A Powerful Twitter Marketing Toolbox: HootSuite

One of the things which helped to make Twitter popular is the ability to use it from third party clients. In most cases, these clients offer users more features than those available on the web version of Twitter itself.

On my Mac, I used Twitterrific, Twhirl, Tweetdeck and many others, while I’m now sticking with Eventbox. I also end up using the web version in some cases, for example when I use the “tweet this” buttons available on my blogs or other services which leverage Twitter’s network.

Today I came across a new service called HootSuite. In a nutshell, it offers a much improved web interface aimed to replace Twitter’s one, adding lots of additional functions which make it a powerful marketing toolbox leveraging Twitter.

Aside from the ability to see your main timeline, replies, retweets, direct messages and so on, there are a couple of interesting features worth noting:

- tracking of the statistics associated to links that you publish on your tweets
- delayed tweets
- auto URL shortening
- integrated Twitter search with the ability to save keywords
- ability to monetize your Tweets with Google Adsense (by using ow.ly url shortener)
- ability to manage multiple Twitter accounts from the same interface
- bookmarklet to quickly tweet about the websites you are browsing

Statistics tracking

Clicks on each url posted on your tweets and shortened with their URL shortener ow.ly are tracked and you can get very useful statistics about click-through, a must-have if you are involved in specific marketing campaigns.

Delayed Tweets

The standard posting window includes the ability to delay the tweet (and you can specify the date, too) and to receive an email when your message gets posted.

URL shortening

Just insert your link in the appropriate edit box and it’ll be automatically shortened and appended to your tweet.

Integrated Twitter Search

Twitter search is integrated in the main interface of the service and you can also save your search keywords in order to quickly access to the search results later.

Monetize your Tweets

This is very interesting. When you shorten a URL through ow.ly, which shows a toolbar on top of the page, your Google Adsense ads will be shown for fifty percent of the time (the other fifty percent they’ll show theirs). I have to try it out.

Manage multiple Twitter Accounts

Lots of power Twitter users have many different accounts. With HootSuite, switching from one to another hasn’t been easier.

Bookmarklet

Are you on a webpage you’d like to share on Twitter? Just place this bookmarklet on your bookmark bar (Safari, IE and Firefox are supported) and this functionality will be at your fingertips.

In conclusion, this is the best web based Twitter suite I’ve ever tried so far. There are a couple of features, though, that would make it even better and that are already available on other services like Twitblogs. They should think about it

Did you try HootSuite? What’s your feedback? Pleae leave your comments and share this post through HootSuite!

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Tagged as: hootsuite, luca filigheddu, Social network, TweetDeck, Twhirl, twitblogs, Twitter, twitterrific