Hootsuite has been a very enlightening experience. The multi-stream style made it very easy to organize posts by priority and platform. One of my favorite tools to use was the Facebook stream in conjunction with certain chat apps. The ability to add a stream that only features analytics information was also a huge bonus. I spent my first few hours with Hootsuite just creating and organizing different streams and lineups.

Hootsuite also let me harness the full potential of other platforms as well. My Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn streams allowed me to observe all the important data covered in the day. The ability to create streams based on specific hashtags, trends, or people was especially useful.

Using Hootsuite, I was able to monitor the growth of my follower pool. This came in handy for many reasons, but the most beneficial part of it was seeing how many new followers were of a specific type. I could keep track of what followers were involved in PR, social media, sales, etc. Hootsuite gave me an easy way to track my followers, and what they posted.

My favorite topic in the Hootsuite University course was the guide to using Hootsuite's polling/survey/gallery portal. It is extremely valuable for creating very customized contests and polls. This feature allows brands to collect information from multiple audiences on one platform. In my opinion, this is one of the most useful features in Hootsuite.

The onboard analytics application offered by Hootsuite is great, but they could stand to include more categories for specific tabs. One can view engagement, but it would be great if there were a direct comparison across all platforms. Hootsuite's analytics function is very useful, but it could improve in these ways.

Hootsuite also gave me some issues with the overall interface, at first. It was easy to adjust certain settings, but others were either buggy or basically unchangeable. The account notification settings, in particular, gave me the most trouble. It was only a small nuisance, but the audible alerts when a new message showed up in one of my tiles was impossible to turn off. Other than that Hootsuite gave me small bug problems, but there were no huge issues.

Hootsuite has greatly improved, even since we started using it in class. I am looking forward to their coming update, and apparently the update is the final step in their response to a slew of tweets. I truly enjoyed using Hootsuite, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be certified in using it! The tweets that sprung Hootsuite into action are featured below, enjoy!