Most businesses have some sort of social media strategy. However, managing multiple accounts across various platforms can be complicated.

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows users to manage, schedule and post updates to any page or profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, WordPress and other platforms from a central dashboard.

Hootsuite offers useful features such as scheduling of posts, analytics and audience engagement tools. Users can implement and analyse marketing campaigns across all social profiles without the need to sign in to each network individually. Premium users get advanced features such as social analytics, audience engagement, team collaboration and security.

The most prominent feature of Hootsuite is the ability to post text, links, videos and photos through the Hootsuite dashboard directly to multiple social media profiles. There are also scheduling features in Hootsuite which allow users to manage posts so that they are automatically posted at specific times. You can schedule your week’s social media activity at the start of the week and leave it to run itself as the week progresses. This is great for time-poor business professionals.

Hootsuite also allows businesses to manage multiple social media profiles. With a free account, you can manage up to three social media profiles. If you need more, you can upgrade to a paid account. If you want to post to the social media profiles of, say, your entire sales team, you can do this centrally from the Hootsuite dashboard.

The system also includes more advanced features such as Targeted Messaging. This allows users to send specific, private messages out to targeted audience groups on selected social media profiles directly, through the Hootsuite dashboard.

Finally, Hootsuite has a dedicated section for creating analytical reports and click-through summaries. It works with Google Analytics as well as Facebook Insights. It is free to try the system out. You can also get a 30 day free trial of Hootsuite Pro which allows you to manage up to 10 social media profiles.