Select a Social Network and choose which account(s) you want to send a

post from…

Step 3: Compose your text in the text box, then add imagery. You can either upload an image from your files,

or you can browse through any company images that already uploaded.


Step 4: Click on the Post Now button…

2. Schedule via CSV

Add your content onto the csv file in the following format:

Column 1; DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM (the last minute should be either a 5 or a 0. You can’t schedule content to be

posted at 9.33am for example, it would have to be 9.30 or 9.35am).

Column 2; Body copy.

Column 3; link

Step 1: Hover over the paper aeroplane icon on the left-hand side of the dashboard. This is the Publisher tool.

Click on it.


Step 2: This then shows you all the content that is planned over the next week. You need to click on Content,

which is up towards the top of the page.

Step 3: Click on Bulk Composer which is on the left-hand side

of the page.

Step 4: Select the csv file that you have created, and choose

which account(s) you would like to upload the content to.

Click the Review Messages button.

Step 5: This will open a new window, which shows all the

content you have just uploaded. You can click on each post to

upload an image or video to it, and you can amend the copy

should you need to.

Step 6: Once you have assigned imagery to each post and are

happy to schedule them, tick the box in the top left corner

and then click on Schedule Selected.

Step 7: You should see this screen, which means that it was

successful, and you have successfully scheduled your content.


5. Editing Scheduled Content

Should you need to, you can jump into a scheduled post to edit the copy and/or imagery, or delete it should you no longer need it to go out.

i) Edit a Post – simply click on the pencil icon at the bottom left of

the scheduled post and this will take you into it where you can

amend it as necessary.

ii) Delete a Post – to delete a scheduled post, click on the three

vertical dots at the bottom right of the scheduled post, then click

onto more options, and it will give you the opportunity to delete it.

6. Common Issues

1. You can’t upload an excel document, it must be a csv file. The time of the posts must also end in a 5 or 0.

2. You only have so many characters for each platform. If you try to upload a post with more characters that

they allow, it will highlight this to you when you are uploading and give you the chance to amend it to fit.

3. Sometimes there is a glitch when uploading content, either in terms of it not uploading the full file, or it

crashing and uploading everything twice. So it’s always worth just looking over the content you’ve just

uploaded to make sure it’s uploaded the full file, and that there are no obvious problems.

B2B Marketing & CommunicationsB2B Marketing & Communications

www.fig.agency

172-174 High Street WestGlossop, Derbyshire SK13 8ERT: 01457 857111E: [email protected]

a how-to guide to hootsuite · here at fig, we use hootsuite to help manage a number of social...

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